As I turned left onto the wide main street of Aughnacloy, I recalled the manned border which had been there when I first visited Inishowen, the barriers, the soldiers with their guns. There was no trace of it now, although I’d just crossed into Northern Ireland, a separate jurisdiction, and I hoped it would never return. I would cross another seamless border after Derry to enter Donegal, that odd contradiction of driving north but leaving the North behind jurisdictionally. I’d had some interesting chats in the States trying to explain it, usually resorting to a map on my phone to dispel the confusion.

I left Aughnacloy and drove on towards Omagh.

After work, my next concern was my home, not just my cottage in Malin but Glendara, the town where my practice was, where my friends lived and where I spent most of my time. I hoped people would be glad to see me back. I’d missed them. As I’d missed my cat Guinness who Marina was supposed to be keeping an eye on, since she was staying in my house. Cats are independent creatures, and Guinness was a particularly cantankerous feline, so he’d probably barely noticed my absence once there was someone to feed him.

But then, and I felt a pinch at finally letting him in, there was Molloy, who might not be quite so straightforward. After a stint in Cork and overseas, Tom Molloy had returned as Glendara’s sergeant once the Garda Station had reopened, though he wasn’t expected to be there long – rumors abounded about an inspectorship. And though I’d missed him more than I’d thought possible these past six months, Molloy was the dilemma I still hadn’t figured out, the smudge on the glass I wasn’t quite tall enough to reach.

The sun shone low in the sky most of the way up the road, making me regret packing my sunglasses away with my Florida clothes, but by the time I reached Derry the weather had changed. The day darkened, clouds were purple and full over the Foyle and the light was a strange grey and yellow, casting an eerie hue over the houses on the Waterside. The rainclouds stayed above and ahead of me as I drove through the city, past the restaurants on the quay, through the Strand roundabout and out past Sainsbury’s and the big DIY shops. At Pennyburn the sky looked like a Turner painting, turbulent and angry.

At the big roundabout at Culmore I passed the signpost for the airport at Eglinton. There was a time when I’d used the Derry–Dublin flight regularly and I was sad to hear that the service was no longer operating. I hoped it would be reinstated. It had been an important communication link – the drive to Dublin took nearly four hours, the flight was about forty minutes.