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her. From his carrier, Jones mews once.
    Wave goodbye, Lizzie. Wave goodbye to forty-one years of waiting for something to happen. Forget O’Gorman’s and Tony and Tuesday-night bacon and cabbage, and rubbing Deep Heat
into Daddy’s bad knee and finding Mammy’s tatty purple slippers that never seem to be where she left them last night. Now pull yourself out of the rut, wind up your window and say hello
to the rest of your life.
    Her cheek is itchy; she puts her finger up to scratch it and finds a tear. She doesn’t remember feeling sad.

Chapter Four
     

     
     
    Lizzie rubs the tear away, blinks and checks the clock on the dashboard. Ten past ten. She never understood why people called it ‘tinker’s time’ until one day
she suddenly realised you were supposed to say ‘tin past tin’.
    She’s got the rest of the day to go – where? The absurdity of the fact that she hasn’t a notion where she’s going makes her smile. She pulls over and reaches for the road
map. Imagine if Mammy came along with her shopping trolley; they’d have to say goodbye all over again.
    She looks at the map. Kilmorris is right in the midlands, about seventy miles from the west coast. She fancies living near the sea, in a place much smaller than this one – a fairly big
village, or a small market town maybe; big enough that she won’t stand out, small enough that she’ll get to know people fairly easily.
    They spent a few holidays by the sea when she was young, staying in rented houses or caravans and having lunch in pubs where old men in tweed caps played fiddles and tin whistles and belted out
rhythms on bodhráns. She remembers the salty tang of the periwinkles Daddy used to buy in little white paper bags and fish out of their shells for her with the pin that came with them, and
the sticky balls of candyfloss she’d pull apart with her hands. She used to love the smell of the seaweed and the noise of the waves in the evening when they’d go walking along the prom
after dinner, Lizzie full of huge yawns after the day of sea air.
    Yes, she wants to live by the sea. She’ll take the road going west and head for the coast, and then meander around a bit until she finds somewhere that she likes the look of. And maybe she
should aim to be not too far from a fairly big town, so she can have a bit more of a social life if she feels the need. She folds up the map again and sets off. Through the next lights and left at
the roundabout, and she’ll be headed west.
    She’s just past the roundabout when she sees him. Thumb raised, sitting on a backpack twice as big as hers. Longish fair hair, hand-knit baggy jumper, jeans, sandals –
God help
us, sandals in January in Ireland.
He has thick woolly socks on under them, but still. He must be insane.
    Lizzie has never hitched a lift, and never given a lift to a hitchhiker, in her life. Tony didn’t believe in it – ‘Let them get the bus, that’s what they’re
for’ – and she’s a bit wary of picking up someone when she’s on her own in the car, especially if he’s a man with long hair who shows definite signs of madness.
    And then she remembers the old woman from the hill country of Kentucky wishing she’d taken more chances. Ah, hell – she’s looking for a change, isn’t she? And what can
happen to her at tin past tin on a Monday morning? Jones will mind her. She pulls over, forgetting to indicate – another first – and checks that her handbag is safely under her seat
while she waits for the hitchhiker. Jones will have to move into the back; he won’t mind.
    The lunatic hitchhiker hefts his backpack up and lopes on long legs to the car. Lizzie leans across and opens the passenger door, and he sticks his head in, smiling. He has lovely, even white
teeth.
    ‘Hi, how ya doin’? Happy New Year. Thanks for stoppin’.’
    His voice is slow and drawly, and American. That may explain the sandals. And the madness. Lizzie smiles back at him, glad she