‘Left my phone in the toilet,’ she lied, trying to smile. ‘I’ll forget my head next.’

She went into her toilet and stared at herself in the mirror over the washbasin, as if she were trying to remember who she was. She looked strangely composed, not like a woman who was smashed up inside with rage and self-recrimination.

She rolled off her tights and dropped them into the pedal bin. Thank God she always carried at least one spare pair in her purse. She washed herself, rubbing the inside of her thigh until it was scarlet, and after that she tidied herself up, trying to breathe calmly and evenly while she did so. Her hairdresser, Ruari, had cut her dark red hair into a short, sharply pointed bob, and so it needed only a few strokes of the brush to straighten it. Fixing her make-up took only a moment, too. She always wore a trace of mascara when she was working, because her eyelashes were so fair, and foundation, and a hint of blusher, but no more than that.

‘I’ll see you in about an hour so – maybe a little more,’ she told Moirin, as she left for the second time.

‘Are you sure that everything’s all right, ma’am?’ Moirin asked her. She could have sworn that Moirin was psychic.

‘I’m grand, thanks, Moirin. Just trying to keep too many balls in the air, that’s all.’ Then she thought: Jesus, that would be funny if it weren’t so sick.

She walked briskly past Brendan’s office, wondering what she would say if he were to suddenly step out, but his door remained closed. Nursing his scratches and his ego, I expect, and wondering what to do next, like I am.

As she drove to Wilton, she turned on the radio in her car to Cork’s 96FM, loud, so that Billie Eilish’s song ‘Bury A Friend’ drowned out both her anger about Brendan and her grieving for Conor. Today… I am thinking about the things that are deadly.

When she turned into the hospital car park, she was surprised to see Dr Kelley standing outside smoking a cigarette, especially since the hospital grounds were a no-smoking zone. She thought that Dr Kelley had put on weight again, too, so that she looked like one of those Russian matryoshka dolls, with one doll inside another.

Katie climbed out of her car and walked across to her, putting on a disapproving expression.

‘I didn’t know you smoked.’

‘I don’t. Well, I didn’t. I gave it up three years ago. But my father passed last week and he was always my guiding light, do you know? And I felt like a cigarette, that’s all. Something to keep me company. Something to smell like my da.’

She took a deep drag and then she flicked the butt away into the street.