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Marie. Always asking questions, always wanting to know exactly what one’s plans are. As if life’s like that. As if one always knows exactly what one wants.’
    I stare at Aggie. When she is with it, she is as bright as a button. That’s it, exactly: Marie always wants to know the details. If you’re separated, she wants to know why, and where you plan to live, and if there’s a financial settlement, and what’s happened to her wedding present (a frightful set of table-mats that has to be retrieved from the attic any time she visits). One of these days I think she may ask me for a five-year plan.
    ‘Aggie…’ I draw the chair closer and touch her cheek softly. ‘Aggie, I love you. I always have. You understand things. You understand me.’ I stare at her dear, familiar face. It looks like someone has been at it with a chisel – whittling away the curves, diminishing the features, making deep lines just for effect.
    She hasn’t heard. She’s staring at the wall; she does that when she’s tired. It’s time to go. I lean forwards and kiss her.
    ‘Are you going?’ She looks towards me, wide-eyed.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Say you’ll try to find DeeDee for me.’
    I look at her warily.
    ‘Say it… please…’ Aggie is leaning towards me earnestly. I’m afraid she’ll fall out of the bed.
    ‘I… suppose I could do some… research,’ I mumble.
    She leans back. ‘Oh, good. Thank you.’ She clasps my hand. ‘Thank you so much.’
    I suspect that on my next visit she will have forgotten all about this conversation. I certainly hope so, because knowing that someone likes hats and Rio de Janeiro and marble cake isn’t quite enough to establish her exact location. DeeDee may not even be alive – and, if she is, she may not want to be found. I store the whole thing in the ‘too difficult’ file and start the ritual I always go through before I leave Aggie’s room. I make shooing noises towards a corner cupboard, like a shepherd directing my flock. ‘Go on, sheep,’ I say. ‘Go on towards the field. It’s bedtime.’ As I get nearer to the cupboard, I pretend to open a gate. ‘That’s right, on you go – out into the field.’ I clap to get them going faster.
    Aunt Aggie watches. ‘Bye, Sally, dear,’ she says. ‘Give my love to Diarmuid. I’m so glad you found yourself such a nice, sensible young man.’
    I kiss her softly on the cheek, and then I leave, with the word ‘sensible’ ringing in my ears. Diarmuid is sensible. He knows what he wants. He knows who he is. And he wants me to be sensible, t oo – sensible in his terms, the only ones he understands. That’s one of the things I find most difficult about my husband: he doesn’t see how different people can be. Maybe that’s why he likes mice so much. They seldom vary in their desire for cheese.
    I creep out of Aggie’s room, and suddenly I don’t know what to do with all these feelings inside me, popping like popcorn. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to lose her. I walk down the corridor, past the sitting-room and its blaring television; the group of residents sitting there, waiting for the stew and the relatives that might just visit. I open the front door and crunch down the gravel path. The winding road to the bus stop is familiar now, and even it is tinged with grief.
    What, in truth, is there to keep me in Dublin after Aggie is gone? Of course, Diarmuid and I may get back together; but if we remain apart, it might be nice to move somewhere new, with no associations to remind me of my failed marriage. I might even go back to California…
    Just for a moment I feel a burst of lightness in my heart, a blaze of excitement. My step quickens; and then it slows again, as I realise there is no way I can go back to California. I have a life here in Dublin. People expect things of me. I have a job, and parents who aren’t getting any younger; I have friends and a mortgage. I can’t be like DeeDee and turn my back on it all. I