I thought we were growing together, knitting and knotting our senses and our thoughts. Love was happening – I thought. I knew that I had only fiddled at love before. The slate was wiped clean by James. I had no past, no present, no future, except with him. I was so sure of that.

St … ea … dy the Buffs!

The branches on the ceiling drift lower and lower. If I lift my hand I will be able to touch them. If I lift my head from the pillow they will tangle in my hair.

What is love? ‘tis not hereafter;

Present mirth hath present laughter;

What’s to come is still unsure.

Clara will be all right when she …

Gioir.

I used to see his face when I closed my eyes. I used to feel his hand on my skin when I was alone. I used to hear his voice in my dreams.

I still feel the weight of his expensive gold watch clasped around my wrist. I sometimes wonder why I didn’t smash it into bits with a hammer and send him the pieces in a Jiffy bag, preferably without stamps on it, so that he would have had to pay to spill the shards of glass and metal out onto his breakfast table.

The branches settle gently on my face like soft fingers. I will sleep.

Lar, on the other hand, did not sleep.

The brandy throbbed in his head, made his heart race, did, in fact, all the things that he had known it would do.

He wondered why he had not told Clara the truth.

He wondered why he had told her mother.

Clara, he felt would nag on and on at him, prying into his privacies, giving him undoubtedly, her strident views on the North, terrorists, Unionists, Republicans, history, religion and all the rest of that stuff that people went on and on and on about. People who didn’t know, people who didn’t care, people who didn’t hurt. How dare she suggest that Caitlin would have wanted him to make a new life, to be content with shadowy memories, to become in some way normal once more. Intolerable notion. Intolerable woman.

He groaned.

Pansy on the floor at the foot of the bed gave a little whimper. He saw his mother standing by the clock in the hall, wearing grey; she stretched out a hand towards him. He turned over and dug his face into the pillow. The image fractured into tears.

The telephone is ringing.

Where am I?

I always laugh when that question comes into my mind.

Dublin or New York?

My life seems to be punctuated by the ringing of the telephone.

That is not a New York bell that rings.

I grope.

Where the hell is the bloody machine anyway? I am going to have to open my eyes.

I should never have had that brandy.

Now I know where I am.

Now I know who is ringing.