Michael poured himself a drink and stood with his back to the sink. Mrs Coyle was speaking in a low, urgent voice, juking over her shoulder the odd time to check no one was listening. Cushla wondered if she was talking about her, but Michael began to reply. It was hardly above a whisper, but Cushla was used to the timbre of his voice when he lowered it and could make out what he was saying. If he refuses to recognise the court he won’t have a defence. A solicitor could ask for an appeal. I know one or two who might take him on.

A long trill from the doorbell, a draught from the door. Laughs and hellos, the house filling with noise. Cushla looked at the clock on the wall. All the guests were arriving on the stroke of eight. Very Protestant of them. She and Michael had been there for half an hour. It occurred to her that he and their hosts had not wanted the other guests to see them arriving together. That no one cared what Mrs Coyle thought mortified her.

Penny rushed into the kitchen asking for Jim. She had changed into a check dirndl skirt and a tight black jumper with three-quarter-length sleeves, her hair held off her face with a slide. Her arms were both slack and sinewy. Michael sat beside Cushla at the table and refilled his glass.

I want to be Penny when I grow up, said Cushla. That ageing-beatnik look. General coolness.

He patted her knee. You’ll do as you are.

It’s kind of creepy, that. Feeling someone’s leg under a table.

Are you all right? You’re quiet.

That wee woman must think I’m a whore, she said. She had pronounced it huir, sounding like her granny, whose favourite term of abuse for a woman was ‘the ould haitch’. The only time she had heard Michael use the word – playfully, after she asked him to do something to her, the thought of which was now making her ears hot – he had pronounced it correctly.

Penny came and went, putting cards and gifts and bottles wrapped in tissue paper on the dresser. Sometimes a guest stuck a head in and called out a hello at Michael, eyes sweeping the room to get a look at Cushla. You’re in hiding, he said. Come on.

In the hall, in the drawing room, in the dining room, there were women in fitted dresses and heavy Victorian jewellery. Michael introduced her to a photographer – a press photographer, the man stressed – in a jerkin like Victor’s. A playwright. An obstetrician who was drinking crème de menthe from a pint glass. Cushla spoke when she was spoken to, moving through the rooms in his shadow. Mrs Coyle was moving too, her compact body lugging platters and stacks of plates.