But she wasn't going out with anyone else. They knew that. It was odd, considering how gorgeous she was. You'd think half the men in college would want to take her out. But perhaps that was it. They wanted to, and yet did nothing about It.

Bill decided to invite her.

Nan said no, she didn't really like the cinema. She was regretful, and Bill didn't think she had closed the door.

"Is there anything you would like to go to? he asked, hoping he wasn't making himself too humble,. too pathetic.

"Well, there is .. but I don't know." Nan sounded doubtful.

"Yes? What?"

"There's a rather posh cocktail party at the Russell. It's a sort of pre-wedding do. I'd like to go to that."

"But we weren't invited." Bill was shocked. "I know." Nan's eyes danced with excitement.

"Bill Dunne and Nan are going to crash a party," Aidan said to Eve.

"Why?"

"Search me."

They thought about it for a while. Why go to a place where you might be unwelcome? There were so many places where Nan Mahon could just walk in and everyone would be delighted. She looked like Grace Kelly, people said, confident and beautiful without being flashy. It was a great art. "Maybe it's the excitement," Aidan suggested. It could be the fear of being caught, the danger element like gambling.

Why ever would you want to go to a wedding party with a whole lot of horsey people from the country, neighing and whinnying? Aidan asked.

Once Eve knew it was that kind of party she knew immediately why Nan Mahon wanted to go. And why she needed someone very respectable and solid like Bill Dunne to go with her.

Jack Foley thought it was a marvellous idea.

"That's only because you don't have to do it," Bill grumbled.

"Oh, go on. It's easy. Just keep smiling at everyone."

"That would be all right if we all had your matinee-idol looks.

Advertising toothpaste all over the place."

Jack just laughed at him.

"I wish she'd asked me to escort her. I think it's a great gas.

Bill was doubtful. He should have known there would be trouble involved once he had dared to ask out someone with looks like Nan Mahon. Nothing came easy in life.

And it was all so mysterious. Who on earth would want to go to a thing like that, where they'd know nobody and everyone else knew everyone?

Nan wouldn't explain. She just said that she had a new outfit and thought it would be a bit of fun.

Bill offered to pick her up at home, but she said no, they'd meet in the foyer of the hotel.

The new outfit was stunning. A pale pink sheath dress with pink lace sleeves. Nan carried a small silver handbag with a silk rose attached to it. She came in without a coat.

"Better in case we have to make a quick getaway," she giggled.

She looked high and excited, like she had looked when she came into Eve's party in Knockglen. As if she knew something nobody else did.

Bill Dunne was highly uneasy going up the stairs, loosening his collar with a nervous finger. His father would be furious if there was any trouble. There was no trouble. The bride's people thought they were friends of the groom, the groom's thought they were on the bride's side. They gave their real names. They smiled and waved and because Nan was undoubtedly the most glamorous girl in the room it wasn't long before she was surrounded by a group of men.

She didn't talk very much, Bill noticed. She laughed and smiled and agreed, and looked interested. Even when asked a direct question she managed to put it back to the questioner. Bill Dunne talked awkwardly to a dull girl in a tweed dress who looked over at Nan sadly.

"I didn't know it was meant to be dressy-uppy," she said. "Ah.

Yes, well." Bill was trying to imitate Nan's method of saying almost nothing. "We were told it was a bit low key," the tweed girl complained. "Because of everything, you know."

"Ah yes, everything," Bill mumbled desperately. "Well, it's obvious isn't it? Why else wouldn't they wait until spring?"

"Spring. Indeed."

He looked over her head. A small dark-haired man was talking to Nan.

They looked very animated, and they hardly seemed to notice that anyone else in the room existed.

Lilly Foley looked at herself in the mirror. It was hard to believe that the lines would not go away. Not ever. She had been used to little lines when she was tired or strained. But they always smoothed out after rest. In the old days.

In the old days, too, she didn't have to worry about the tops of her arms, whether they looked a little crepey and even a small bit flabby.

Lilly Foley had been careful about what she ate since the day her glance had first fallen on John Foley. She had been thoughtful, too, about what she wore, and even, if she were honest, about what she said.

You didn't win the prize and keep it unless you lived up to the role.

That's why it was heartbreaking to think that big overgrown puppy dog of a girl Benny Hogan should think that she had a chance with Jack.

Jack was so nice to her, he had his father's manners and charm. But obviously he couldn't have serious notions about a girl like that. He had driven her to Knockglen and gone to the funeral out of natural courtesy and concern. It would be sad if the child got ideas.

Lilly had been startled to hear Aidan Lynch talking of Benny and Jack as if they were a couple. At least Benny had the sense not to keep telephoning like other girls did.

She must realise that there could be nothing in it.

Benny sat at the kitchen table and willed the phone to ring She was surrounded by papers and books. She intended to understand all about the business before talking to Sean and Mr. Green at the end of the week. She could ask no help and advice from old Mike in the shopand her mother was not likely to be any help either.

Benny bought a box of black-bordered writing paper. She listed the people who sent flowers, hoping that her mother would write a short personal note to each of them. She even addressed the envelopes. But Annabel's hand seemed to feel heavy and her heart listless. She never managed more than two letters a day. Benny did them herself eventually. She ordered the mortuary cards, with little pictures of her father, and prayers on them which people would keep in their missals to remind them to pray for his soul.

It was Benny, too, who had ordered the black-rimmed cards printed with a message of gratitude for the sympathies offered.

Benny paid the undertakers, and the gravediggers, and the priest, and the bill in Shea's. She paid everyone in cash as she had drawn a large sum from the bank in Ballylee. Fonsie had driven her there in his van.

"Wait till we get Knockglen on the map," Fonsie had said. "Then we'll have a bank of our own, not having to wait till the bank comes on Thursdays as if we were some onehorse wild west outpost.

The man in the bank in Ballylee had been most sympathetic, but also slightly uneasy about advancing the sum.

"I'm meeting Mr. Green the solicitor on Friday," Benny reassured him.

"Everything will be put on a proper footing then."

She hadn't imagined the look of relief on the banker's face.

She realised that she hadn't the first idea about how her father had run his business all these years, and she had only had a few days to find out.

As far as she could see it was a matter of two big books and a till full of pink slips.

There was the takings book. Every item was entered in that as it was received. Some of them were pitiably small. The sale of collar studs, sock braces, shoehorns, shoe polishing brushes.

And then there was the lodgement book, a big bron leather volume with a kind of window in the front of it. It was ruled in three columns: cheques, cash and other. Other could mean postal orders or in one case dollars from passing American.

Each Thursday her father had queued up with others when the bank came to town. The bank signature at the end of each week's lodgement was the receipt and acknowl-eddgement that the money had been put in the account. In the till there were always pink raffle tickets, books that had been sent on spec by Foreign Missions, ideal for tearing off to write out what had been taken out. Each time there was a sum listed and a reason. Ten shillings: petrol."

It was Wednesday, early-closing day. She had lifted both books from the shop and put them into a large carrier bag. Sean had remonstrated with her, saying that the books never left the premises.

Benny had said nonsense. Her father had often pored over the ledgers at home, and her mother wanted to see them. It seemed a small comfort at a time like this. Sean had been unable to refuse.

Benny didn't even know what she was looking for. She just wanted to work out why the business was doing badly. She knew that there would be seasonal highs and lows. After the harvest when the farmers got paid for the corn they all came and bought new suits.

She wasn't looking for discrepancies, or falsification. Which was why she was so surprised when she realised that the takings book and the lodgement book didn't match up.If they took so much a week, then that much should have been lodged, apart from the small pink tickets called drawings from the till, which were very insignificant. But as far as she could see by reading it and adding everything laboriously, there was a difference between what was taken and what was lodged, every single week. Sometimes a difference of as much as ten pounds. She sat looking at it with a feeling of shock and despair. Much as she disliked him and wished him a million miles away from Knockglen, she did not even want to think for a moment that Sean Walsh had been taking money from her father's business. It was so unlikely, for one thing.

He was such an over-respectable person. And for another, if he was to be made a partner why steal from his own business? And most important of all, if this had been going on for months and months, and maybe years, why was Sean Walsh living in threadbare suits in a cramped room two floors above the shop? She sat numbed by the discovery, and hardly heard the telephone ring.

Patsy answered it and said that a young man was looking for Benny.

"How are you?" Jack was concerned. "How's everything?"

"Fine.

We're fine." Her voice sounded far away. "Good. You didn't ring."

"I didn't want to be bothering you." It was still unreal. Her eyes were on the books.

"I'd like to come down." He sounded regretful, as if he were going to say he couldn't. She didn't want him here anyway. This was too huge.

"No, heavens no. Please." She was insistent, and he knew it. He seemed cheered. "And when will you come back to me?" She told him she should have things sorted out in some way by next week. Maybe they could meet for coffee in the Annexe on Monday.

Her lack of pursuit was rewarded. He really did seem sorry not to see her.

"That's a long time away. I miss you, you see," he explained.

"And I miss you. You were wonderful, all of you, to come to the funeral."

When he was gone from the phone he went from her mind too.

There was nobody she could ask about the books. She knew that Peggy, Clodagh, Fonsie and Mario would understand. As would Mrs. Kennedy, and many other business people in the town.

But she owed it to the memory of her father not to reveal him as an incompetent bungler, and she owed it to Sean Walsh not to mention a word of her suspicion until she knew it was true.

"Why won't you let me take you home?" Simon asked Nan after dinner.

It was the second time they had met that week after the extraordinary coincidence of their meeting at the cocktail party.

Nan looked at him and spoke truthfully. "I don't invite anyone home with me. I never did." She sounded neither apologetic nor defiant.

She was saying it as a fact.

"Might one ask why?"

She smiled at him mockingly. "One might, if one was rather pushing and curious."

"One is." He leaned across the table and patted her hand. "What you see is the way I am, the way I see myself. And how I feel and the way I am always going to be. Were you, or anyone to come home with me, it would be different." For Nan it was a long speech about herself. He looked at her with surprise and some admiration. He realised that she was from somewhere in North Dublin. He knew her father was in building. He had thought that perhaps they lived in a big nouveau-riche house somewhere. They must have money. Her clothes were impeccable. She was always at the best places. He felt quite protective about her wish to keep her home life to herself, and her honesty in saying that this was what she was doing. He told her gently that she was a silly. He didn't feel ashamed of his home, a falling-down, crumbling mansion in Knockglen, a place that had seen better days, where he lived with underpaid retainers, a senile grandfather and a pony-mad little sister. It was a pretty weird background to introduce anyone into. Yet he had invited her there after Christmas. He held his head on the side quizzically. Nan was not to be moved. It was not a pleasure for her to bring her friends home. If Simon felt uneasy about this, then perhaps they had better not see each other again. As she had known he would, he agreed to dismiss the matter from their conversation and their minds. In a way he was actually relieved. It was better by far than being paraded at a Sunday lunch and having expectations raised.

Heather was very bad at needlework at school. But after a conversation with Dekko Moore, the harness maker in Knockglen, she had decided that she should try to be good at it. He said that she might have a future for herself making hunting attire for ladies, and that they could be sold through Pine's or Hogan's.

It was Heather's project for the new term to learn to sew properly.

"It's awful, things like cross stitch, not real things like clothes," she grumbled to Eve. It was Heather's twelfth birthday and the school allowed her to spend the evening out with a relation just as long as�was back by eight.

They had a birthday cake in Kit's house and everyone clapped when she blew out the candles. The students liked Heather, and her overwhelming interest in food.

They discussed the teaching of sewing in schools and how unfair it was that boys never had to learn cross stitch.

"At least you don't have to make big green knickers with gussets in them like we did at school," Eve said cheerfully.

"Why did you have to make those?" Heather was fascinated by the tales of the convent.

Eve couldn't remember. She thought it might have had something to do with wearing them over their ordinary knickers and under their tunics when they were doing handstands. Or maybe she was only making that up.

She really didn't know. She was annoyed with Simon for not taking his sister out on her birthday and only sending her a feeble card with a picture of a crinoline lady on it. There were hundreds of nice horsey birthday cards around that he could have got. But more than that, she was worried about Benny. There was some problem, some worry about the business.

Benny had said she couldn't talk about it on the phone, but she'd tell all next week.

something she had said at the end that wouldn't go out of Eve's mind.

"If ,you ever say any prayers, Eve, prepare to say them now.

"What am I to pray for?"

"Oh, that things will turn out all right."

"But we've been praying for that for years," Eve said indignantly. She wasn't going to start praying for unspecified things, she told Benny.

"The Wise Woman would leave them unspecified for a bit," Benny had said.

Benny didn't sound very wise or very happy. "Simon's got a new girlfriend," Heather said chattily. She new Eve was always interested in such tales. "Really? What happened to the lady from Hampshire?"

"I think she's too far away. Anyway this one's in Dublin, Bee Moore told me.

Ah, Eve thought, that's going to be one in the eye for r friend Nan Mahon and her notions. Then the thought came to her suddenly.

Unless of course it is Nan Mahon.

CHAPTER 14

Benny returned the account books to the shop very early on the following morning. She took Shep with her for the outing. The dog looked around hopefully in case Eddie might come out of the back room beaming and clapping his hands, delighted to see his dear old dog arriving for a visit.

She heard a footstep on the stair and realised that she had not been early enough. Sean Walsh was up and dressed.

"Ah, Benny," he said.

"I should hope so too. We wouldn't want anyone else letting themselves in. Whereil I leave these for you, Sean?"

Was she imagining it or did he eye her very closely? He took both books and laid them in their places. It was a good three quarters of an hour before the shop opened.

The place smelled musty and heavy. There was nothing about it that would encourage you to spend. Nothing that would make a man feel puckish and buy a bright tie or a coloured shirt when he had always worn white. She looked at the dark interior and wondered why she had never taken the time to notice these things when her father was alive, less than a week ago, and talk to him about them.

But she knew why. Almost immediately she answered her own question.

Her father would have been so pleased to see her taking an interest, it would have raised his hope again. The whole subject of a union with Sean Walsh would have been aired once more.

Sean watched her looking around. "Was there anything in particular..?"

"Just looking, Sean."

"There'll have to be great changes.

"I know." She spoke solemnly and weightily. That was the only language he understood, heavy pontificating phrases. But she thought a look of alarm came into his eyes as if her words had been menacing.

"Did you find what you were looking for in the books?" His glance never left hers.

"I wasn't looking for anything, as I told you I just wanted to familiarise myself with the day-to-day workings before I met Mr. Green.

"I thought your mother wanted to see them." His lip curled a little.

"She did. She understands much more than any of us realised."

Benny didn't know why she had said this. Annabel Hogan knew nothing of the business that her dowry had helped to buy. She had deliberately stayed away from it, thinking it to be a man's world where the presence of a woman would be an intrusion. Men didn't buy suits and get measured in a place with a woman around it.

Suddenly Benny realised that this had been the tragedy of her parent's life. If only her mother had been able to get involved in the shop, how different things would have been. they would have shared so much more, their interest in Benny would not have been so obsessive. And her mother, in many ways a sharper, more practical person than Eddie Hogan, might have spotted this discrepancy, if such it was, and headed it off long ago. Long before it looked as serious as it looked now.

Emily Mahon knocked on the door of Nan's bedroom and came in carrying a cup of tea.

"Are you sure you don't want any milk in it?" Nan had taken to having a slice of lemon instead. It was puzzling for the rest of the family, who poured great quantities of milk in their tea which they drank noisily from large mugs.

"It is nice, Em. Try it," Nan urged.

"It's too late for me to change my ways, and no point in it either not like you." Emily knew that her daughter had found a special person at last. She knew from the amount of preparation that went on in the bedroom, from the new clothes, the wheedling money from her father and mainly from the sparkle in Nan's eyes.

On the bed lay a small petal hat. It matched exactly the wild silk dress and bolero in lilac trimmed with a darker purple. Nan was going to the races today. An ordinary working day for most people, a studying day for students, but a day at the races for Nan.

Emily was on late shift; they had the house to themselves.

"You'll be careful, love, won't you?"

"How do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. I don't ask you about him because I know you think it's bad luck, and we wouldn't want to be meeting him anyway, lowering your chances. But you will be careful?"

"I haven't slept with him, Em. I haven't a notion of it."

"I didn't mean only that." Emily had meant only that, but it seemed a bit bald to hear it all out in the open. "I meant, careful about not neglecting your college studies, and not going in fast cars."

"You meant sleeping, Em," Nan laughed affectionately at her mother.

"And I haven't, and I won't, so relax."

"Are you and I going to keep teasing each other for ever, or will we give in to ourselves and go to bed together soon?" Simon asked Nan as they drove to the race meeting.

"Are we teasing each other? I didn't notice." He looked at her admiringly. Nothing threw her. She was never at a disadvantage.

And she looked really beautiful today. Her photograph would probably be in the papers. Photographers always looked for somebody classy as well as the ladies with silly hats. His companion was exactly the girl they would seek out.

They got stuck with a lot of people as soon as they went into the Enclosure. At the parade ring Molly Black, a very bossy woman with a shooting stick, looked Nan up and down with some care. Her own daughter had once been a candidate for Simon Westward's interest. This was a very different type of girl for him to parade. Handsome certainly. A student by all accounts, living in Dublin, and giving nothing away whatsoever about herself or her background.

Mrs. Black moaned about the decree from Buckingham Palace abolishing the debutantes' presentation at Court.

"I mean, how will anyone know who anyone is once that goes?"

Molly Black said, staring at Nan with gimlet eyes.

Nan looked around for Simon, but he wasn't at hand. She resorted to her usual system, answering a question with another.

"Why are they abolishing it, really, do you think?"

"It's obvious. You have to be presented by someone who was herself presented. Some of these are on rather hard times, and they take a fee from really dreadful businessmen to present their ghastly daughters.

That's what caused it all."

"And did you have someone to be presented?" Nan's voice was cool and her manner courteous. She had hit home.

"Not my immediate family, no, obviously," said Mrs. Black, annoyed.

"But all one's friends, one's friends' children. It was so nice for them, such a good system. They met like-minded people until all this crept in. "But I suppose that it's easy to tell like-minded people, to recognise them, do you think?"

"Yes it is, quite easy." Molly Black was gruff. Simon was at her elbow again.

"Having a most interesting conversation about doing the season with your little friend here," Mrs. Black said to him. "Oh good."

Simon moved them away.

"What a battle-axe," he said. "Why do you bother with her then?"

"Have to." He shrugged. "She and Teddy are everywhere. Guarding their daughters from fortune hunters like myself."

"Are you a fortune hunter?" Her smile was light and encouraging.

"of course I am. You've seen the house," he said. "Come and let's have a very large drink and put a lot of money we can't afford on a horse. That's what living is all about."

He took her by the arm and led her across the grass through the crowds into the bar.

The meeting with Mr. Green was very low key. It was held in Lisbeg.

Benny had woken her mother up enough to attend by strong coffee and a stern talking-to.

Her mother must not ask that things be put off, or postponed until later. There was no later, Benny insisted. Hard as it was on all of them, they owed it to Father to make sure that things didn't end in a giant muddle.

Benny had begged her mother to recall any conversations about Sean's partnership. The letter existed, the letter saying that the intention was there. Had there been anything at all that made her think it had been formalised? Wearily, Annabel said that Father had kept saying there was no need to rush things, that they'd wait and see, that everything got done in time.

But had he said that about things in general, or about Sean's partnership?

She really couldn't remember. It was very difficult for her to remember, she complained. It seemed such a short time ago Eddie Hogan had been alive and well and running his own business. Today he was buried and they were meeting a solicitor to discuss business dealings that she knew nothing of. Could Benny not be more patient and understanding?

Patsy served coffee in the drawing room, aired and used now because of the stream of sympathizers who had filled the house.

There were just the three of them. Benny said they would telephone Sean Walsh and ask him to join them after a suitable period.

Mr. Green told them what they already knew, which was that the late Mr. Hogan, despite numerous reminders, suggestions and cautions, had made no will. He also told them what they didn't know, which was that the Deed of partnership had been drawn up and prepared ready for signature, but it had not been signed.

Mr. Green had been in Knockglen as was his wont on four Friday mornings in January, but on none of these occasions had Mr. Hogan approached him with a view to signing the document.

On the one occasion that Mr. Green had reminded him of it, the late Mr. Hogan had said that he still had something to think about. "Do you think he had discovered anything that made him change his mind? After all he did write that letter to Sean before Christmas?" Benny was persistent. "I know. I have a copy of the letter. It was sent to me in the post.

"By my father?"

"I rather think by Mr. Walsh."

"And there were no hints or feelings.. Did you get any ood that the thing was wrong, somehow?"

"Miss Hogan, you'll have to forgive me for sounding so formal, but I don't deal in the currency of feelings or moods. As a lawyer I have to deal in what is written down."

"And what is written down is an intent to make Sean Walsh a partner, isn't that right?"

"That is correct.

Benny had no proof, only an instinct. Possibly in the weeks before his death her father too had noticed that they semed to be lodging less than they took. But there had been no confrontation.

Had there been a face-to-face accusation he would have told his wife about it, and Mike in the workroom would have heard every word.

Perhaps her father had been waiting to find proof, so this is what she too must do.

Like her father she would ask to delay the partnership agreement, by saying that it was hard to know who should be the parties to it. Mr. Green, who was a cautious man, said that it was always wise to postpone any radical change until well after a bereavement. They agreed that now would be the time to have Sean Walsh to the house. Fresh coffee was brought in when Sean arrived. He explained that he had closed the shop. It was impossible to allow Mike to remain in control. He was a man who had given untold service in the past, no doubt, but as Mr. Hogan used to say, poor Mike wasn't able for a lot in today's world.

Her father used to say that, Benny remembered, but he had said it with affection and concern. He had not said it with the knell of dismissal echoing around it.

The arrangement was that for the moment everything would carry on as it was. Did Sean think they needed to employ somebody on a temporary basis? He said that all depended.

Depended on what? They wondered. On whether Miss Hogan was thinking of abandoning her university studies and coming to work in the shop with him. If that were to happen there would be no need to employ a casual.

Benny explained that nothing was further from her father's dreams. Her parents were both anxious that she should be a university graduate, but she would nonetheless take a huge and continuing interest in the shop.

She almost kicked her mother into wakefulness and a few alert statements that she would do the same thing.

Very casually and with no hint of anything being amiss, Benny asked if the very simple book-keeping system could be explained to them.

Laboriously Sean went through it. "So what's in the takings books should be more or less as what's in the lodging book each week." Her eyes were round and innocent.

"Yes. Give or take the drawings," he said. "Drawings?"

"Whatever your father took out of the till."

"Yes. And the little pink slips, they say what those were, is that right?"

"When he remembered." Sean's voice was sepulchral and he sounded as if he were trying not to speak ill of the dead.

"Your father was a wonderful man, as you know, but forgetful in the extreme.

"What might he have taken money out for?" Benny's heart was cold.

There would never be any proof, not if this was believed.

"Well, let me see." Sean looked at Benny. She was wearing her best outfit, the new skirt and bolero top that she had been given as a Christmas present.

"Well, maybe for something like your clothes, Benny. He might have taken money out to pay for an outfit without remembering to sign a drawing slip."

She knew now that she was defeated.

Kevin Hickey said that his father was coming up from Kerry and wondered could Mrs. Hegarty recommend a good hotel in Dunlaoghaire?

"God, Kevin, you pass a dozen of them yourself every day," Kit said.

"I think he wanted your choice rather than mine." Kit suggested the Marine, and she booked it for him. She supposed that Kevin's father would like to see the house where his son lived all through the academic year, and urged the boy to bring him round for a cup of tea during his visit.

Paddy Hickey was a big, pleasant man. He explained that he was in machinery in the country. He had a small bit of land, but there wasn't the streak of a farmer in any of them. His brothers had all gone to America, his sons had all done degrees in something, but none of them in agriculture.

Like all Kerry men he said he put a great emphasis on education.

Kit and Eve liked him. He talked easily about the boy of the house who had died, and asked to see a picture of him.

"May he rest in peace, poor young lad who never got a chance to know what it was like down here," he said.

It was awkward but affecting. Neither Kit nor Eve felt able to say anything in reply.

He thanked them for giving his son such a good home, and encouraging him to study.

"No hope he's getting anywhere with a fine-looking young girl like yourself?" he asked Eve.

"Ah no, he wouldn't look at me," Eve said, laughing. "Besides, she has a young law student besotted about her," Kit added.

"That must leave you lonely here sometimes, Mrs. Hegarty," he said.

"When all the young folk go out of an evening."

"I manage," Kit said.

Eve realised that the man was revving up to ask Kit Hegarty out.

She knew that Kit herself was quite unaware of this. "You do manage," Eve said. "Of course you do. And people want you everywhere, but I'd love you to go out and be silly, just once.

"Well, talking of being silly," said big Paddy Hickey, "I don't suppose there's a chance you'd accompany a poor lonely old Kerry widower out for a night on the town."

"Well, isn't that great," cried Eve, "because we're all going out tonight, every single one of us."

Kit looked startled.

"Come back for her about seven o'clock, Mr. Hickey. I'll have her ready for you," Eve said.

When he was gone Kit turned on Eve in a fury. "Why are you behaving like that? Cheap and pushy. It isn't at all like you."

"It's not like me for me, but by God I'd need it for you."

"I can't go out with him. I'm a married woman. "Oh yes?"

"Yes, I am. No matter what Joseph did in England I'm married anyway.

"Oh, belt up, Kit."

"Eve!"

"I mean it. I really do. Nobody's asking you to commit adultery with Kevin's father, you great fool, just go out with him, tell him about your living encumbrance across the channel if you want to. I wouldn't personally, but you will. But don't throw a decent man's invitation back in his face.

She looked so cross that Kit burst out laughing. "What'll I wear?"

"That's more like it." Eve gave her a big squeeze as they went upstairs to examine both their wardrobes.

I was wondering would you consider Wales a sort of break.. ."

Jack asked Benny hopefully. "No, it's too soon.

"I just thought it could be a change. They always say that's a good thing."

Benny knew what he meant. She longed to go to Wales with him. She longed to be his girl, on a boat sailing out from Dunlaoghaire to Holyhead. She longed to be sitting beside him on a train, and meeting the others and being Benny Hogan, Jack Foley's girl, with everything that that implied.

And she knew that a change could clear her head of the thoughts and the suspicions that buzzed around in it. She had tried to get her mother to make a visit. To go to her brothers and their wives. They had been very solicitous at the funeral. But Annabel Hogan told Benny sadly that they had never approved of her marrying Eddie all those years ago, a man younger than she was with no stake in any business. They had thought she should have done better for herself. She didn't want to go to stay in their homes, large country places, and tell them tales of a marriage which had worked for her but which they had never thought anything of.

No, she would stay in her home and try to get used to the way things were going to be from now on.

But Benny didn't want to explain all this to Jack. Jac wasn't a person to weigh down with problems. The great thing was that he seemed so glad to see her. He took no notice of the admiring glances coming at him from every corner of the Annexe. He sat on his hard wooden chair and drank cup after cup of coffee. He had two fly cemeteries, but Benny said she had gone off them. In fact her whole being cried out for one, but she was eating no cakes, bread puddings, chips or biscuits. If she had not had Jack Foley to light up everything for her, it would have been a very dull life indeed.

Nan was delighted to see Benny back at lectures.

"I had no one to talk to. It's great to see you again," she said.

Despite herself, Benny was pleased.

"You had Eve. Lord, I envy the two of you being here all the time."

"I don't think Eve is too pleased with me," Nan confided "I've been, going out with Simon, you see, and she doesn't approve.

Benny knew that was true: Eve did not approve, but it would have been the same with anyone who wentout with Simon. She felt that he should have made some effort to make provisions for his cousin once he was old enough to understand the situation.

And she felt that Nan had been sneaky. Eve always claimed that Benny had been dragged to the Hibernian with the express purpose of making the introduction. Benny thought that was impossible, but there were some subjects on which Eve was adamant.

"And where does he take you?" Benny loved to hear Nan's cool comments on the high life that Simon Westward was opening up.

She described the back bar in Jammet's, the Red Bank, the Baily and Davey Byrne's.

"He's so much older, you see," Nan explained. "So most of his friends meet in bars and hotels."

Benny thought that was sad. Imagine not going to where there was great fun, like the Coffee Inn, or the Inca or the Zanzibar. All the places she and Jack went to.

"And do you like him?"

"Yes, a lot."

"So why do you look so worried? He obviously likes you if he keeps asking you to all these places."

"Yes, but he wants to sleep with me." Benny's eyes were round. "You won't, will you?"

"I will, but how? That's what I'm trying to work out. Where and how."

Simon as it turned out had decided where and how. He had decided that it was going to be in the back of a car parked up the Dublin mountains.

He said it was awfully silly to pretend they both didn't want it.

Nan was ice cool. She said she had no intention of doing anything of the sort in a car.

"But you do want me?" Simon said. "Yes, of course I do."

"So?"

"You have a perfectly good house where we can be comfortable."

"Not at Westlands," Simon said. "And most definitely not in a car," said Nan.

Next day Simon was waiting at the corner of Earlsfort Terrace and Leeson Street as the students poured out at lunch time, wheeling bicycles or carrying books. They moved off to digs, flats and restaurants around the city.

Nan had said no, when Eve and Benny asked her to come to the Singing Kettle. Chips for Eve and black coffee for strong-willed Benny.

They didn't see her eyes dart around as if she knew someone would be waiting for her.

They didn't notice as Simon stepped out and took her hand.

"How amazingly crass I was last night," he said.

"Oh, that's perfectly all right."

"I mean it. It was unpardonable. I wondered if you might come down to a pretty little hotel I know for dinner and we might stay overnight.

If you'd like to."

"I'd like to, certainly," Nan said. "But sadly I'm not free until next Tuesday.

"You're making me wait."

"No, I assure you.

But she was indeed making him wait. Nan had worked out the safe period, and next Tuesday was the earliest she dared go to bed with Simon Westward.

Clodagh was sitting in her back room sewing. She had a glass door and could see if there was a customer who needed personal attention.

Otherwise her aunt and Rita, the new young girl they had taken on, could manage fine without her.

Benny came in and sat beside her. "How's Rita getting on?"

"Fine. You've got to choose them - quick enough to be of some use.

Not so quick that they'll take all your ideas and set up on their own.

It's the whole nature of business."

Benny laughed dryly. "I wish someone had told that to my father ten years ago," she said ruefully.

Clodagh went on sewing. Benny had never brought up the subject of Sean Walsh before. Even though it had been a matter of a lot of speculation in the last weeks. Just after Christmas there had been talk of him becoming a partner. Those who drank in Healy's Hotel said Mrs. Healy spoke of it very authoritatively. Clodagh, since the day she had been barred from Healy's, made it her business to find out everything that went on there, and all subjects discussed at its bar. She waited to hear what Benny had to say. "Clodagh, what would happen if Rita was taking money from the till?"

"Well, for a start I'd know it at the end of the day, or else the end of the week."

"You would?"

"Yes, and then I'd suggest cutting off her hands at the wrists, and Aunt Peggy would say we should just sack her."

"And suppose you couldn't prove it?"

"Then I'd be very careful, Benny, so careful you wouldn't believe it."

"If she had put it in a bank someone would know?"

"Oh yes. She wouldn't have put it in a bank, not around these parts.

It would have to be in cash somewhere."

"Like where?"

"Lord, I'd have no idea, and I'd be careful I didn't get caught looking."

"So you might have to let it go if you couldn't prove it."

"Crucifying as it would be, I might."

Benny heard the warning in her voice. They both knew they were not talking about the blameless Rita out in the shop. They each realised that it would be dangerous to say any more.

Jack Foley said he'd ring Benny when he got to Wales. They were staying in a guest house. He was going to share a room with Bill Dunne, who was going for the laugh and a beer. "You won't need me at all," Benny had said, laughing away her disappointment that she couldn't be there.

"Fine though Bill Dunne is and everything, I don't think there's much comparison. I wish you were coming with me."

"Well, ring me from the height of the fun," Benny said. He didn't ring. On night one, or night two, or night three. Benny sat at home.

She didn't take her mother up to Healy's Hotel to try out one of their new evening dinners, at Mrs. Healy's invitation.

Instead she stayed at home and listened to the clock ticking and to Shep snoring and to Patsy whispering with Mossy while her mother looked at the pictures in the fire and Jack Foley made no phone call from the height of the fun.

Nan packed her overnight bag carefully. A lacy nighty, a change of clothes for the next day, a very smart sponge bag from Brown Thomas, with talcum powder and a new toothbrush and toothpaste.

She kissed her mother goodbye.

"I'll be staying with Eve in Dunlaoghaire," she said. "That's fine," said Emily Mahon, who knew that wherever Nan was going to stay it was not with Eve in Dunlaoghaire.

Bill Dunne ran into Benny in the main hall.

"I'm meant to bump into you casually and see how the land lies," he said.

"What on earth do you mean?"

"Is our friend in the doghouse or isn't he?"

"Bill, you're getting worse than Aidan. Talk English."

"In plain English, your erring boyfriend, Mr. Foley, wants to know if he dares approach you, he having not managed to telephone you."

"Oh, don't be so silly," Benny said, exasperated. "Jack knows I'm not that kind of girl, going into sulks and moods. He knows I don't mind something like that. If he couldn't phone he couldn't."

"Now I see why he likes you so much. And why he was so afraid that he'd upset you," Bill Dunne said admiringly. "You're a girl in a million, Benny.

Heather Westward didn't really like the thought of Aidan coming on their outings, but that was before she got to know him. Soon Eve complained that she liked Aidan more than she liked Eve. His fantasy world was vastly more entertaining than her own.

He told Heather that he and Eve were going to have eight children, with ten months between each child. They would marry in 1963 and keep having children until late 1970.

"Is that because you're Catholics?"

"No, it's because I want something to occupy Eve during my first hard years at the Bar. I shall be in the Law Library all day and night in order to make money for all the Knickerbocker Glories that these children will demand. I shall have to work at night in a newspaper as a sub-editor. I have it all worked out. Heather giggled into her huge ice cream. She wasn't absolutely sure if he was being serious. She looked to Eve for confirmation.

"That's what he thinks now, but actually what's going to happen is that he's going to meet some brainless little blonde who'll flutter long lashes at him and giggle, and he'll forget all about me and the long-term plan."

"Will you mind?" Heather spoke as if Aidan weren't there.

"No, I'll be quite relieved really. Eight children would be exhausting. Remember how Clara felt with all those puppies?"

"But you wouldn't have to have them all at the same time?"

Heather took the matter seriously.

"Though it would have its advantages," Aidan was reflective.

"We'd get free baby things, and you could come and help with the babysitting, Heather. You'd change four while Eve changed the other four."

Heather laughed happily.

"I wouldn't want a brainless little blonde, honestly," Aidan said to Eve. "I'm no Jack Foley."

Eve looked at him, astonished. "Jack?"

"You know, the Wales outing. It's all right. It's all right, Benny's forgiven him.

Bill Dunne says.

"She's forgiven him for not phoning her. She doesn't know anything about a brainless blonde that should be forgiven."

"Oh .. I don't think it was anything really.." Aidan backtracked.

Eve's eyes glinted.

"Well, only a ship that passed in the night, or the evening, a blonde, silly Welsh ship. I don't know, for God's sake. I wasn't there. I was only told."

"Oh, I'm sure you were told, and all the gory details."

"No, really. And Eve, I wouldn't go and say anything to Benny."

"I'm her friend."

"Does that mean you will or you won't?"

"It means that you'll never know.

Nan settled herself into Simon's car.

"You smell beautiful," he said. "Always the most expensive of perfumes."

"Most men don't recognise good perfume," she complimented him.

"You're very discerning."

They drove out of Dublin south through Dunlaoghaire, past Kit Hegarty's and past Heather's school.

"That's where my sister is."

Nan knew this. She knew that Eve went there on Sundays when Simon did not. She knew Heather was unhappy there and would much prefer a day school within reach of her beloved pony and dog and the country life she loved so much, pottering around Westlands. But she didn't let Simon know that she knew any of this.

With Simon she was determined to play it cool and distant. To ask little and seem to know little of his family and home life, so that he would not feel justified in prying into hers. Later, when she had really captivated him, then it would be time for him to get answers to his questions.

And by then he would know her well enough to realise that a drunken father and a messy family would form no part of the life that she led.

She believed that she had flirted with him for long enough and that she was timing it right to go to this hotel with him tonight.

She had looked the hotel up in a guide book, and knew all about it.

Nan Mahon would not arrive anywhere, even at a hotel to lose her virginity, unprepared and uninformed about the social background of the place.

He smiled at her, a crooked lopsided smile. He really was most attractive, Nan thought, even though he was smaller than she would have chosen. She didn't wear her really good high-heeled shoes when she was out with him. He was very confident of her, as if he had known that this day would come sooner rather than later. In fact that thought must have been on his mind. "I was very glad when you agreed to come to dinner and let us spend a whole evening together instead of rushing away at a taxi rank," he said.

"Yes, it's a lovely place, I believe. It has marvellous portraits and old hunting prints."

"Yes. How do you know that?"

"I can't remember. Someone told me."

"You haven't been here with any of your previous boyfriends?"

"I've never been to a hotel with anyone."

"Come on now. "True."

He looked slightly alarmed. As if the thought of what lay ahead was now more arduous and complicated than he had supposed. But a girl like Nan would not go ahead with something like this unless she intended it.

And when she said she had never been to a hotel with a chap, she might be speaking the literal truth. But a girl like this must have had some kind of experience, whether it was in a hotel bedroom or a sand dune.

He would not face that problem until he had to.

There were candles on the table, and they sat in a dark dining room with heavy oil paintings of the hotelier's stern ancestors.

The waiter spoke respectfully like an old retainer, and they seemed to recognise Simon, and treat him with respect. At the next table sat a couple. The waiter addressed the man as "Sir Michael'. Nan closed her eyes for an instant.In many ways being here was better than being in Westlands. He had been right.

It was like a stately home, and they were being treated like the aristocracy. Not bad for the daughter of Brian Mahon, builders' provider and drunk.

Nan had not been telling him any lies, Simon realised with surprise and some mild guilt. He was indeed the first man she had gone to a hotel with in any sense of the word. She lay there with the moonlight coming through the curtains and catching her perfect sleeping face. She really was a very beautiful girl, and she seemed to like him a lot. He drew her towards him again.

Benny knew that Sean Walsh's partnership could not be postponed for ever. If only she could get her mother to take an interest in the matter. Annabel woke heavy and leaden from a sleep that had been gained through tablets. It took her several hours to shake off the feeling of torpor. And when she did the loneliness of her position came back to her. Her husband dead before his time, her daughter gone all day to Dublin and her maid about to announce an engagement to Mossy Rooney, and only holding up the actual date out of deference to the bereavement in the family.

Dr. Johnson told Benny that these things took time. Sometimes a lot of time, but eventually, like Mrs. Kennedy in the chemist's, if the wife could be persuaded to take an interest in the business they would recover.

Dr. Johnson looked as if he were about to say something and thought better of it.

He had always hated Sean Walsh. Benny wondered could it have been about him?

"The problem is Sean, you see," she began tentatively. "When was it not?" Dr. Johnson asked. "If only Mother was in the shop and properly there, taking notice.."

"Yes, I know."

"Do you think she'll ever be able to do that? Or am I just running after a pipe dream?"

He looked affectionately at the girl with the chestnut hair, the girl he had watched grow from the chubby toddler into the big awkward schoolgirl and now fined down a bit he thought, but still by anyone's standards a big woman.

Benny Hogan may have had more comforts than some of the other children in Knockglen whose tonsillitis and chicken pox and measles he had cured, but she never had as much freedom. Now it looked as if the chains that bound her to home were growing even stronger.

"You have your own life to live," he said gruffly. "That's not much help, Dr. Johnson.

To his own surprise he heard himself agreeing with her. "You're right.

It isn't much help. And it wasn't much help saying to your mother, "Stop grieving and try living". She won't listen to me.

And it was no help at all, all those years ago, telling Birdie Mac to put her mother into a home, or telling Dessie Burns to go to the monk in Mount Mellary who gets people off the jar. But you have to keep saying these things. Just to stay sane.

As long as she had known him Benny had never known Dr. Johnson make such a speech. She stared at him open-mouthed.

He pulled himself together. "If I thought it would get that long drink of water, Sean Walsh, out of your business and miles from here, I'd give Annabel some kind of stimulant to keep her working in there twelve hours a day."

"My father had an undertaking to make Sean a partner. We'll have to honour it."

"I suppose so." Dr. Johnson knew that this was so. "Unless there was any reason my father didn't sign the deed." She looked at him beseechingly. It was the smallest hope in the world that Eddie Hogan might have confided his suspicions to his old friend Maurice Johnson.

But no. With a heavy heart she heard Dr. Johnson say gloomily that he didn't know any reason.

"It's not as if he was the kind of fellow who'd ever be caught with his hands in the till. He hasn't spent tuppence on himself since the day he arrived."

Sean Walsh was having his morning coffee in Healy's. From the window he could see if anyone entered Hogan's.

Mike could cope with an easy sale, or measuring a regular customer.

Anything more difficult would have to be monitored.

Mrs. Healy sat beside him. "Any word of the partnership?"

"They're going to honour it. They said so in front of the solicitor."

"So they might. It should be done already. Your name should be above the shop, for all to see.

"You're very good to have such a high opinion of me.. um..

Dorothy." He still thought of her as Mrs. Healy.

"Nothing of the sort, Sean. You deserve to make more of yourself.

And be seen to be what you are."

"I will; One day people will see. I move slowly. That's my way.

"Just as long as you're moving, not standing still."

"I'm not standing still," Sean Walsh assured her.

"When can I see you again?" Simon said as he dropped Nan off outside University College.

"What do you suggest?"

"Well, I'd suggest tonight, but where could we go?"

"We could go for a drink anywhere."

"But afterwards?"

"I'm sure you know some other lovely hotels." She smiled at him.

He did, but he couldn't afford them. And he couldn't take her to Buffy and Frank's place where he stayed when he was in Dublin.

And she wasn't going to take him to her home. A car seemed out of the question, and Westlands was off limits as far as he was concerned.

"We'll think of something," he promised. "Goodbye," Nan said.

He looked after her with admiration. He hadn't met a girl like this in a long time.

"Benny, you look awful. You haven't even combed your hair," Nan said.

"Thanks a bundle, that's all I need."

"It is what you need, actually," Nan said. "You've got the most handsome man in college panting after you. You can't turn up looking like a mess.

"I'll comb my hair then," Benny said ungraciously. The most handsome man in college was not panting after her. He was looking like a guilty sheep, every time he met her he apologised for the whole Wales thing.

Benny had said he must forget it, these things happened. And she wasn't making an issue of it, so why should he?

She had even arranged to stay in town this Friday, and suggested they have an evening together. She had asked Eve if they could stay in Dunlaoghaire. She had told Patsy that she would be gone and she had explained to her mother that she needed one night a week in Dublin.

That everyone got over a loss in their own way, and her way had to be spending time with her friends. Her mother's eyes, dull and listless, had clouded as if this was one further blow.

Worst of all Jack said that Friday wasn't a good night for him.

They had a meeting in the rugby club, and then they'd all go for a drink afterwards.

"Make it another night," he said casually. Benny had wanted to smack him very hard. He was as thoughtless as any child.

Why did he not realise how hard it was for her to arrange anything at all? Now she had to go and unpick everything she had arranged. Eve, Kit, Patsy, her mother. Bloody hell, she wouldn't.

She'd stay in Dublin anyway that night and maybe go to the pictures with Eve and Aidan. They had asked her often enough, and to have a curry afterwards.

They were still whistling the theme tune of Bridge on the River Kwai when they arrived at the Golden Orient in Leeson Street.

They met Bill Dunne coming out of Hartigan's, and he joined them for the meal. Aidan took them through the menu as an expert.

Everyone was to order something different, then they could taste four dishes and become curry bores.

"But we all like kofta," Eve complained. "Too bad. The mother of my children is not going to be a one-dish lady," Aidan said.

"Where's Jack?" Bill Dunne enquired. "At a rugby club meeting."

Benny spoke casually. She thought she saw the boys exchange glances, but decided that she was imagining it. All that watching of Sean Walsh made her see glances and looks where none existed.

Jack Foley rang, very cross, on Saturday.

"I believe there was a great outing last night. The only night of the week I couldn't get away," he said.

"You never told me. You always said Fridays were marvellous nights in Dublin." Benny was stung by the injustice of it all.

"And so they were for some, Bill Dunne was telling me."

"What night are you free next week, Jack? I'll arrange to stay in town.

"You're sulking," he said."

"You're sulking over the Wales thing."

"I told you, I understand that you didn't have time to ring me. I am not sulking over a phone call."

"Not the phone call," he said. "The other thing."

"What other thing?" asked Benny.

Nan and Simon met three times without being able to do what they both wanted to do, which was to make love.

"What a pity you don't have a little flat in town," he said to her.

"What a pity you don't," she countered. What they really needed was a small place where nobody would see them, somewhere they could steal in and out of.

It needn't be in Dublin. It could be miles away. Petrol was no problem. Apparently Simon put it all down for the farm. It was complicated, but it was free.

He just needed to be back in Knockglen to fill up. Nan remembered Eve's cottage by the quarry. She had seen where Eve put the key under a stone in the wall. Nobody went there. Except sometimes a nun to keep an eye on the place. But the nun wouldn't be keeping an eye on the place at night.

There were only lights in one cottage. Nan remembered that this was the one where a silent man called Mossy lived. She had heard Benny and Eve talking about him once.

"That's the man our Bee Moore wanted for herself, but some other took him away," Simon said, smiling loftily at his local knowledge.

Nan had brought a pair of sheets, pillowcases and two towels.

Plus her sponge bag, this time with soap as well. They must leave no trace of their visit.

Simon couldn't understand why they didn't just ask Eve. Nan said this was not even remotely possible. Eve would say no.

"Why? You're her friend. I'm her cousin."

"That's why," Nan said.

Simon had shrugged. They were here, so what did it matter? They dared not light the fire or the range. They brought the bottle of champagne to bed immediately.

Next morning it was very chilly.

"I'll have to bring my primus stove if I can find it," Simon said shivering.

Nan folded the sheets and towels carefully and put them into the bag.

"Can't we leave them here?" he asked. "Don't be ridiculous."

Washed briskly in cold water, but as yet unshaven, Simon examined the cottage for the first time. "She has some nice things here," he commented. "That came from Westlands, definitely." He nodded at the piano. Does Eve play?"

"No, I don't think so."

He touched other things. This was definitely from the house, and that might have been. He seemed to know even though he was only a child when his aunt had begun the ill-advised marriage, and started to live in this cottage instead of a Big House similar to the one she grew up in.

He laughed at a statue in place of honour on the mantlepiece.

"Who's he, when he's at home?" he said looking at a china figure of a man with a crown and a globe and a cross.

"The Infant of Prague," Nan replied. "Well, what's he doing on display like this?"

"Probably one of the nuns gave it to her.

They do come and clean the house. Why not leave it there to please them when you don't have to look at it yourself?" Nan asked.

He looked at her admiringly. "You're a businesswoman as well as everything else, Nan Mahon."

"Let's go," she said. "It would be terrible to be caught first time."

"You think there'll be others?" he teased. "Only if you get your primus stove going," she laughed. On the first floor of Hogan's the rooms were big and highceilinged. That was where the family that owned the shop formerly used to live. It was where Eddie Hogan and his bride lived for the first year of their marriage.

They had bought Lisbeg just before Benny was born.

The rooms on that first floor were still filled with lumber. To the furniture which was already stacked there came extra lumber, old rails not used in the shop, bales empty now of material, boxes. It was not a pretty sight.

The rooms where Sean Walsh had had his home for going on ten and a half years were on the floor above that.

A bedroom, another room which could be a sitting room, and a very old-fashioned bathroom with a geyser that looked like a dangerous missile.

Benny had not been up there since she was about eight or nine.

She remembered her father saying that he had asked Sean would he like a key to his own area. But Sean had been insistent that he did not.

If he had taken the money he would not have hidden it in his own rooms, since that was the first place that would be searched if it ever were found out. It would be pointless for her to search.

Pointless and dangerous. She had not forgotten Clodagh's heavy warning.

Things would be quite bad enough if Sean Walsh were not made a partner.

There would be an outrage in Knockglen if he were wrongfully accused of stealing from her father. Benny did not relish the thought of hunting in his private rooms for some evidence. But she felt so sure that there must be something, perhaps in the form of a post office book from some faraway branch.

In the beginning as she had ploughed through her father's simplistic and even then not very thorough bookkeeping methods, she had only suspected that Sean must be taking away a sum of money each week. But now she knew it. She knew it because of one simple lie he had told.

When she had tried to ask him to explain the system of drawing slips in front of Mr. Green, she had asked for an example. Sean Hogan had pointed to the outfit she wore and suggested that Benny's own clothes might be something that her father drew money from the till to pay for.

The thought had raised a lump in her throat. Until she had looked at the cheques that were returned with the bank statement. Her father had paid for every single garment he had bought for her. Clothes she had liked, clothes she had hated, each one paid for in Pine's by cheque with his slanting writing.

She wished it were all over. That Sean had been unmasked, and that he had left town. That her mother had recovered her spirit and gone in to run the business. And most of all that someone would tell her exactly what had happened in Wales.

Simon brought his primus stove. Nan brought two pretty china candlesticks, and two pink candles.

Simon brought a bottle of champagne. Nan brought two eggs, and herbs, and bread and butter. She brought some instant coffee powder too. She made them a glorious omelette in the morning.

Simon said it made him feel so excited they should go straight back to bed.

"We've just remade it with all her things, silly," Nan said. Nan never referred to Eve by name.

After a time Simon stopped calling her Eve as well.

"Where does that daughter of yours spend the nights?" Brian Mahon asked.

"You were very drunk a couple of times, Brian. I think she was frightened. She goes out to her girlfriend, Eve, in Dunlaoghaire.

They all get on together, that Eve and Benny down in Knockglen.

They're her friends. We should be glad she has them."

"What's the point of rearing children and having them stay out at night?" he grumbled.

"Paul and Nasey often don't come home. You never worry about them."

"Nothing could happen to them," he said. "Nor Nan either," Emily Mahon said, with a small silent prayer.

Nan was out three nights a week at least nowadays. She did hope most fervently that nothing would happen to her beautiful golden daughter.

Mossy Rooney saw lights there one evening. He walked straight by.

Eve Malone must have come home quietly for a night, he thought to himself. None of his business.

The very next day Mother Francis asked him if he would do a job on the guttering at the cottage. She came up to show him where it was falling away.

"Eve hasn't been back for weeks, the bold child," Mother Francis scolded. "If it wasn't for yourself and myself, Mossy, the place would fall down around her ears."

Mossy kept his peace.

Eve Malone might have wanted to come back to her house without letting the nuns know.

Sean Walsh walked the quarry road at night. It was a place you didn't meet many people. It left him free to think of his plans his hopes.

his future. It was a space where he could consider Dorothy Healy and the interest she showed in him. She was several years older than him.

There was no denying that. He had always thought in terms of marrying a much younger woman. A girl in fact.

But there were advantages in a union with an older woman. Eddie Hogan had done so after all. It had never hurt his prospects. He had been perfectly happy in his life, limited though it was. He had fathered a child.

Sean's thoughts were in a turmoil as he passed the cottage. He wasn't really aware of his surroundings.

He thought he heard music coming from inside. But he must have been imagining it.

After all, Eve wasn't at home and who else would be in there at midnight playing the piano?

He shook his head and tried to work out what length of time Mr. Green the solicitor had in mind when he spoke about the regrettably snail-like process of the law.

Dr. Johnson pulled his prescription pad across the desk. Mrs. Carroll had always been a difficult person. He felt that she needed the services of Father Ross more than himself, but was it fair to dump all the neurotic moaners on to the local priest and call the whole thing a religious crisis?

"I know I'm not going to be popular for saying so, Dr. Johnson, but I have to say what's true. That cottage up in the quarry is haunted.

That woman died roaring and her poor halfwitted husband, God be good to him, may have taken his own life, God bless the mark afterwards. No wonder a house like that is haunted."

"Haunted?" Dr. Johnson was weary.

"No soul died at peace there. No wonder one of them comes back to play the piano at night," she said.

Heather rang Westlands. She was coming home next weekend. Bee Moore said that was grand, she'd tell Mr. Simon.

"I'll be going to tea with Eve in her cottage," Heather said proudly.

"I wouldn't fancy that myself. People say it's haunted," said Bee Moore, who had heard that for a fact.

Heather and Eve sat making toast by the fire in the cottage. They had long toasting forks that Benny had found for them.

She said there were amazing things on the first floor of Hogan's shop, but she didn't like to denude the place entirely in case bloody Sean was going to be a partner. So she had just brought something he could hardly sue for through every court in the land.

"Is it definite about the partnership?" Eve wanted to know.

"Some time, when you have about thirty-five hours.."

"I have."

"Not now.

"Do you want me to go away? I could go out to the pony," Heather said.

"No, Heather, it's a long, long story, and it would depress me telling it and depress Eve listening to it. Stay where you are.

"Right." Heather put another of Sister Imelda's wonderful tea cakes on the toasting fork.

"Anything new though?" Eve thought Benny looked troubled.

But Benny shook her head. There was a resigned sort of look on her face that Eve didn't like. As if Benny wanted to get into a big fight over something and lacked the energy.

"I could help. Like the old days. The wise woman would let two people tackle it."

"The Wiser Woman might give in to the inevitable."

"What does your mother say?"

"Very little."

"Benny, will you have a toasted cake?" Heather's solution for nearly every crisis.

"No. I'm fooling myself that if I don't eat, this fellow will like me more and stop going off with Welsh floozies." Eve sighed heavily. So someone had told her.

They cycled along cheerfully, Eve saluting almost everyone they passed.

Heather knew no one. But she knew fields that would have donkeys at the gate, and a gap in the hedge where you could see a mare and two foals. She told Eve about the trees and their leaves and how her nature scrapbook was the only thing she was any good at. She wouldn't mind school work if it was all to do with pressing flowers and leaves and drawing the various stages of a beech tree. Eve thought how odd it was about two first cousins, with only seven years between them, living only a mile and a half apart, never having met, and one knowing every person who walked the road and the other every animal in every farm.

It was strange to ride up the ill-kept ridge-filled drive of Westlands with the young woman of the house. Even though she was no outsider, coming to ask for a handout, Eve still felt odd and out of place.

"We'll go in through the kitchen." Heather had thrownher bicycle up against the wall.

"I don't know.." Eve began. Her voice was an almost exact copy of Heather's when lunch at the convent was suggested.

"Come on," Heather said.

Mrs. Walsh and Bee Moore were surprised to see her, and not altogether pleased.

"You should have come in at the front when you had a guest," Mrs. Walsh said reprovingly.

"It's only Eve. We had lunch in the kitchen of the convent."

"Really?" Mrs. Walsh's face expressed very clearly that Eve had been unwise to receive the daughter of the Big House so poorly.

The very least that might have been arranged was lunch in the parlour.

"I told her you made great shortbread,' Heather said hopefully.

"We must make up a nice little box of it some time." Mrs. Walsh was polite, but cold. She definitely didn't want Eve Malone on her patch.

From inside the house, Eve heard someone playing a piano. "Oh, good,' Heather said, pleased. "Simon's home."

Simon Westward was charming. He came forward with both his hands out to Eve.

"Lovely to see you here again."

"I didn't really intend.. ." She wanted terribly to tell him that she had no intention of being a casual visitor to his house. She must make him understand that she was doing it to please a child, a lonely child, a lonely child who wanted to share the place with her. But those words were hard to find.

Simon probably had no idea of what she was trying to say.

"It's great you're here now, it's been far too long!" he said.

She looked around her. This was not the drawing room she had been in on her first visit. It was another, southfacing room, with faded chintz and old furniture. A small desk stuffed with papers stood in the corner, a large piano near the window. Imagine one family having so many rooms and enough furniture to fill them.

Enough pictures for their walls.

Her eyes roamed around the portraits, hoping to find the one of her mother. The one she had not known existed.

Simon had been watching her. "It's on the stairs,' he said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I know Nan told you. Come, and I'll show it to you." Eve felt her face burn. "It isn't important."

"Oh, but it is. A painting of your mother. I didn't show it to you that first day because it was all a bit strained. I was hoping you'd come again. But you didn't, and Nan did, so I showed it to her. I hope you're not upset. "Why should I be?" Her fists were clenched.

"I don't know, but Nan seemed to think you were." How dare they talk about her!

How dare they, and whether or not she was upset.

With tears stinging at the back of her eyes, Eve walked like a robot to the foot of the stairs where hung a picture of a small dark woman, with eyes and mouth so like her own she felt she was looking in a mirror.

She must have so little of her father about her, if there was so much of Sarah Westward there already. Sarah had her hand on the back of a chair, but she didn't look relaxed and at peace. She looked as if she were dying for it all to be over so that she could get away.

Somewhere, anywhere.

She had small hands and big eyes. Her dark hair was cut short, as the thirties fashion would have dictated. But looking at her you got the feeling that she might have preferred it shoulder length and pushed behind her ears. like Eve's.

Was she beautiful? It was impossible to know. Nan had only said that she was in order to let Eve know that she had seen the picture.

Nan. Nan had walked around this house, as a guest. "Has Nan been back here since then?" she asked. "Why do you say that?"

"I just wondered."

"No. That was the only day she was at Westlands," he said.

There was something slightly hesitant about the way he said it, but yet she knew it was the truth. Out in the kitchen they were getting a grudging afternoon tea ready. Eve thought that the food they were eating this day would never end, but Heather was loving it and it would be a pity to spoil it for her now.

Eve admired the pony and the way Heather had cleaned its tack.

She admired Clara's puppies and refused the offer of one as guard dog.

"It would be good to look after your property," Heather tried to persuade her.

"I'm not there often enough."

"That's all the more reason. Tell her, Simon. "It's up to Eve."

"I'm hardly ever there,. Only the odd weekend. A dog would die of loneliness.

"But whoever is there could walk him." Heather held an adorable little male puppy up for inspection. It was seven-eighths labrador, she explained, all the best, but with a little of the silliness taken out.

"No one but me, and Mother Francis from time to time."

"Does she sleep there?" Heather asked. "Heavens no. So you see, no need for a guard dog." She didn't think to ask why Heather supposed the nun might sleep in her little cottage. She just assumed it was part of Heather's continuing ignorance of convent life. And she didn't notice any change of expression in Simon's face.

Mrs. Walsh came to tell them that tea was served in the drawing room.

Eve walked in to meet her grandfather for the second time in her life.

The grandfather that Nan Mahon had told everyone was so charming and such a wonderful old man. She felt herself pushing her shoulders back, and taking those deep breaths that Nan said were so helpful if you had to do something that was a bit stressful.

As if Nan would know!

He looked about the same. Possibly a bit more alert than on the previous occasion. She had heard that he had been taken ill on Christmas Day, and that Dr. Johnson had been summoned, but that it had all passed.

It was touching to see Heather, the child who had grown up with him and who loved him as part of the only life she knew, sit beside him, nestling in to him and helping him with his cup.

"No need to cut up the sandwiches for you today, Grandfather.

They're absolutely tiny. It must be to impress Eve." The old man looked across at where Eve sat awkwardly on a hard-backed and uncomfortable chair. He looked at her long and hard.

"You remember Eve, don't you?" Heather tried. There was no reply.

"You do, of course, Grandfather. I was telling you how good she's been to Heather, taking her out of school.."

"Yes, yes indeed."

He was cuttingly distant. It was as if someone told him that a beggar on the street had once been a fine hard worker.

She could have just smiled and let it pass. But there was something about the way he spoke which went straight to Eve's heart. The temper that Mother Francis had always said would be her undoing bubbled to the surface. "Do you know who I am, Grandfather?" she said in a loud, clear voice. There was a note of challenge in her voice that made them all look at her, startled, Heather, Simon and the old man. Nobody helped him out.

He would have to answer now or mumble. "Yes. You are the daughter of Sarah and some man."

"The daughter of Sarah and her husband Jack Malone."

"Yes, possibly."

Eve's eyes blazed. "Not possibly. Definitely. That was his name.

You may not have received him here, but he was Jack Malone. They were married in the parish church." He raised his eyes. They were the same dark almondshaped eyes that they all had, except that Major Westward's were smaller and narrower. He looked hard at Eve. "I never doubted that she married the handyman Jack Malone.

I was saying that it is possible he was your father. Possible, but not at all as definite as you believe She was numb with shock, the words filled with hate seemed to make no sense. His face, slightly lopsided, was working with the effort of speaking clearly and making himself understood.

"You see, Sarah was a whore," he said. Eve could hear the clock ticking.

"She was a whore with an itch, an itch that many handymen around the place found it easy to satisfy. We lost so many good grooms, I remember."

Simon was on his feet in horror. Heather sat where she had been, on the little footstool, the one with beaded trimming at her grandfather's feet. Her face was white.

He had not finished speaking.

"But let us not think back over unpleasant times. You may indeed be the child of the handyman Jack Malone. If you wish to believe that, then .. that is what you must believe.."

He reached for his tea. The effort of speaking had exhausted him.

His cup shook and rattled against the saucer.

Eve's voice was low, and because of that all the more menacing.

"In all my life there has only been one thing I was ashamed of. I was ashamed that my father used a religious occasion, the funeral of my mother, to call down a curse on you. I wished he had more respect for the people who had come down to mourn. I even thought that God might have been angry with him for it. But now I know he didn't curse you hard enough, and his wish wasn't answered. You have lived on full of hate and bile. I will never look on your face again. And I will never forgive you for the things you said today."

She didn't pause to see how the others took her departure. She walked straight out of the door, and through the big hall into the kitchen.

Without speaking to Mrs. Walsh or to Bee Moore she let herself out of the back door. She got on her bicycle and without a backward glance cycled down the rutted avenue that led from her grandfather's house.

At the window of the drawing room Heather stood, tears pouring down her face.

When Simon came to comfort her she pummelled him with her fists.

"You let her go. You let her go. You didn't stop him. Now she'll never be my friend again."

Dearest Benny, dearest, dearest Benny, Do you remember those shaking tempers I used to get at school? I thought they had passed over like spots do, but no.

I was so desperately and hurtfully insulted by that devil in a wheelchair out in Westlands that I am not normal to speak to, and I'm going back to Dublin. I haven't told Mother Francis about the row, and I won't tell Kit, or Aidan. But I will tell you when I'm able. Please forgive me for running off, and not meeting you tonight. I've asked Mossy to take this note in to you, but honestly it's the best thing.

See you on Monday.

Love from a very distraught Eve When Mossy handed her the note Benny first thought it was from Sean Walsh, that it was some kind of threat or instruction to back off her investigations.

She was deeply upset to hear of a row bad enough to send Eve away in one of her very black moods. Sorry, too, because that nice child would be caught in the middle of it. And selfishly she was sorry, because she had hoped to spend the evening telling Eve all about her ever-growing belief that Sean Walsh had been salting away money and to ask her advice about where they should look for it.

When Eve let herself into the house, Kevin Hickey was in the kitchen.

"Not out, wowing the girls on a Saturday night, Kevin?" she said.

She had promised herself that she would be a professional. This was her job, this house her place of work. She would not allow her personal anger to rub off on the guests.

Kevin said, "I did have a sort of a plan, but I thought I'd hang around." He nodded with his head, indicating upstairs towards Kit's room.

"She's had some bad news, apparently. Her old man died in England. I know she hated him, but it's a shock all the same.

Eve came into the dark room with two cups of tea and sat beside the bed. She knew Kit would not be asleep.

Kit lay, head propped up by pillows and cushions, smoking.

Through the window the lights of Dunlaoghaire harbour were glinting and shining.

"How did you know I needed you?"

"I'm psychic. What happened?"

"I'm not sure. An operation. It didn't work."

"I'm very sorry, Eve said.

"She said it was very unexpected, the operation, that he had no idea that there was anything wrong with him. That if ever he were to die she was to ring me and say he had no idea there was anything wrong.

"Who said all this?"

"Some landlady. He had given her fifty pounds in an envelope and said it was for her.

Eve was silent. It was all curious and complicated and messy, like everything Joseph Hegarty seemed to have touched in his life.

"What's worrying you, Kit?"

"He must have known he was dying. That's why he came back. He must have wanted to spend the last few weeks here. And I didn't let him."

"No, didn't he make a big point about that? He didn't know."

"He said that because of the insurance."

"The what?"

"Insurance policy. He's done what he never did in his life, he's made sure I'm provided for."

Eve felt a big lump in her throat.

"They're going to bury him in England next weekend. They're extraordinary over there. Funerals aren't the next day. It's at a weekend so people could get there. Will you come with me, Eve? We could go on the boat.

"Of course I will."

Dear Heather, I have to go to a funeral in England. Kit's ex-husband died. She needs me to go with her. That's why I won't be there on Sunday.

Nothing to do with other things. See you the weekend after. Maybe Aidan will come as well.

Just so that you know it's urgent, otherwise I'd come.

Love, Eve Heather read the letter silently at breakfast. Miss Thompson, who was the only nice teacher in Heather's opinion, looked at her.

"Everything all right?"

"Yes."

Miss Thompson shrugged and left her alone. You couldn't push adolescent girls for confidences they didn't want to give.

She's never coming again, Heather said to herself over and over.

She said it during morning prayers, during mathematics and during geography. Soon it became like the refrain of a song you can't get out of your mind. "She's never coming again."

Miss Thompson didn't remember about the letter, but she did say that she had noticed Heather was extremely quiet and withdrawn during the week. And she went back over it all, as they all had to on Friday night when Heather Westward didn't turn up for supper, and couldn't be found anywhere on the school premises.

And she had not turned up at home. It had to be admitted by all those who didn't want to believe it, that Heather had run away from school.

Chapter 15

As soon as Simon heard that Eve Malone had gone to England he said that was where they would find Heather.

Eve had not acknowledged his note of apology and explanation that his grandfather's hardening of the arteries made him unstable and unreliable and therefore someone whose opinions and views were best ignored.

Simon wondered had the note been too formal? He had told Nan about it, and to his surprise she had been critical of him.

Normally she had been so cool, unruffled and giving so little of herself and her views.

"Why was it such an awful letter?" he asked anxiously. "Because it sounds icy, like your grandfather."

"It wasn't meant to be. It was meant to be low key, to try and bring down the temperature."

"It did that all right," Nan agreed.

On Friday when the school had been in touch he rang Nan. "You know what you were saying about the letter. . . do you think that's why she took Heather?"

"Of course she didn't take Heather." Nan was dismissive. "So where is Heather then?"

"She ran away because you were all so awful."

"Why don't you run away then?" He sounded petulant. "I like awful people. Didn't you know?"

The schoolgirls were frightened. Nothing like this had ever happened before. They were all being asked extraordinary questions. Had they seen anyone come in to the school, had they seen Heather leave with anyone else?

Her school coat was gone, her hated school beret left on the bed.

Her pyjamas and sponge bag, her book of pressed flowers, her snaps of the pony and Clara and her puppies had disappeared. They were normally on display beside her bed where other girls had pictures of their families.

Heather's classmates were asked had she been upset? They hadn't noticed.

"She's very quiet really," said one of them. "She doesn't like it here," said another.

"She's not much fun. We don't take much notice of her," said the class bully.

Miss Thompson's heart was heavy.

There had been no sign of Heather on the bus. Mikey said he knew her well. A big thick lump of a child as square as a half door.

Of course he'd have noticed her.

She would have had eleven shillings at the most, and possibly a lot less. Heather was known to spend a few pennies on sweets.

By the time Simon arrived at the school they had called the guards.

"Is it really necessary to have the police?" he said. The headmistress was surprised. "Since she hasn't gone home and you could throw no light on anywhere she might be. .

Miss Thompson looked at Simon with some dislike.

"And we have assumed that there was nothing for her to run home to apart from her pony and her dog, and she didn't go there anyway, so we thought you would have wanted us to call in the guards. It would be the normal thing for anyone to do, the normal thing to do."

Simon looked at her miserably. Until now he hadn't realized how far from normal poor Heather's life had been.

He would make it up to her, when they got her back from England, which was undoubtedly where Eve had taken her.

At the guest house in Dunlaoghaire, the guards and Simon found three students holding the fort. Mrs. Hegarty had gone to England to a funeral. Eve Malone had gone with her. Yes, of course they had left an emergency number where they could be contacted.

Mrs. Hegarty had said she would ring anyway next morning to see if they had managed their breakfasts.

It was now eleven o" clock on a Friday night. The mail boat would not yet have arrived at Holyhead. Mrs. Hegarty would not be in London until seven in the morning. She and Eve would take the mail train to Euston.

There was a discussion about telephoning the police in Wales to look for Heather.

There was some doubt on the part of the two guards who were busy taking down details.

"You're absolutely sure this is where your sister is, sir?" they asked again.

"There's nowhere else she could be." He was sure of that. "Did anyone see Mrs. Hegarty and Miss Malone off at the boat?" one guard asked.

"I did." The boy who said he was Kevin Hickey, veterinary student, was spokesman.

"And were they accompanied by a twelve-year-old girl?"

"You mean Heather?"

Simon and the Guards had not explained the purpose of their enquiries.

"Was she with them?" Simon asked.

"Of course not. That's the problem. Eve was worried because she was going to this funeral. She was afraid Heather wouldn't understand that she simply had to go away."

Eve had left a box of chocolates which she had instructed Kevin to deliver to the school on Sunday, with a note from Eve.

"Could you give them to her, if you're connected?" he asked Simon.

They asked to see the note.

It was simple and to the point: "Just to show I haven't forgotten you.

Next week, you choose where we go. Love, Eve."

Simon read it and for the first time since his sister's disappearance had been discovered tears came to his eyes.

On Saturday morning there could hardly have been anyone in Knockglen who didn't know about it. Bee Moore had done her fair share of telling, and Mr. Flood, who had been one of the early recipients of the news, had been out consulting with the nuns in the tree, but finding to his disappointment that there was no heavenly message about Heather.

"I had hoped she might have been in Heaven. Well, her kind of Heaven," he said, remembering that he mustn't lose sight of the fact that the Westwards were Protestants.

Dessie Burns said there'd be a fine reward for anyone who found her, and mark his words she was kidnapped, and what's more kidnapped by someone in the know.

Paccy Moore said that the chances of being kidnapped by anyone in the know were slim. If you knew anything about the Westwards you'd know they could hardly pay their bills. If the poor child had been kidnapped it was by some gombeen Dubliner who thought that she was wealthy because she had a posh accent and came from a big house.

Mrs. Healy said to Sean Walsh that they'd be singing a different song up at Westlands now. They had always been so distant and different, and things that happened to ordinary people never happened to them.

Sean wondered why she had turned against them And Mrs. Healy said it wasn't a matter of that so much as being slightly peeved. Mr. Simon Westward had implied that he would be having the most important of people to stay at the hotel in the near future, if they had evening dinners. Mrs. Healy had put on those dinners, but Mr. Westward had never partaken.

"But other people have," Sean Walsh said. "You've made your profit on them, that's all that matters." Mrs. Healy agreed, but you didn't like to be hopping and jumping like people in a gate cottage just for the whims of the aristocracy.

She said as much to Mrs. Kennedy from the chemist who looked at her thoughtfully, and said that it was a sad thing to have a hard heart when there was a child's life at stake, and Mrs. Healy changed her tune drastically.

Clodagh told the news to Peggy Pine. Clodagh thought that a man in a raincoat had offered poor Heather a whole box of chocolates in Dunlaoghaire harbour.

Mario said that all the men of Knockglen should go out and beat the hedges with sticks looking for her.

"You see too many bad films," Fonsie complained. "Well, where do you think she is, Mister Smartie Pants?" Mario enquired.

"I see too many bad films too. I think she went for that bloody horse of hers, and rode off into the sunset."

But it was one of the many theories that didn't hold up because the pony was still up in Westlands.

Peggy Pine went up to the convent to talk to Mother Francis. "Eve was on the phone from London," Mother Francis said. "I could hear her grinding her teeth from there. Apparently they thought she had taken Heather with her. I dread to think what she'll do when she gets back."

"But Eve would never had done that."

"I know, but there was some kind of row up in Westlands last week.

Needless to say Miss Malone didn't tell me anything about it. . .

Lord, Peggy, where would that child be?"

"When you think about running away you think about running to somewhere you were happy." Peggy Pine was thoughtful. It didn't get them much further.

Heather had never seemed to be all that happy anywhere. Sister Imelda had started the thirty days prayer. She said it had never been known to fail.

"The poor child. I never met a girl who was as appreciative. You should have heard her telling me how much she enjoyed toasting my tea cakes up in Eve's cottage."

Suddenly Mother Francis knew where Heather was.

She reached into the gap in the wall and as she suspected the key wasn't there.

Mother Francis moved softly to the front door of Eve's cottage.

It was closed. She peeped in the window and saw a large box on the table. There was something moving inside it, a cat she thought first, a black cat. Then she saw it was a bird.

A wing of black feathers came at an awkward angle out of the box.

Heather had found a wounded bird and had decided to cure it. Not very successfully, by all appearances. There were feathers and bits of torn-up newspaper everywhere.

Heather, flushed and frightened-looking, was trying to get a fire going. She seemed to be using only sticks and bits of cardboard.

It would flare for a moment, and then die down.

Mother Francis knocked on the window. "I'm not letting you in."

"All right," Mother Francis said unexpectedly.

"So there's no point in staying. Seriously."

"I brought your lunch."

"No, you didn't. It's a plot. You're going to rush me as soon as I open the door. You have people out behind the wall."

"What kind of people? Nuns?"

"The Guards. Well, maybe nuns as well, my brother. People from school."

Mother Francis sighed. "No, they all think you're in London.

That's where they're looking for you as it happens."

Heather stood on a stool and looked out of the window. There did not seem to be anyone else. "You could leave the lunch on the step.

"I could. But it would get cold, and I'll need the dish for sister Imelda, and it means I don't get any."

"I'm not coming home or anything."

Mother Francis came in. She left a covered dish and the big buttered slices of bread on the sideboard.

She looked first at the bird. "Poor fellow. Where did you find him?"

"On the path."

Gently Mother Francis lifted the bird. She kept up a steady stream of conversation. It was only a young crow. The young often fell from the high trees. Some of them were quite clumsy. It was a myth to believe that all birds were graceful and could soar up in the air at will.

The wing wasn't broken, she told Heather. That was why the poor thing had been trying so hard to escape. It had just been stunned by the fall.

Together they felt the bird and smiled at the beating of the little heart and the anxious bird eyes not knowing what fate was in store for it.

Mother Francis gave it some bread crumbs, and then together they took it to the door.

After a few unsteady hops it took off in a low lopsided flight, just clearing the stone wall.

"Right, that's the wildlife dealt with. You get rid of all those feathers and newspapers and put back this box in the scullery.

I'll see to lunch."

"I'm still not going back, even if you did help me with the bird."

"Did I say a thing about going back?"

"No, but you will."

"I won't. I might ask you to let them know you're safe, but that's all." Mother Francis got the fire going. She explained to Heather about the dry turf, that stood leaning against the wall.

She showed her how to make a little nest of twigs and get that going with a nice crackling light before putting on the turf.

Together they ate Sister Imelda's lamb stew, and big floury potatoes, and dipped their bread and butter into the rich sauce.

There was an apple each and a piece of cheese for afterwards.

Mother Francis explained that she couldn't carry much more, because the path was quite slippery and anyway she didn't want to arouse suspicion about where she was going.

"Why did you come for me?" Heather asked.

"I'm a teacher, you see. I imagine I know all about children.

It's a little weakness we have."

"There's nothing you can do."

"Ah now, we never know that till we've examined all the possibilities."

Eve rang Benny from England. She said she had spent more time making cross-channel phone calls than she had spent being any help to Kit.

The whole thing was so infuriating she was going to tear off Simon Westward's affected little cravat and tie it round his thin useless neck and pull it hard until he was blue in the face and only when she saw his tongue and eyeballs protruding would she stop pulling.

"You're wasting time, "Benny said. "I am. I suppose there's no news, is there?"

"Not that we've heard."

"I've just had an idea where she might be. It's only an idea," said Eve. "Right. Who will I tell. Simon?"

"No, go on your own. Just go up as if you happened to be passing, and if the key isn't there you'll know she's inside. And Benny, you know how comforting you can be. She'll need that. Tell her I'll sort it out when I get back."

On her way up the town Benny thought that she might buy some sweets.

It would break the ice if Heather was there and needed to be talked out of the place. She had no money, but she knew that her credit would be good in Birdie Mac's.

As she passed the door of Hogan's she suddenly thought of the drawing slips. She could sign a pink piece of paper and write " miscellaneous goods" on it. Why should she, from one business premises in the town, ask credit from Birdie in another.

Sean watched carefully.

"There, I think that's in order, isn't it?" she smiled brightly.

"You've taken a great interest in the mechanics of the business," he said.

She knew he had something to hide. She knew it. But she must be careful. She continued in her same cheery tone.

"Oh well, one way or another I'll have to be much more involved from now on," she said.

He repeated the phrase with an air of wonder. "One way or another?"

She shouldn't have said that. It implied that there might be doubt over his partnership. She had told herself so often to be careful.

Best now to play the role of someone who was not the full shilling.

"Oh, you know what I mean, Sean."

"Do I?"

"Of course you do."

She almost ran from the shop. In and out of Birdie's and up to the square. She had better not go through the convent, even though it was quicker. The nuns would see her and ask her what she was up to.

Eve wanted this done on the quiet.

They had been over a lot of ground, Mother Francis and Heather Westward. The school in Dublin and the games and the other girls having lots of family coming to see them and houses to go to at weekends. And how much Heather loved Westlands and how horrible Grandfather had been to Eve, and the fear that Eve might not come again.

And how nice it would be if there was a school that she could cycle to everyday.

"There is," Mother Francis said.

There were some areas that had to be argued through. Mother Francis said that there wouldn't be any effort made to convert Heather to Catholicism because the main problem these days was keeping those that were already in the flock up to the mark.

And there would be no idols of the Virgin Mary to bow down to and worship. There would however be statues of the same Virgin Mary around the school to remind anyone who wished to be so reminded of the Mother of God.

And there would be no need for Heather to attend religious doctrine classes, and she need have no fear that history would be taught with an emphasis on the Pope being always right and everyone else being wrong.

"What was it all about, the split?" Heather asked. "The Reformation do you mean?"

"Yes. Was it about your side worshipping idols?"

I think it was more about the Real Presence at Mass. You know, whether Communion is truly the Body and Blood of Jesus, or just a symbol."

"Is that all it was about?" Heather asked, amazed. "It started that way. But it developed, you know the way things do."

"I don't think there should be all that much fuss then." Heather seemed greatly relieved that the doctrinal differences of three hundred years appeared to be so slight. They were just shaking hands on it when there was a knock on the door.

"You said you didn't tell anyone." Heather leapt up in dismay.

"Nor did I." Mother Francis went to the door. Benny stood there with her speech ready. Her jaw dropped when she saw the nun and the angry little figure inside.

"Eve rang. She wondered whether Heather might have been here. She asked me to come and. . . and well. .

"Did you tell anyone?" Heather snapped out the question. "No, Eve particularly said not to." The face relaxed.

Mother Francis said she had to be going now before the Community assumed that she too was a missing person and started broadcasting appeals for her on the wireless.

"Are they doing that for me?"

"Not yet. But a lot of people are very worried and afraid that something bad might have happened to you."

"I'd better tell them . . . I suppose."

"I could if you like."

"What would you say?"

"I could say that you'll be back later this afternoon, that you'll be calling in to the convent to borrow a bicycle."

She was gone.

Benny looked at Heather. She pushed the box of sweets over to her.

"Come on, let's finish it. We'll tear through it, both layers."

"What about the man who fancies Welsh women, the one you're getting thin for?"

"I think it's too late."

Happily they ate the chocolates. Heather asked about the school and who were the hard teachers and who were the easy ones.

Benny asked about her grandfather and whether he knew all the awful things he had said.

"Did she tell everyone?" Heather looked ashamed. "Only me. I'm her great friend."

"I don't have any great friends."

"Yes, you do. You have Eve."

"Not any more."

"Of course you do. You don't understand Eve if you'd think a thing like that mattered. She didn't want to like you in the first place because she had all the bad memories about that old business years ago.

But she did, and she always will."

Heather looked doubtful.

"Yes, and you can have me, too, if you want me, and Eve's Aidan as a sort of circle of friends. I know we're way too old for you, but until you make your own."

"And what about the man who goes off with thin Welsh people? Is he in the circle?"

"On the edges," Benny said.

In a way that was more true than she meant it to be. She had met Jack twice during the week, and he had been rushing. There was a lot of training, and hardly any time to speak alone.

He had been very contrite about some still unspecified incident during the friendly match played in Wales. Some girls had come to the club, and it had all been a bit of fun, a laugh, nothing to it. Tales had been greatly exaggerated. In vain Benny tried to tell him that she had heard no tales so nothing could be made better or worse because there had been no stories to exaggerate.

Jack had said that everyone was entitled to a bit of fun, and he never minded her jiving away in Mario's when he wasn't around. It had been highly unsatisfactory.

There was an uneven number of sweets, so they halved the last one, a coffee cream.

They tidied up Eve's house and damped the embers of the fire.

Together they left and replaced the key in the wall.

Mossy nodded to them gravely as he passed by. "Who was that?"

Heather whispered. "Mossy Rooney."

"He's broken Bee Moore's heart," Heather said disapprovingly.

"Not permanently. She's going to be Patsy's bridesmaid when the time comes."

"I suppose people get over these things," Heather said. Mother Francis handed Heather Eve's bicycle. "Off you go. Your brother will be waiting for you. I said he should let you go home on your own pedals."

The nun produced Heather's small bag of possessions, her nature book, her pyjamas, the photographs of the horse and dog and the small sponge bag. She had wrapped them neatly in brown paper and twine and clipped them on to the back of the bicycle.

Benny and Mother Francis watched her cycle off. "You guessed! Eve always said you had second sight."

"If I have then I'd say you have some big worry on your mind." Benny was silent. "I'm not prying," "No, of course not." Benny's murmur was automatic politeness.

"It's just being what people laughingly call out of the real world..

. I hear a great deal about what goes on amongst those who are in it."

Benny's glance was enquiring.

"And Peggy Pine and I were school friends years ago, like you and Eve.."

Benny waited. Mother Francis said that if it was of any use to Benny she should know that Sean Walsh had enough money, from whatever source, to think himself able to buy one of the small cottages up in the quarry road. Cash deposit.

Benny's mother said that Jack Foley had rung. No, he hadn't left a message. Benny thought harsh things about Heather Westward for having taken her out of the house when the call came. And she wished that she had not run so readily to do Eve's bidding.

But then Eve would have done the same for her. And if he loved her and wanted to talk to her, he would ring again.

If he loved her.

Nan's mother came to say that there was a Simon Westward on the phone.

Nan's tone was cold.

"Did I give you my phone number?" she asked. "No, but that's irrelevant. Heather's home."

"Oh, I am glad. Where was she?" Nan was still wondering how he knew where to telephone. She had been adamant about not telling anyone how to contact her.

"She was in Eve's cottage, as it happens."

It had been a distinct possibility that Nan and Simon might have been there also. The thought silenced them both for a moment.

"Is she all right?"

"She's fine, but I can't leave. I have to sort her out." Nan had been ironing her dress for the last hour. It had complicated pleats in the linen. Her hair was freshly washed and she had painted her toenails a pearly pink.

"Yes, of course you must stay," she said. "Oh good. I thought you'd be annoyed."

"The main thing is that she's safe."

There was no hint of the rage that Nan was feeling. His tone was so casual.

Simon said that apparently Heather had been very unhappy at the school in Dublin. Nan sighed. Eve had been saying this for months. Heather had probably been saying it for years, but Simon had not listened.

There were just a few schools that were suitable for his sister and she would jolly well have to learn to like the one she was in. That had been his attitude.

"So maybe tomorrow?" He was confident and sure. "Sorry?"

"Tomorrow, Sunday night. Things will have sorted themselves out here.."

"And?"

"And I was hoping you might come down. . . for the night?"

"Well, I'd love to." Nan smiled. At last he had invited her. It had taken some time, but he was inviting her to Westlands. She would be given a guest room. She was going there as Mr. Simon's young lady.

"That's marvellous." He sounded relieved. "You get the last bus.

I'll go to the cottage and set things up for us."

"The cottage?" she said.

"Well, we know Eve's in England." There was a silence. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"Suppose Heather decides to call again?"

"No, by heavens, she'll get a strict talking to about respecting other people's property."

He saw no irony in this at all. "I think not," she said. "Nan?"

She had hung up on him.

Joseph Hegarty had made a few, but not many, friends during his years in England. They had gathered to speak well of him after his funeral.

In the back room of a bar they sat, an ill-assorted group. A landlady who had been fond of him; whenever he didn't have the rent, he always did so many repairs around the house, it was twenty times better than having a lodger, she confided. Eve could see the pain in Kit's face.

That Joseph Hegarty should be without the rent was bad enough, but that he should do plumbing and carpentry for a strange woman in England rather than in his own house in Dunlaoghaire was even worse.

If the barmaid was amongst the group she did not declare herself.

The whole thing had such an unreal atmosphere about it, Eve felt that they were taking part in some play. Any moment the curtain would fall and they would all start talking normally again.

The only clue to why Joseph Hegarty might have stayed so long in this twilight world where he touched so little on people around him came from Fergus, a Mayo man, who said he was a friend.

Fergus had left a long time ago. There had been no row, no one thing that drove him out of his smallholding in the West of Ireland. He just felt one day that he wanted to be free and he had taken a train to Dublin, and then the boat.

His wife was now dead, his family grown. None of them wanted anything to do with him, and in many ways it was for the best. If he had gone back, he would have had to explain.

"At least Joe saw his son last summer. That was the great thing," he said.

Kit looked up, startled.

"No, he didn't. Francis never saw him since he was a child."

"But didn't he write to him and all?"

"No." Kit's voice was clipped.

Eve went to stand beside Fergus the Mayo man at the bar later.

"So he did keep in touch with his son then?"

"Yes, I think I was out of order. The wife is very bitter. I shouldn't have said. . . I didn't know."

"In time she'll be glad. In time I'll tell her properly. And maybe she'll want to talk to you." She took out a diary and a pen. "Where would you be. . . if we wanted to get in touch?"

"Ah, now, that's hard to say." The look in the eyes of Fergus became wary. He wasn't a man who liked to plan too far ahead.

There was a discussion with the man from the insurance, and some documents to sign. Eve and Kit went to Euston and took the train to Holyhead.

For a long time Kit Hegarty looked out of the window at the land where her husband had lived for so long.

"What are you thinking about?" Eve asked.