Pansy got up from her place by the Aga and clicked her way across the floor; she put her head on Lar’s knee and gazed into his face. He scratched at the top of her head with a finger.

‘Maybe I don’t know much about love,’ Clara whispered.

‘What we had was special.’

‘That’s what they all say. Forgive me, I don’t want to be cynical about this or hard-hearted, but if you are capable of love at all, then you will find it again. It will not be the same, but it can be equally special. That’s a proven fact.’

‘I wish to mourn for ever.’

‘What a priggish thing to say.’

‘It’s true.’

‘I don’t believe you. And what’s more, I don’t believe that Caitlin would have wanted you to. You make her sound like a woman who liked living.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘Have a glass of brandy?’

He shook his head.

‘Well, I will.’

She got up and went over to the cupboard, took out a squat bottle and a glass and brought them back to the table.

‘I will regret this,’ she said, as she poured.

‘Why do it then?’

‘Because I love the feeling of the warm spirit creeping down the back of my throat. Because I know that after one glass I will sleep like a log. Because I would like to feel benign. You don’t make me feel benign; maybe the brandy will.’

He laughed. ‘You’re an odd one. She probably would have liked you.’

She held the glass up towards him.

‘Sláinte.’

‘Aye. Maybe I’ll have a glass after all. Maybe we could both be benign for a while.’

I lie here now thinking about love.

Yes.

The light stirs on the ceiling of my room; branches, twigs, budding leaves, all pattern and re-pattern in the wind. I could, if I wished, pretend that I was lying out of doors, staring up into the trees.

Yes.

Maybe he was right.

Maybe I do know nothing about love. I have perhaps devoured life and people too fast, like a greedy child who eats her ice cream quicker than all the others and then expects them to share their melting cones with her.

‘Clara will be all right when she steadies herself,’ I once heard Mother say to someone.

‘Steady the Buffs,’ was an expression my father used and then having used it, he would explain its military connotations.

I don’t feel I want to be steady, but I do want to find out about love.

Sleep is snatching at me.

I thought I loved James.

The love words slip in and out of my head.

Joy, longing, excitement, laughter, glory.

Three months.

Steady the Buffs.