He opened his mouth to say something, but found he couldn’t. He wanted to scream at her, perhaps even to attack her with his clenched fists, thumping and thumping, making her cry out and bleed. Instead he turned and slithered down from the road to the edge of the stream, jumped across it, trailing one foot into a swirling pool as he went and then set off at speed across the valley, bounding and stumbling from tussock to tussock, dodging the whinbushes and the bog holes as he went. Pansy turned and raced after him.

Lar could hear Clara’s voice calling him as he ran. ‘Hey, hey, hey!’

He ran until a stitch in his side became too painful for him to continue, then he stood heaving in and out great gouts of air and wiping the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his coat. He was standing on the lip of the valley and down below him stretched fields and trees, little outcrops of rock, here and there a dark roof and away in the distance the curve of the bay and the thickening of the air around it that indicated the city. Here it felt to him that he stood in no man’s land.

Caitlin stood beside him. There was no longer any blue left in the sky and the wind was quite cold. He put his arm around her and they stood in silence looking down at the sprawling lough.

‘Wouldn’t it be awful to think that we might never see that again?’ she said. ‘Just think of all those people who were forced away from here by poverty and hunger and were never able to come back. It probably hasn’t changed all that much, you know. They’d probably recognise it, even after a hundred years. There’s not too many places you can say that about.’

‘It’s only a matter of time. The bungalows are on the march.’

She punched at him gently. ‘I prefer my notion. There are places that remain untouched, they always will. I have a great plan in my head for a series of paintings about the three north-western loughs, to do with light and dark and space. I’d like to be able to tell you exactly what I have in my head, but I feel if I talk about it, I may lose it.’ She looked at him almost apologetically.

‘That’s all right, love.’

‘I want to start work on this as soon as possible. When this exhibition is over, I can throw Moya in the back of the car and we can both come over here on good days. I can spancel her like a wee goat and I can try and work out exactly what I want to do. That’s my plan. And I’ll think of you in your stuffy classroom.’

‘Thank you. And you and the child will probably get colds, rheumatism and chilblains.’

‘She will have to suffer for her mother’s art.’

She took his arm and they walked towards the car.