‘Tangled up somehow. A lot of the wrong ideas pushing the right ideas rather hard. You don’t like him much, do you?’

Joe blushed.

‘He’s OK.’

She laughed.

‘In ten years you’ll feel differently. Confusion is hard for people of your age to understand.’

‘Is Fred Burgess confused?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Oh.’ She took his arm and squeezed it tight up close to her side.

‘Brendan might go away soon … I think … I hope … he ought to go … really.’

From far away there was a burst of gunfire.

‘Oh dear,’ she said. She took a cigarette packet out of her pocket and looked at it.

‘I think he’ll go. It would be better. You know, I think I’m going to give it up.’

‘That’s good.’

She threw the box into the middle of the road.

‘There.’

‘How many were in it?’

‘Cheeky.’

She began to run, dragging him along with her.

‘Quick, sticky buns.’

At her steps she stopped.

‘I really mean it. I’ve had my last stick of poison.’

‘I give you twenty-four hours.’

‘Your windows are dirty.’

She was lighting matches in an abstracted way and the gas kept popping.

‘There must be air in the pipes,’ he said.

She put the matches down and came over to the window.

‘I don’t really look out much, so it doesn’t worry me if they’re clean or dirty. There’s not much to see anyway.’

‘No.’

‘I suppose when those houses fall down they’ll put up a huge tower block and I wouldn’t want to look at that either.’

‘You won’t be here.’

She sighed and went back to the gas. This time it lit at once. He watched her quick neat fingers as she cut the buns and laid them on the griller and wondered if, in his life, he would ever meet anyone like her again.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked him.

‘Yes. Why?’

‘You don’t look well.’

‘I’m tired, I suppose.’

‘All the kids are tired. It’s been long.’

‘What?’

‘Oh, the winter perhaps.’

‘What makes you think that Brendan will go?’

‘Just a feeling I have. I don’t know anything.’ She looked rather fiercely at him. ‘Nothing. It’s best to know nothing. All or nothing. Otherwise you start making idiotic moral judgements. So I know nothing. I think he’ll go away. He’s not very strong. I don’t mean Tarzan-strong. No strength inside. His mind is too open to suggestion. He needs a good friend.’

‘You?’

She took one of the buns from under the grill and began to butter it.

‘There’s a lovely shop in Dublin makes the best sticky buns in the world. Bewleys. A great dark place. They sell coffee beans …’ She lost the thread of her own words.

‘Bewleys …?’

She arranged the buns in a circle on a plate.

‘Here.’

He took one from her. She stood looking down at him.

‘Joe …’