“Clare was mad,” Martin said. “There was nothing to Delia. That’s a weight off my mind. I know where I am now. I always knew where I was with her, even though I didn’t know what she was, and now I still don’t know what she was, and God knows I don’t know where I am without her. But there was nothing to her.”

“My mother said Delia didn’t amount to much,” Min said spitefully. “Right from the beginning, she said that.”

“Nothing to her. You said it yourself,” Martin said. “I’ll show you a picture of her, taken when she was sixteen years old.”

He pulled himself slowly to his feet, and made his way across the room to the cupboard, which had glass doors on top and solid wooden doors underneath. Behind the glass doors Delia’s Waterford glass bowls and her Waterford glass jug shimmered dimly. They had a shelf to themselves. Another shelf held her good Arklow china. Martin bent painfully to open the lower doors, and when they were open wide he reached in and took out a large brown envelope. He pushed the doors shut and made his way back to where Min sat in Delia’s chair on Delia’s side of the fire. He unfastened the envelope and slid the photograph out carefully, holding it as though it were thin glass. His hands are trembling more these days, Min thought. When the photograph was free, he held it up for Min to see.

“There she is,” he said. “That’s what she looked like. Look at the hair she had. Who ever had hair like that, that color? Nobody else in that family had hair like that. They said she took after her father. He died young. Look at that, Min.”

“That photograph glorifies her,” Min said.