She pulls down his leggings and he is screaming at the friction of the fabric against his own raw flesh. On the inside of his thigh, under his right testicle, she sees one white growth, like an overgrown wart. She holds his sex out of the way, and leans in closer; peers at it. The white swelling has a strange shape; it is like a small face trying to escape through his skin. Is this a foreign growth, or our child that will never escape? she thinks. It is ugly. Around the swelling are light bruises, encircled in black; the outer limit of the infection.

He says something, but he is speaking so low, she must put her ear next to his mouth.

‘Water—’

She gets him a mug of water, and, while she is out of his line of vision, takes a loose nail from his basket of tools. He cannot swallow, so she wrings the water into his mouth from a cloth, but even this makes him cough. He is drowning in his own fluids.

‘I’m not ready to forgive you,’ he says. ‘I am too young, and selfish. I’m not wise enough. I will not be given enough years to become wise.’

But he cannot move his tongue any more; he is only making a humming sound. None of his words have been spoken. She doesn’t understand.

‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘It will be fine.’

She drops to her knees, pierces the white swelling with the nail. No blood comes out, and he does not flinch in pain; there is no feeling in the growth. She pierces the blue skin around it, and a drop of blood emerges. She wipes the blood on her finger and then puts it in her mouth.

‘If this does not kill me, nothing will,’ she says, showing him the finger. ‘See how much I love you? See?’

There is blood on one of her front teeth. Joseph is tired, but his eyes won’t close. He dreams of hitting her, stabbing Eoin. He always hated the Prestons. You hate people for reasons that haven’t happened yet, but you know they will. He dreams of loving Áoife more, of her loving him more, but none of it matters. He knows his gentleness towards her has always been her greatest punishment. He has always manipulated it; and now there is nothing left. There was no point to their life together. He is going someplace else, and he doesn’t know where. I will miss her, though, he thinks.

‘I can’t die no matter what I do,’ she says.

She is crying now, and the sight of her in pain hurts him. Her hopelessness has defeated the anger he thought would guide him into death.

‘I love you,’ he says.