Her mother creaked her way across the floor and down the stairs. Cushla listened to her lie for her, in her telephone voice: gastric flu, she was saying, sure you couldn’t have her going near the place with a dose like that. She forced down the now tepid tea and drew her body into a ball. The anaesthetic effect of the alcohol was wearing off, her stomach juices fizzling, the scalded feeling returning to her chest cavity. She dozed off for a moment then jolted awake, sensing that something was very wrong, and sat upright, ready to run downstairs to the telephone to ask Michael what she should do. But Michael was dead. She closed her eyes and tried to summon his face, but the only image that came was of the stretcher, the untidy arrangement of his limbs. How he looked with the life gone out of him.

Gina came back with a bottle of Kali Water begged from Mr Reid. Cushla’s father had sworn by it for sick tummies. It seemed sordid to take it for a hangover, but she was parched and drank it by the neck, the mild quinine flavour reminding her of her mother’s gin breath.

I need a lift down the road, said Gina.

Somebody might see me. I’m meant to be sick.

You can park at the bar.

No! You walk to the off-licence every day, do it today.

A few minutes later the front door slammed. She got up and dressed in the clothes she had worn last night, putting the cardigan back on. Downstairs, she sat on the third step, cradling the phone. She had spent so much of the last few months here, circling the table, willing him to call. She lifted the receiver and dialled the number of the flat. With each ring, the anguish she always felt when he didn’t answer grew until she could not bear it, because he never would. As she was about to replace the receiver, a man’s voice said, Yes?

Michael? she said, knowing as she cried his name it couldn’t be him.

Fingers snapping, low voices. It’s a woman, someone said. Cushla hung up. Who was in the flat? His son? Jim or Victor? The police?

She took a packet of cigarettes from the carton Gina kept in the pantry and her keys from the kitchen table. Her car was on the driveway. She had no recollection of driving home. She could not, in fact, remember anything after exclaiming at Michael’s shoulder. Eamonn must have ordered her out. She got behind the wheel and started the engine, letting the car roll backwards, too fast; a horn blasted and a van swerved out of her path. When her breathing had settled, she checked her mirrors and inched out.