She put the fireguard in place, switched off the lights and climbed the stairs.

Is that you? said her mother.

Who else would it be? said Cushla, pushing open her door. Gina Lavery was reclined against three pillows, a pair of knickers over her rollers. The radio was on low. She always left it on all night, said it was company. Some mornings she told Cushla things she had dreamt, about George Best and round-the-world yacht races and the US space programme, only to find out they were true when the newspaper was delivered. All that subliminal information she was taking in.

You left the curtains open again, said Cushla.

Who’d waste a bullet on me? said Gina. She was trying to sound imperious, but there was a cloy in her voice from the sleeping tablet. Were youse busy?

The usual. And three soldiers as well.

Scum.

I let Eamonn go home for a wee while.

I don’t like you standing behind that bar by yourself.

It was OK. A man called Michael kept me company. About forty-five. Dark. Awfully-awfully. Said he’s a barrister.

Michael Agnew. And he’s fifty-odd, said Gina.

He looks younger, said Cushla.

Is he still gorgeous? said Gina. He was a ladykiller in his day. God, I haven’t seen him for donkey’s years. He got on great with your daddy.

Eamonn was thirty-two, and had worked in the bar since he was fifteen. He must have remembered Michael from then. Where does he live? Cushla asked.

In a big house out the hill road. Has a flat in town as well. The wife wouldn’t be great, said Gina. Then she did that thing that all the women in her family did when they felt sorry for someone: crumpled one cheek and mouthed the word ‘help’ out of the side of her face. It was short for ‘God help her’.

What’s wrong with his wife?

Gina tilted her hand to her mouth as if she was throwing a drink into it. She’s from Dublin, she said, as if that explained it.

Oh? Is she a Catholic?

No, she’s from some posh Protestant family.

Do they have kids?

A son. He must be seventeen or eighteen now.

Cushla leaned over her mother and kissed her cheek, taking in her sad scents. Je Reviens and cigarettes. Setting lotion and gin. Michael Agnew’s wife was not the only woman who was fond of the drink.

In her room, Cushla laid out clothes to wear to work in the morning. A-line plaid skirt, navy lambswool jumper, grey blouse. Like a school uniform. She had never given much thought to how she looked behind the bar, throwing on clothes she didn’t mind spattering with bleach, tying her hair up to keep it from her eyes. Not until now.

2

Her mother’s cough woke her, a treacly hack that made Cushla feel sick. She got out of bed and opened the curtains an inch. Morning was struggling through a seam of low, grey cloud. A figure came out of the house across the road and dropped to the ground as if he was about to do press-ups. It was Alistair Patterson, a prison officer who claimed to be a civil servant, checking under his car for a bomb. His wife was watching from the doorstep in a turquoise nightgown, holding their dog.