‘It may have escaped your notice, Miss Hahn, but my plane leaves in approximately three and a half hours,’ Mr Huff grumbled, inspecting his watch.

‘Everything was always so … so painful to her, Mr Huff.’ I struggled to try and condense it all. ‘Because her arms were so short. She longed to press them together, in prayer, but she couldn’t. And people were always drawn to her. They would approach her – out on walks, in the car, over the garden fence – and ask for her blessing. She never complained or resisted. She always gave it to them – happily, willingly. Always. But every time she did, something painful was exacted … extracted … a toll …’

‘People can be so incredibly selfish!’ Mr Huff expostulated, with a tut.

‘On several occasions when I was with her she suddenly fell into a state of deep ecstasy,’ I battled on. ‘She’d be talking or walking or laughing or eating and then in the next instant, she’d keel over. One time she collapsed, face down, into a bowl of hot porridge. It was all up her nostrils, it was matted into her hair …’

‘Have you ever heard of a condition called narcolepsy, Miss Hahn?’ Mr Huff wondered. I shook my head. I hadn’t.

‘It’s a neurological condition in which …’

‘Kalinda seemed to find this especially terrifying,’ I calmly talked over him. ‘She’d get completely hysterical. She’d pinch Orla, slap her, scream at her. Then Bran would yell at poor Lonely. But none of it made any difference. Nothing would revive her. Sometimes she’d be gone for just a matter of minutes, other times for many hours. On one occasion she lay unconscious for the best part of a day. So we’d generally call in the doctor …’

‘Dr Meadows.’

‘Exactly. Dr Meadows. But he couldn’t do anything for her. Aside from recommending that we kept her liquids up, and delivering the odd quiet aside to Bran about the positive benefits of psychoanalysis …’

‘He thought she was a hysteric?’

‘I suppose she was.’ I shrugged. ‘But aren’t all saints, at some level?’

Mr Huff didn’t respond. He seemed momentarily distracted – although by what exactly I couldn’t tell.

‘When she did eventually revive’ – I smiled (fondly remembering those revivals, both the timely and the untimely ones) – ‘she was often incredibly weak, although … although blissfully happy. This intense atmosphere of joy would emanate from her, but also a feeling of deadly absence. As if on each occasion she left us, it grew more and more difficult to drag herself back …’

Mr Huff’s slightly paranoid eyes continued to scan the garden. ‘What about Father Hugh?’ he wondered (almost in spite of himself).

‘Uh … Father Hugh visited several times over that summer,’ I recalled. ‘Orla absolutely adored him. And he and Bran were old friends – almost like brothers. Orla called him her “spiritual father”. But Lonely despised him. She loathed him. I think she pretty much blamed him for everything. And she hated the Catholic Church. With a passion. She was naturally suspicious of all big institutions. But she reserved her special hatred for poor, long-suffering Father Hugh …’