Would I ever have taken her, as I had promised, to see the cities of Europe? I rather doubt it. I would have made excuses on and on until her energy would have leached away.

Yet here is this odd bird wanting to leave all this and go round the world.

Maybe women have itchy feet, always wanting to find out what’s around the next corner. I hate the next corner. Death may again be waiting there. Hate may be waiting there.

‘Where’s my tea?’

She was standing beside him, barefoot, clutching her dressing-gown round her – looking, he thought, like a rather badly wrapped parcel.

‘I’m so glad you came in at that moment. I was becoming turgid in my brain.’ He said to her.

She sighed. ‘It happens to me all the time.’

The lid of the kettle was clattering. She went over and moved it off the hot plate.

‘Let’s have coffee instead? I don’t feel like tea any more. How about you?’

‘Either will do me.’

‘Have you had breakfast?’

He nodded.

She shovelled three large spoonfuls of coffee into the coffeepot and poured the boiling water onto them.

‘Sit down. I hate people hovering.’

‘I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

‘I’d have stopped quite soon anyway. I loathe the day arriving and me not being ready to cope with it. It is difficult to cope with crises in a dressing-gown. I hate answering the door to my mother at ten-thirty in my dressing-gown. I become speechless.’

He didn’t believe that, but he said nothing.

‘Yes,’ she said after a long time. ‘That would be a nice thing to do. I can’t walk for miles but I will bring a book.’ She pressed down the plunger in the coffee-pot. She turned and grinned at him. ‘Like to see my scar?’

He felt himself going bright red.

‘No .. I … No …’

She laughed.

‘You are an idiot. The only person I show my scar to is my doctor. It’s terribly nasty-looking. It’s really lucky I’m not a belly dancer. There.’ She pushed a mug towards him. ‘I’m taking mine to the bath. I won’t be long. If we dilly and dally it will start to rain or something will happen to stop us going. I’m really looking forward to this.’ She shuffled from the room clutching her coffee in one hand and her dressing-gown in the other.

‘You must admit it’s beautiful.’

They sat on a low stone bridge and Pansy in ecstasies of joy ran nose to the ground in huge circles around them, whimpering with pleasure. Over and back she went across a brown stream that ran down the hillside, under the bridge and on across a wide stretch of valley. There was no sign of human life; just a few leaning poles indicated that somewhere, someone was receiving electricity. High above the hill a hawk hovered, its wings barely moving.

Lar thought of the Glens of Antrim. ‘It’s OK.’

‘I don’t mean the landscape. I mean,’ she pointed up towards the bird, ‘up there. Waiting to kill something. Watching out for some infinitesimal movement. Bird or animal. Something vulnerable – alive and vulnerable. I find that very exciting, just that notion that death can come – wham – like that, falling from the sky.’