Ruth sits back in her chair, and eyes Concessa. There is so much hatred in these looks, in these rooms. And then, all at once, the flood of talking begins again.

When Raghnailt was …

When Raghnailt was a child she thought she would be twice as good at living at twenty as she was at ten; twice that again at forty, but there is no growth, no progression. Nothing ever works. The same emotions strangle her. They are merciless, but shifting. No defence is mounted that cannot be destroyed by the liquid shapes they take, seeping through her skin like smoke, rising up again in her throat. And once they begin it feels constant, always total, as though it had never stopped; even now when she has a reprieve. She should be happy. She knows it, but she is only afraid. How is it that a place can be so empty of people, or event, but so full of emotion? Nothing happens in between, but the world has changed for her. Perhaps there is nothing behind these eyes that see, she thinks. The mind is a very thin thing, the soul even slighter; nothing seems to move within. Some other me just crashes about in the shards of my mind, but sees nothing clearly. I am so old, she thinks, but feel like I have just been born.

Her father used to say there was nothing real in feelings; the only reality was the prayers you offered to God; that emotion was the devil’s work, a trap to trick you into moving away from God’s light. He said that feeling always masqueraded as truth, and yet she has more emotions than anyone she has ever known.

I do not want them, though, she thinks.

Now, her son, whose love she has longed for, is close to her, wiping her forehead and checking her eyes; and it shows some sort of love. He is unused to contact and is too rough with her, but he is trying to be gentle. She has craved this, but now she wants nothing more than to be left alone to indulge her fear, let it loose and see if she can find its limit.

‘Almost finished,’ Colca says. ‘You will remain in bed, Mother, and not go about just yet, will you?’

I was not made a mother, she thinks; I did not become one. I tried to learn, and was not enough for it.

‘I am fine,’ she says. ‘I do not know why Alannah said I was ill.’

His face is almost sad. It is unrecognisable to her sometimes. I have not looked at him enough in our life together, she thinks, unable to read him.

‘Do you remember my father?’ she says.

‘I remember nothing before he poisoned me.’