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the shelf under the dashboard, a little plastic bottle that Mammy filled at the church the other day.
    ‘Let us know when you’ve a place to stay,’ Daddy says.
    ‘Course I will; I’ll ring as soon as I’ve landed somewhere. Don’t worry about me.’
    That’s a good one – like asking the spring clematis over the garage not to bloom till September this year because Aunty Kate is coming to visit from America with her new husband and
step-kids and you want the place to look well. Mammy and Daddy have no one else to worry about; in forty-five years of marriage, Lizzie is all they managed to produce. She’s lived under the
same roof as them for forty-one years, apart from the weeks driving around Cork or Kerry or Galway with Tony. Now she’s thrown a backpack into the boot of the car and she’s disappearing
God knows where for God knows how long, and she tells them not to worry. Very funny.
    Daddy came home with a book from the Tourist Office the other day. He’d paid seven euros for it – the price was written on the front cover – and he handed it to Lizzie after
dinner, when Mammy had disappeared into the sitting room.
    ‘Now, you can pick out a nice place and give them a ring.’
    Lizzie took it from him and opened it with a sinking heart. It was full of self-catering houses and apartments by the sea, or in towns near golf courses, or just outside villages, all approved
by Bord Fáilte; and she knew that, wherever she ended up living, it wouldn’t be in one of them.
    To keep the peace, she promised Daddy she’d take the book with her and be guided by it. ‘It’s just that I don’t want to pick anyplace yet, while I haven’t worked
out where I want to go. I might be travelling around for a while before I find a place that appeals to me.’
    He looked at her, trying to understand, and nodded.
    The book is sitting in the little pocket in her door, beside her road map of Ireland. She’s planning to give it to the first charity shop she passes.
    Mammy puts a hand on her arm. ‘Now, Lizzie, you know you can still just go for a couple of weeks and come back. It’s not too late to change your mind; your bed is always here, and
Julia would have you back in the morning if I had a word with her.’
    And I’d last another six months and then throw myself off the tallest building in Kilmorris.
Lizzie smiles and puts her arms around her and knows her bed will always be here, and
knows she’ll never live here again. Mammy smells of rashers and Pledge and hairspray.
    ‘I’ll remember, Mammy.’
    ‘You make sure you find someplace nice to stay. Make sure it’s not damp.’
    Lizzie nods. ‘I will. And you take care. I’ll give you a ring this evening.’
    ‘Do that.’
    Mammy moves back as Daddy steps forward – after forty-five years together, they’re perfectly synchronised. Daddy puts out his hand, but Lizzie ignores it and puts her arms around
him. She can’t remember when she hugged him last. He feels narrower than she expected.
    ‘Bye, Daddy.’
    ‘Bye now, Lizzie. Mind yourself.’ He pats her back twice, then drops his arms and steps back from her.
    Lizzie slides into the driver’s seat, pulls the door closed and winds down the window.
    ‘Drive carefully,’ says Mammy.
    ‘I will. Bye now. Say bye, Jones. Go in out of the cold now; ye’ll freeze. Talk to ye later. Wish me luck.’
    ‘Good luck,’ they chorus, standing close together. Mammy tucks her arm into Daddy’s and waves at Lizzie with her other hand. ‘Make sure you wrap up well.’
    Lizzie starts the engine and moves off, waving awkwardly out of the window, watching in her mirror as the couple on the path get smaller. They look old and unfamiliar, this white-haired man in
his grey suit and this neat little woman in a brown tweed coat over her blue-and-white flowery apron, not going in out of the cold, just standing there together and waving. Pretending that they
don’t mind her going, that they’ll be just fine without