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made her feel closer to Fintan at the time, or rather, it had made her want to be closer to him, to remain in his life. Although already somewhat besotted with him, she found he rose considerably in her estimation after she had met Christy and Beth. To have such family enhanced him in her eyes; she wondered at the luminous hinterland of his life and what she might find there, if this was his auntie and uncle. But when she had tried to intimate as much to him, he had only said drily, ‘Wait till you meet my mum.’
    A lifetime ago all that had been, nigh on thirty years, and it had ended so sadly. She looks around the room again. All this will end too. It is changing all the time, although she doesn’t much like to think about it. Soon the boys will be gone, would have left home already were it not for the high rents in the city. Rob in particular is keen to go, and Fintan, she suspects, is keen to see him gone. Niall feels guilty about the comfort in which he lives and that too grates on Fintan; on Colette too at times, if the truth is to be told. Maybe her own good intentions have backfired here, for when they were small she would always say to them, ‘Aren’t we lucky to live in such a nice place? Beside the sea, with the boats and the harbour, in such a house?’ Had this been the cause of Niall’s highly developed social conscience, which she found admirable and irritating in equal measure? She can see that Rob aspires to something more, that he fully approves of the moneyed climate which is contemporary Ireland, and which even Colette and Fintan feel slightly uneasy about, let alone Niall. Rob wants more material things, much more than they have given him, whereas Niall wants less, and wants to share what he does have with others.
    Colette sighs and rolls over on the sofa. And what about Lucy? What about this sleepover that’s supposed to happen soon and that Fintan’s not keen on? How can that be squared so as to keep everyone happy? And then she’s back where she started, thinking again about the lasagne. Would she be able to stretch it over two days if she made a really big salad? She decides to go into the kitchen and have a look at it, and is alarmed to find when she goes into the hall that the kitchen door is ajar and the light is on, even though she distinctly remembers turning it off, and she hasn’t heard anyone coming downstairs. Gingerly she opens the door.
    Lucy and her little friend Emma are sitting at the kitchen table, with the empty lasagne dish between them. Emma is putting the last forkful in her mouth as Colette comes into the room, and Lucy says to her coldly, ‘It wasn’t very nice, Mum.’ At that, something brushes against Colette’s cheek, gentle, tickling, but there is nothing there. ‘You’re not a very good cook, are you?’ Again there’s that distracting feeling of something soft against her face. She puts her hand up to brush away whatever it is. ‘What are you doing here?’ she says. ‘I can’t believe you ate the whole thing,’ and for the third time, something touches her cheek. She shakes her head in irritation, and opens her eyes wide to find Fintan leaning over her, smiling.
    He is holding the cord of her own dressing-gown and dangling the tassel on the end of it softly against her face to waken her. This is how they used to wake the children when they were babies, gently, so as not to startle them. The empty chocolate mug is still in her hand.
    â€˜I woke up and you weren’t there,’ he says, still smiling. ‘Come back upstairs while the bed’s still warm.’  

 
FIVE
    When she opens the door to Fintan, Martina is wearing a cream jumper with fine grey horizontal lines, well-cut grey trousers and flat velvet pumps. He registers the general elegance of all of this, but not the detail. Unlike his own dear wife, Martina does not dress down, even when she is merely sitting