There was a packet of cigarettes by the phone. Cushla lit one and sat on the bottom step. Sunlight was coming through the fanlight above the front door, catching the emerald-green of twenty-nine empty Gordon’s gin bottles. She finished the cigarette and went to the sitting room to get rid of the butt. There was a bottle on the hearth, a couple of inches left in it. She put it with the others and picked up the receiver, dialling the number of Michael’s flat. It rang out.

She got an ashtray and sat on the step, smoking one cigarette after another. Just before six she tried the flat again and again he didn’t reply. She dialled the number of the pub. Voices risen in laughter, the ping of the till, a whoosh as the cycle on the glasswasher came to a halt.

Hello? Eamonn barked over the din.

Mummy’s drinking is out of hand.

What?

Mummy’s pissed all the time, she shouted. There are bottles all over the house.

I’m up to my ballix here, wee girl, he said. The line went dead.

She opened the telephone directory and found Michael’s listing, memorising the house number, road, townland.

Outside, a tabby cat slunk under the hedge. She got into her car and drove out the hill road, past the estate. She pictured Betty McGeown scraping plates, dumping them in a basin of sudsy water, turning away to reverse vests and pants on the clothes horse. Past the barracks, the cemetery. Left on to the country road, past the lay-by where she and Michael had looked at the lough, where he’d picked the gorse and placed it in her hands. The road narrowed, the hedgerows became neater, shoulder high and angular like the walls of a maze. A sign for a Baptist church, the old Irish name of the townland anglicised. A village: his village. Tea room, antique shop, Pentecostal church. A strip of nineteenth-century cottages, the British Legion. A crossroads. She found herself turning left, as if her little red car knew where to go.

Number 18 was on the right. A Japanese car, olive-green, not yet rusted, Michael’s car blocking it in. A large house, built in the thirties or forties, painted white, criss-crossed with mock-Tudor slats of dark timber. A spartan garden, flanked each side by Castlewellan Golds, a cherry blossom in the centre of the lawn. To the right of the door, crazy paving with floribunda roses sticking out of the cracks. A garden that didn’t get much attention. Like his wife.

The curtains were open, venetian blinds slatted across the windows. She pictured him at a stripped-pine table, the wife fluttering around him, serving a meal; sitting on the edge of the chair opposite him, watching him eat. The thought was unbearable. Cushla reversed into his driveway, allowing a car to pass, before driving off.