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more stock and built the bungalow for Thomas. Everything was booming, growing, improving. But the market had flooded and Gerard hadn’t had the foresight to move quickly enough into anything else. The cattle were keeping everything ticking over, but there was nothing to spare; nothing for post and rail fencing. All the same, he had to admit that it would have cost nothing to clear up the mess; drag the rusty wire to the dump and burn the old posts. He could hear Thomas’s disapproval nagging away at the back of his mind. It would never have been neglected like that if he was still running the place.
    He had come to a stop where the boirin met the main road and he sat looking left and right, wondering which way he was going. With a shock that sent acids cutting through his circulation, he remembered. He turned to the left, and as he did so he saw Brigid in the Kadett behind him, inching up to the junction, turning the opposite way. He was ashamed, certain that she knew he had forgotten, the way she knew everything about him; everything about everyone.
    He crawled for a hundred yards along the road, scanning the hedgerows. It was difficult, even at that speed, and he wished he had brought someone with him. Where was she, for God’s sake? There must be some obvious answer, some safe and happy outcome. His mind ran down various alleys of possibility. They were all blocked.
    Brigid turned right on to the main road and then immediately left again, up a single-track road that led towards the mountains. She was surprised that Gerard had not gone that way. It seemed the most obvious place to look.
    They had cattle up there, about thirty of them, all bullocks, ranging on a hundred acres of hillside. The land didn’t look like much in farming terms, but Brigid knew they were lucky to have it. The area was limestone based, and the mountains were almost entirely bare rock. Some said that it was a natural process of erosion that had taken place over the millennia, and others said that it was the result of over-grazing by the livestock of nomadic peoples in more recent times. There might, in the end, be no way of knowing for sure, but the consequences were beyond doubt. The bald mountains acted as heat-banks, and along the sides of them alpine shrubs and flowers grew. On the best-sheltered flanks were areas where between the rocks, grasses and other fodder plants thrived throughout the year. These areas were generally left to the wild goats during the summer, but in the winter they could support small numbers of cattle without any supplementation at all. Except for water. Despite its high rainfall, the region was classified as desert, since it possessed hardly any natural reservoirs, and the run-off from the rocks passed directly into underground bores.
    The place was famous. People came from all over the world to visit it, but for the life of her Brigid couldn’t imagine why. It was grey and dreary. Counting the cattle up there was just another chore on a list. One that she never undertook. One that Martina and Specks regularly did.
    Brigid’s voice ran a commentary, a continuous loop inside her head. ‘It’ll be all right. It has to be. It’ll be all right, please God.’
    She jammed on the brakes. There was a flash of colour in a gateway; bright blue and black, but even before Brigid stopped, she knew. It was plastic. Fertiliser bags and bale-wrap scrunched up together and stuffed down behind the gatepost. Brigid put a hand to her face and closed her eyes. Her heart was banging in her chest, frightening her. She gritted her teeth. The stupid girl was probably fast asleep in a comfortable bed somewhere. And when she found her, she would kill her.
    Gerard got out of the pick-up and pushed open the gate into one of Dan Flaherty’s fields. It was badly hung and he had to drag it across the muddy ground, ploughed and pitted by the feet of standing cattle.
    He decided not to drive in and went back to turn off the engine. He would be