Everything was close by. The service was held in the church in town, and the graveyard was only a ­ten-­minute drive from the estate. It was another ­twenty-­minute drive to the Silver Coast Golf Club in Enniscrone, where Lydia’s family were putting on a meal for the mourners at two o’clock. The women were going to go to the golf club, but Lorna had wanted to drop Luke back first, because Luke had done his duty for the day. Luke didn’t really know Mike Healy, Lydia’s son, but he had come to the church anyway. Mike Healy had been a wretched sight; his body swallowed by a suit that was clearly a size too big for him. He was a bit older than Luke, fifteen or sixteen and emphatically pubescent, with scraggly porkchop sideburns and the bright red bulb of a cyst throbbing like a stalled car’s warning light on the side of his nose. He had small features squished into a broad, flat face, and ­deep-­set eyes puffy and raw with grief in a way it had been hard to look at. Lorna was proud of Luke for electing to join the line to shake the hands of the family and, when his turn came, how he had earnestly taken Mike’s dazed hand in his and told him he was sorry for his loss. Returning to the house, released from the oppressive solemnity of the funeral, the women had been moved to talk, in a general and speculative way, about death. This had led to a discussion about the possibility of an afterlife, which had led to a discussion concerning planes of existence, which had led to Ciara sitting here relating her experience with the Being in a South American forest.

Lorna plunged the press and brought the coffee over to the kitchen table.

‘I’ve no decent biscuits, I’m afraid,’ she said.

‘Stop,’ Anne said.

‘Imagine if coffee tasted as good as it actually smelled,’ Emma said, pouring herself a cup.

‘How are the two men faring?’ Emma asked Lorna.

‘I think Barry’s after knocking Luke over. There’s snow all up his coat.’

Anne got up off her chair and went over to the window.

‘He’ll have that poor lad’s coat ruined,’ Anne said. ‘And where exactly is he going with that tree?’

Lorna joined Anne.

‘I would wager he’s going to dump it in the ditch at the back of the estate,’ Lorna said.

‘Why wouldn’t he just leave it out for the binmen?’

‘That’s not the way Barry’s mind works. For weeks I’ve been telling him to leave the tree out and he wouldn’t lift a finger. ­Until –’ Lorna spread her hands in exasperation ‘– he decides this morning the tree has to go right now, and that’s that. The collection’s not till Monday but all of a sudden it can’t wait.’