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always mindful of a thought caught somewhere between a prayer and a simple wish, that the place will be safe until she returns. As she walked away today she had thought of the empty house, of it sitting there deserted and silent, intact and sealed like a snow globe, a little closed world onto itself. Not that it was perfect, far from it: there were always things to be done – the perfection for her was that it was home.
    But it was fragile too, and could be destroyed, as a snow globe can be broken, reduced in an instant to fragments of glass and the gimcrack contents that had been magnified and made magical by the water. Their lives could be overtaken by calamity; the dark act of some blank force could bring it all to an end tomorrow.
    â€˜I want to take you to meet my auntie and uncle.’ He’d said it artlessly, as a child might, and even Colette, herself quite artless and up until now more than happy with some exceptionally low-key, low maintenance dates – those noisy cafes, those walks by the canal – even Colette had demurred at this. But Fintan had coaxed her into it, albeit with nothing more original or enticing than, ‘They’re really nice,’ and, ‘I know you, you’ll like them.’
    Fintan’s auntie and uncle lived in Drumcondra, in a slightly dingy street of red-brick houses made lovely by the cherry trees that lined it, and that happened to be in full bloom on the day of the visit. Remembering this on the sofa Colette realises that it must have been at exactly this time of year, for the cherry trees are all out now; and she remembers how the door had been opened by Christy, a little gnome of a man, and how the force of his sudden and sincere delight had blown away her shyness.
    â€˜Fintan! And . . . Colette! Colette! You’re very welcome. Come in! Come in! Beth, come and see who’s here.’
    It was the strangest house she had ever seen. It was the house in which, Christy told her, he had grown up, and his father before him. Little or nothing had been done to change it over the years, so that it was remarkably old-fashioned. It was all wainscoting and dark-green paint, hooked rugs and framed tapestries. There was a stuffed fish in fake weed, with the name of the lake where it had been caught painted in gold letters on the glass case. There was a black piano, and an old-fashioned gramophone with a great golden horn. Even though it was spring it was a cold day, and there had been a fire burning in the grate, and on the table there was a huge vase full of daffodils that blasted the room with their yellow energy; that lit the place up more than any lamp could ever have done. It had been like going back in time, like stumbling into the pages of a story book, so that, Colette thought, if the cat on the hearth – and there was always a cat, even back then – had sat up and spoken to her, she thought that she would hardly have been surprised.    
    â€˜Here’s my lovely girl,’ Christy said, as he introduced Beth, ‘here’s my sweetheart.’ For that had been another strange thing about the day, strange but beguiling, as the house itself was: the affection between them, the way they looked at each other like newly-weds, even though they were old. (Old! Colette thinks now. Why, they could only have been in their fifties.) But then again, they had only been married for a couple of years at that time, something Fintan told her on the way home afterwards, which surprised her greatly.
    There had been music playing in the house that day, Beethoven and Mozart, always music, Christy’s great love. He told her that he would have liked to have been a musician, but as an only child in a family of modest means, it had been more important for him to find a more solid job, and he had become a music teacher.
    She wonders now why she doesn’t think back consciously to that day more often, for the charge of happiness it gives her. It had