Nina went to bed with Bea’s words floating around her. She felt like she’d been too old for too long. What a great hurry she’d been in and, looking back, she didn’t know why. She hadn’t been alone. Many of her generation had grown up too quickly. Then, around the turn of the millennium, someone had flicked a switch. Kids went from growing up too fast to not growing up at all. (And, yes, she knew their lives contained a million challenges that her generation hadn’t had to face. As Alannah often reminded her, the day of the permanent job was over, rents were ridiculously high, and they’d all be living at home until they were forty. ‘Forty?’ Nina liked to reply. ‘You’ll have me in the madhouse long before then.’) Too frequently, she acted like an old woman. She’d see a tattooed youngster and hear herself saying, ‘How are they ever going to get a job?’ She’d read an article about a twenty-something’s adventurous sex life and think, That doesn’t sound very wise. Then she’d round on herself for being such a moan. If she was honest, she envied them. She’d never had the same sense of youthful infallibility.

Nina and Julian had married two years after they’d met. The wedding had taken place in Dublin. According to the official explanation, this had been the most sensible location. Most of their friends had lived in the capital, as had Julian’s family. In reality, Nina had feared being shunned by people in Kilmitten. For a while, her visits home had been brief. If she hadn’t been ostracised, she hadn’t been very popular either. She remembered some locals, like Haulie Crossan, being kind to her, and it had meant a lot.

After Alannah and Bea were born, she continued to work, struggling on through exhaustion, telling herself that others coped with far more. Bit by bit, Julian became disillusioned with filmmaking. The commissioning editors were narrow-minded idiots; the budgets were too small; the media industry was rotten with nepotism. Although Nina suspected her husband’s complaints contained an element of truth, she also knew that his vision had withered. His ambition had been replaced by inertia. She was disappointed when he told her he was going to work for his father, but not surprised. There was more opportunity in the building game, he said. He’d be a fool not to take advantage of his family connections.

It was all about money, after all.