I was hearing it (the message), but not hearing it (I’m doing my best, Orla, but there are eggshells to be negotiated – down here, in the heap – and a dense layer of newspaper, and an unhealthy preponderance of … of … urgh! tiny flies and ants and earwigs). I was hearing it (Yes! Truly!) but not … not hearing it. Her voice was vague and indistinct. But it was crystal clear. Part of me understood the message (utterly lucid! Completely transparent!) … but then the other bit (the other part?) …? Nope. Absolutely nothing. Terrible reception. A pointless roar. Humming static. A sarcastic laugh. The sharp, peremptory clearing of an irritated throat. Then silence. Not even silence. Nothing so … so sweet, so pure as …

The message was about … well, about the nature of mortality, I suppose (love, loss, risk). But it was more than that, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it, though?

Or less? Less than that?

Holy Queen, Most Joyful Mother, we are sinful weeds in your …

Sinful weeds in …

It was about Mame. Surely? The message? It was about my mother. It was about mine and Orla’s secret pact. Our secret pact to save her. Poor, desperate Mame. From her dreadful fate.

Can a saint be sinful? Or … or encourage sin? Would that …? Does that …?

Does that make any sense at all?

I can’t think about it!

Answer me, Orla!

No! No, please don’t.

… bind us in your …

I cycled part of the way home from Tatteh’s (uphill! Almost all the way!) and then my front tyre went flat. A slow puncture. I reinflated it, twice, but the tiny rubber seal connecting the little metal nozzle to the elasticated hose on my pump, which had been leaking small amounts of air for quite some time, suddenly started gushing it out. Which meant pumping one-handed (bike flat on the ground, body of the pump supported between my knees) while struggling to keep the damn thing airtight with the fleshy part of my other hand.

I was tired and frustrated by the time I reached home. But I couldn’t relax. I prepared myself a small supper, but I couldn’t eat it. I was restless. I turned on the TV and I saw bodies being carried out of a collapsed hotel on the Brighton seafront. I walked to the window and I saw the garden crashing down to the sea in crazy terraces. Everything suddenly so … so fragile. So temporary. So random-seeming. And me, standing in the middle of it all, tightly shuttered, locked up, emptied, like an old, out-of-season beach hut. Scared of feeling anything. Bright paint peeling in the damp. A light sprinkling of sand across the partly rotted top step. An old collection of shells tucked under the dripping eaves. A special pebble with a hole in it. A dried starfish. A single broken flip-flop.

What was the word Alys had used? That formal, old-fashioned word …? Rep …rep … reparation? To make amends? To pay back? Is that what I was doing? Almost without knowing (but still … still knowing, deep inside)? Staring the problem straight in the face – incapable of looking away, of blinking, of re-focusing – so that all I could really see (finally) was a horrible blur of … of everything (everything!) and absolutely nothing in the self-same instant?