"Right," Frank said, when we hit Glenskehy, "let's see how well you've learned your geography. Give me directions."

"Straight on through the village, fourth lane to your right, way too narrow, no wonder Daniel and Justin's cars look like they've been drag racing, give me good old dirty Dublin any day," I told him, doing his accent. "Home, James." I was on a giddy one. The jacket had been freaking me out all afternoon--it was that lily-of-the-valley smell, right up close, I kept whipping round to see who had come up beside me--and the fact that I was being given the heebiejeebies by a jacket, like something out of Dr. Seuss, was making me want to giggle. Even passing the turnoff to the cottage, where I had met Frank and Sam that first day, didn't sober me up.

The lane was unpaved and potholey. Trees gone shapeless with years of ivy, hedge branches rattling along the sides of the car and flicking in at my window; and then huge wrought-iron gates, flaking with rust and hanging drunkenly off their hinges. The stone pillars were half drowned in hawthorn grown wild. "Here," I said.

Frank nodded and turned, and we were looking down an endless, graceful sweep of avenue, between cherry trees crowded with exploded balls of flowers. "Fuck me," I said. "Why did I have doubts about this, again? Can I sneak Sam in with me in my suitcase, and we can just live here forever?"

"Get it out of your system," Frank said. "By the time we reach that door, you need to be blase about all this. Anyway, the house is still shitty, so you can calm down."

"You told me they'd redone it. I expect cashmere curtains and white roses in my dressing room, or I'm calling my agent."

"I said they were doing it up. I didn't say they were magic."

Then the drive gave a little twist and opened up into a great semicircular carriage sweep, white pebbles speckled through with weeds and daisies, and I saw Whitethorn House for the first time. The photos hadn't done it justice. You see Georgian houses all over Dublin, mostly turned into offices and undermined by the depressing fluorescents you can see through the windows, but this one was special. Every proportion was balanced so perfectly that the house looked like it had grown there, nested in with its back to the mountains and all Wicklow dropping away rich and gentle in front of it, poised between the pale arc of the carriage sweep and the blurred dark-and-green curves of the hills like a treasure held out in a cupped palm.

I heard Sam take a fast hard breath. "Home sweet home," said Frank, turning the radio off.