You’re gaunt getting, said Gina. A woman needs a bit of fat on her face.

Cushla lifted the spoon again, letting it hover an inch from her lips, then lowered it back into the bowl. I can’t, she said. I’ll try later.

Gina was staring at her. She didn’t seem quite so drunk.

Cushla left the kitchen and went to her room. Michael’s cardigan was on her pillow. She lay on top of the covers and put her face in it. For a few minutes he was beside her. Lemon soap, tobacco, whiskey. The toasty smell of him in the morning. It had not been so hard to keep herself together. Skulking at the back of a church during his funeral had just been a continuation of the lying and deceit of the past few months. And it wasn’t as though she deserved better. Standing between her mother and the dishevelled regulars had felt like her proper place. She didn’t know what she had wanted to hear from Victor and Jane. Words of sympathy? An acknowledgement of her loss? That Michael had loved her?

She cried for a long time, not in whooping sobs as when her father died, some relief in the violence of them. The tears that were falling now were bubbling steadily, as if they might never stop. She lay without moving, watching the light outside fade.

Her mother was roaring for her. She must have fallen asleep. She pulled on the cardigan, wrapping it around herself, and went down the stairs. Gina passed her the receiver. It’s that wee lad, she said.

Gerry? said Cushla into the receiver.

There was shouting in the background, jeering, a smashing sound.

Miss, it’s Davy.

She could smell the smoke as she turned into the estate. The first few quadrants had a closed look but as she neared the square the McGeowns lived in, all the front doors were open, as if their occupants had dropped what they were doing and walked out of their houses, drawn by some unseen force. She abandoned the car, unable to get past the crowd that had assembled on their street. There were people everywhere. The women who had stood in the garden scowling the day Seamie was attacked. The girl with the severe blusher with whom Gina’d had a stand-off. Trevor of the dirty rhymes.

Betty was on the path, holding Mandy by the sleeve, trying to pull her back, Seamie leaning against her, his face turned into her shoulder.

Where’s Davy? said Cushla.

He was here a second ago, said Betty.