When I finally got home, the house was dark. Phyllis had gone to bed. I was relieved at this, and sad too. I could see the Belfast Telegraph lying open at the television page, where she had marked out her evening’s viewing in pencil, alone.

Everything suddenly had a drunken clarity. The thought of her specially picking out which programmes to watch made me want to weep. I should have rung and told her where I was. I hadn’t. She wouldn’t mention anything about it the next day: that made it worse. I failed her as a companion, I knew. Would she be happier back with bloodhound Mary and remote-control-man Sam? Probably not.

She loved working in the newsagent’s: she hoarded little bits of information about everyone. She helped people out, sending them cards and chocolates when they were sick, and they never stopped being grateful. At least Phyllis was busy making herself part of something real. She was a spider at the centre of the sticky human web of fussing and affection. Not like me. I just hung around on the edges of things, ineffectually watching. Phyllis was trying to mean something to people. I didn’t mean anything to anybody.

I could have saved Titch, with more effort and conviction, and I hadn’t. I had guessed this would happen to him, I had even warned him, and yet there he was trussed up in bandages anyway. My superior knowledge had made not the least impression on events. The terrible, predictable misery had unfolded just as though I had never spoken, never even existed. Why had I let him learn it for himself? Had I wanted, somehow, to be proved right?

I remembered a story from a long time ago, told by a friend of Big Jacky’s who called in to see us one night. His son had been given a pet rabbit, not one of the little dwarf rabbits that are as limp as an old fur glove, but the real article: a big buck number with restless ears and a prominent will of its own. This rabbit was a source of great pride to the son. The father had watched the son building a run for the rabbit in the back garden, where the boy had made plans to observe it frolicking and chomping grass to its heart’s content.

The boy was assembling the run from loose bricks, cardboard boxes and bits of wire all shambled together, and the father saw that the rabbit could easily escape from it. So he warned the son: ‘Your rabbit will break out that run, and you’ll not see it again.’ And the son ignored him, and went on fixing up the flimsy pen.