Things had come together quickly after what had happened back home—she still thought of it as back home—in Bath. She had been raised there in the West Country of England, had met Damien at the University of Bath, he a postgrad architecture student, she in her second year of studying for a social work degree. She never imagined, even after they married, that she would come to live in the place he never ever called Northern Ireland. Always the North, the North of Ireland, sometimes the Six Counties, but never Northern Ireland. As if to speak its name would shame him. She accepted his reasons, even if she never fully understood them. Not that it mattered, she had thought, because they would never move there, not to that place. But then things went bad, she had come so close to that most wretched sin, and they had decided to start over. Here, where he came from.

And it all fell into place, just like that, as if some unknown god had been waiting for her to take the overdose, as if the job for Damien had been here all along, as if this house had been biding its time until their arrival.

“It’s there, look,” Sara said.

Damien pulled a sheet of kitchen paper from the roll on the island and wiped his hands clean before balling it up and leaving it by his plate. He reached for his jacket, slipped it on, and came to her side.

Looking down, he said, “No, I don’t see it. It’s just the colour of the stone.”

“No, it’s—”

“It’s your imagination. I need to get going. You’ll get some stuff unpacked, won’t you? I don’t want Da to be tripping over boxes when he comes round. You don’t want the place to be a tip, do you?”

Francie Keane was due to visit this week to see how the work on the house was coming along. The parts the electrician needed hadn’t turned up, and half the light switches remained uninstalled, clusters of wires snaking from the holes in the walls, ready to bite.

Damien didn’t wait for a response, and Sara heard the front door close as she toed the stain. When the sound of his car had receded, she went to the sink, filled the plastic basin with warm water and washing-up liquid, and took the dish scrubbing brush from the windowsill. On her knees, she cleaned the floor, the deep red blotches fading into the smooth darkness of the stone.

She knew they would come back.