You’re sending all the heat up the chimney, said Gina.

That coal keeps exploding, said Cushla. And will you try and finish each cigarette before you light the next one?

I’m never going to hear the end of it, said Gina. Earlier, Cushla had found the remains of a Silk Cut in the laundry basket, burnt-out in the molten gusset of an 18-hour girdle. Gina said she only wore one the odd time, as if the offence was in needing support underwear and not in almost burning the house down.

I’m away.

Where are you for? said Gina.

I’m going to the pictures with Gerry Devlin, said Cushla. When she invited him in after the theatre he had not attempted to stick his tongue in her mouth. She now thought of him as a friend. And he was a plausible alibi.

The teacher? she said. Will he not come in to say hello?

I told him to wait outside.

You should be looking a fella a bit more sophisticated.

If she knew.

Michael’s car was outside the house next door and the extra yards felt like miles. Cushla sat in the passenger seat, clutching her basket to her chest. She had emptied it of schoolbooks and packed it with the Irish texts she hadn’t opened since college: a dictionary, a vocabulary, a phrase book, a grammar book. The seat was as far forward as it would go and her knees were uncomfortably high. She had a sudden picture of Michael’s wife, an uncharitable thought: a slight nervy woman, pressed to the glove compartment, slatternly in herself. She was so taken with the image it was a moment before she realised he was speaking to her.

I’ll adjust it, he was saying. He reached down beside her and released a lever that made the seat roll back. The skin on her calf prickled at the nearness of his hand.

I hope you don’t mind that I picked you up. I thought it would be the easiest thing for the first time, he said.

The first time.

I don’t mind, she said. She took in a breath to settle herself but got a lungful of him instead, a clean, manful smell of soap and tobacco.

How are you getting on with Iris Murdoch? he said.

She cleared her throat. I’m not sure I know what’s going on, she said. In the dark his profile was coarse. A forehead that protruded slightly, the line of his nose uneven, as if it had been broken. A full, belligerent set to his mouth. He smiled and his features seemed to soften.

Will you stick with it? he said.

Yeah. I hate not finishing a book.

That’s a good policy. Although sometimes I think life’s too short.

On the main street, someone had changed the quote from the Bible that was displayed in a glass box outside the apricot-painted Pentecostal church. The wages of sin is death.

You Catholics think you have a monopoly on sin, he said.