In the daylight she could see that they were at the top of a hill, other hills in front of her in various degrees of fog and sparkle. “Do you think they spent the whole night there?”

Piet nodded. “I like to think so, yes.”

“Like a children’s book,” she said. The embarrassed feeling of having been so exhausted that she’d left the door open in a rainstorm evaporated. Where else would the animals of Clonmel take shelter? It must be a good sign. An odd and happy marriage, after all. But whose sign was it?

Piet ripped his sandwich in two and handed the unbitten portion to her. “Breakfast,” he said. Dizzily, she bit into it. She had been expecting ham, but it was sweet and delicious and crunched under her teeth.

“Strawberry,” said Piet. “Butter, sugar.” He felt his chin. “I suppose I am getting married and should shave.”

“The wedding’s here?”

“The wedding’s at church,” he said philosophically. “I could be married on a rock, by a buzzard or a bear, but not Fiona. She believes in God. God is everywhere, I told her, don’t you think? But I am an atheist, and so my opinions on God do not matter.”

He carried her bag into the house and pointed her to the bathroom, which had a toilet unconvincingly attached to the wall and a claw-foot tub belly-up in the corner, awaiting its installation. The sink worked. Her toothbrush had rubbed up against something soapy in the cosmetic bag, and it tasted like mint and perfume and incompetence. She pulled on a clean dress, a pair of leggings, clean socks, draped her dirty damp clothing over the top, stowed the suitcase in the snug, and went around the other way to follow the sound of voices to a kitchen. There was Jack leaning against a yellow enameled stove, surrounded by English people, all of them dressed like stable hands. Him, too, in yesterday’s clothing. By sleeping in it he seemed to have achieved the correct level of rumpled. The room smelled of cigarettes and sausage. She studied Jack’s face for some evidence of guilt over abandoning her.

Instead he said, “There she is!”