Maybe he’d had to go to Cork on the train because a necessity for the sister’s wedding hadn’t arrived. Or he could have tripped over something that was in an unusual place because of the preparations; he could have injured his bad leg. Mrs Moledy straightened the bedclothes and looked out of the window. The sister’s bridegroom went by on the promenade, the family from Dunmanway were sitting on a seat. No point in fretting, though it was hard not to: six days would have to go by before she’d know. The banknotes were in the hat-box on top of the wardrobe, underneath the tissue paper and the hat she’d worn the day she’d got married herself, cordial-green with a veil, hardly ever taken out now.

Supposing he never came again? Supposing he’d met some Protestant girl and gone for her? You might be standing in Dungan’s and you’d hear about it, the way you always heard about things in shops. One of the Blenner-hassett girls, or one of the Garlands. He’d go with her, having scattered his wild oats, forgetting altogether that he was loved, that his face stayed behind long after he went away on a Monday. She’d told him he was good-looking. She’d told him other things too, but what he’d never understood was how there’d be nothing left of her if he didn’t come any more. She’d said that to him maybe twenty times on a Monday, first thing and last in spite of any words they’d have. But his eyes were sometimes listless, as if the pain in his wound had come on.

Agitated by her thoughts, Mrs Moledy blew her nose and powdered away the smears on her cheeks. She descended to the hall, and having opened the door that led down to the kitchen, she shouted to her maid, who she knew would be reluctant to get on with anything until she appeared herself. She’d be gone five minutes, she called down, and then hurried out to Myley Flynn’s, for the drink she felt in need of.

Carriglas, August 22nd, 1931. The wedding-cake arrived today, from Thompson’s in Cork. Miss Laffey, who has constantly been over to take fittings, sent word to say she has completed the dress. We again aired the visitors’ rooms. Brigid came upstairs to polish because Patty is still slow, and Mrs Haverty works morning and afternoon now. There will be six to stay, and almost fifty on the wedding day.

At dinner tonight there was talk of the bridge, though the subject of the memorial inscription was not touched upon.

’I would almost wager,’ John James declared, ‘that some calamity of engineering will befall that bridge. Before it’s completed the structure will collapse and will not afterwards be resumed.’