Evening Class

Bill was hoping it would be a warm summer. Lizzie might just about tolerate staying in Ireland if the sun shone. But if it were overcast and all her friends were talking about this Greek island, that Greek island and how cheap it was to live in Turkey for a month, then she would become very restless indeed. Bill could not get a loan from the bank he worked in. It was a diamond hard rule. But of course it was always possible elsewhere. Possible and highly undesirable. He wondered if he were a mean man. He thought not, but then who really knew what they were like themselves?

'I suppose we are only what other people think we are,' he said to Grania at coffee.

'I don't think so, that would mean we might be acting the whole time,' she said.

'Do I look like an owl?' he asked.

'Of course not,' Grania sighed. She had been through this before.

'It's not even as if I wore glasses,' Bill complained. 'I suppose I have a round face and sort of straight hair.'

'Owls don't have hair at all, they have feathers,' Grania said.

This only served to confuse Bill further. 'Then what makes them think I'm like one?' he said.

There was a lecture that evening at the bank on opportunities. Grania and Bill sat together. They heard of courses and schemes, and how the bank wanted the staff to specialise in different areas, and how the world was open to bright young men and women with a command of languages and different skills and training. The salary working abroad would of course be greater since it would include an overseas allowance. The opportunities would present themselves in a year and interested staff were advised to prepare themselves well in advance since the competition would be keen.

'Are you going to apply for any course?' Bill asked.

Grania looked troubled. 'There are ways I want to, because it might get me out of here, get me away from chances of seeing Tony O'Brien. But then I don't want to be thinking about him in some other part of the world. What's the point of that? I might as well be miserable here where I know what he's up to than in some far off place where I don't.'

'And he wants you back?' Bill had heard the story many times.

'Yes, he sends me a postcard every week to the bank. Look, here's this week's one.' Grania took out a picture of a coffee plantation. On the back were three words: 'Still waiting, Tony.'

'He doesn't say very much,' Bill complained.

'No, but it's a kind of series,' Grania explained. 'There was one that said: "Still brewing", and another that said: "Still hoping". It's a message that he's leaving it all up to me.'

'Is it a code?' Bill was bewildered.

'It's a reference to the fact that I said I wouldn't go back to him unless he bought a proper coffee percolator.'

'And he did?'

'Yes, of course he did, Bill. But that wasn't the point.'

'Women are very complicated,' Bill sighed.

'No they're not. They're perfectly ordinary and straightforward. Not necessarily little Miss Retail Therapy that you've got yourself involved with, but most of us are.'

Grania thought that Lizzie was hopeless. Bill thought that Grania should go back to this old man and have coffee and bed and whatever else he was sending messages about, because she sure as hell wasn't enjoying life without him.

The lecture had started Bill thinking. Suppose he were to get a posting abroad. Suppose he actually did succeed in being chosen as one of the experimental task force going to a European capital as part of the expansion process. Imagine the difference it would make. He would be earning real money for the first time in his life.

He would have freedom. He need not spend the evenings at home playing with Olive and telling his parents choice bits of the day which would show him in a successful light.

Lizzie might come and live with him in Paris or Rome or Madrid, they could have a little flat, and sleep together every night rather than his just going to her place and then coming home again afterwards… a habit that Lizzie found screamingly funny and quite suitable since she didn't get up until just before noon and it was nice not to be wakened by someone leaving to go to something as extraordinary as the bank.

He began to look at brochures about intensive language courses. They were very expensive. The language laboratory ones were out of the question. He didn't have time or energy for them either. A day in the bank took it out of him, he felt tired in the evening and not able to concentrate. And since the whole point was to make enough money to build a life for Lizzie, he must not risk losing her by absenting himself from her and her crowd of friends.

Not for the first time he wished that he loved a different kind of person. But it was like measles, wasn't it. Once you got love it was there. You had to wait to get cured of it or it worked itself out someday. As usual he consulted his friend Grania and for once she had something specific to offer, rather than what he felt was a vague threat that he was on a helter-skelter to hell through loving Lizzie.

'My father is starting an evening class in Italian up in his school,' she said. 'It begins in September and they're looking far and wide for pupils.'

'Would it be any good?'

'I don't know. I'm meant to be drumming up a bit of business for it.' Grania was always so honest. It was one of the many things he liked about her. She wouldn't pretend. 'At least it's cheap,' she said. 'They've put as much money as they can into it and unless he gets thirty pupils the class will fall on its face. I couldn't bear that for my father.'

'Are you signing up then?'

'No, he said that would be humiliating for him. If his whole family had to join it would look pathetic.'

'I suppose it would. But would it be any help at all in banking? Do you think it would have the terms and the technical kind of phrases?'

'I doubt that, but they'd have hallo and goodbye and how's your father. And I suppose if you were out in Italy you'd have to be able to say all that to people like we do here,'

'Yes.' Bill was doubtful.

'Jesus, Bill, what technical phrases do you and I use here every day, except debit and credit? I bet she'd teach you those.'

'Who?'

'The one he's hired. A real Italian, he calls her Signora. He says she's great altogether.'

'And when does the class start?'

'September fifth, if they have the numbers.'

'And do you have to pay the whole year in advance?'

'Only the term. I'll get you a leaflet. If you were going to do it then you might as well do it there, Bill. You'd be keeping my poor old father sane.'

'And will I see Tony, the one who writes all these long passionate letters?' Bill asked.

'God, don't mention Tony, you're only told this in great secrecy.' Grania sounded worried.

He patted her hand. 'I'm only having a bit of fun with you, of course I know it's a secret. But I'll have a look at him if I see him, and tell you what I think.'

'I hope you'll like him.' Grania looked suddenly very young and vulnerable.

'I'm sure he's so fabulous that I'll be sending you postcards about him myself,' said Bill with his smile of encouragement that Grania was relying on so much in a world that knew nothing of Tony O'Brien.

Bill told his parents that night that he was going to learn Italian.

Olive was very excited. 'Bill's going to Italy. Bill's going to Italy to run a bank,' she told the next-door neighbours.

They were used to Olive. 'That's great,' they said indulgently. 'Will you miss him?'

'When he goes there he'll bring us all over to Italy to stay with him,' Olive said confidently.

From his bedroom Bill heard and his heart felt heavy. His mother had thought learning Italian was a great idea. It was a beautiful language. She loved to hear the Pope speak it, and she loved the song O Sole Mio. His father had said that it was great to see a boy bettering himself all the time, and he had always known that those extra grinds for the Leaving Certificate had been an investment. His mother asked casually whether Lizzie would go to the Italian classes.

Bill had never thought of Lizzie as being disciplined or organised enough to spend two sessions of two hours each learning something. Surely she would prefer to be out with her friends laughing and drinking very expensive multi-coloured cocktails. 'She hasn't decided yet,' he said firmly. He knew how much they disapproved of Lizzie. Her one visit had not been a success. Her skirt too short, her neckline too low, her laughter too wide and non-specific and her grasp of their life so minimal.

But he had been resolute. Lizzie was the girl he loved. She was the woman he would marry in two years' time when he was twenty-five. He would hear no disparaging word about Lizzie in his home and they respected him for this. Sometimes Bill wondered about his wedding day. His parents would be so excited. His mother would talk for ages about the hat she was going to buy and perhaps buy several before settling on the right one. There would be a lot of discussion too about an outfit for Olive, something which would be discreet and yet smart. His father would discuss the timing of the wedding, hoping that it was convenient for the supermarket. He had worked in this store since he was a boy, watching it change character all the time, never realising his own worth and always fearing that change of manager might mean his walking papers. Sometimes Bill wanted to shake him and tell him that he was worth more than the rest of the employees combined, and that everyone would realise this. But his father, in his fifties without any of the qualifications and skills of young men, would never have believed him. He would remain fearful of the supermarket and grateful to it for the rest of his days.

Lizzie's family on her side of the church was always fairly vague in Bill's dream of a wedding day. She talked of her mother who lived in West Cork because she preferred it there, and her father who lived in Galway because that's where his pals were. She had a sister in the States and a brother who was working in a ski resort and hadn't come home for ages. Bill couldn't quite imagine them all gathering together.

He told Lizzie about the class. 'Would you like to learn too?' he asked hopefully.

'Whatever for?' Lizzie's infectious laughter had him laughing too although he didn't know why.

'Well, so that you could speak a bit of it if we went there, you know.'

'But don't they speak English?'

'Some of them, but wouldn't it be great to speak to them in their own language?'

'And we'd learn to do that up in a ropey old school like Mountainview?'

'It's meant to be quite a good school, they say.' He felt stung with loyalty for Grania and her father.

'It may be, but look at the place it's in. You'd need a flak jacket to get through those housing estates.'

'It's a deprived area certainly,' Bill said. 'But they're just poor, that's all.'

'Poor,' cried Lizzie. 'We're all poor, for heaven's sake, but we don't go on like they do up there.'

Bill wondered, as he so often did, about Lizzie's values. How could she compare herself with the families who lived on welfare and social security? The many households where there had never been a job? Still, it was part of her innocence. You didn't love people to change them. He had known that for a long time.

'Well I'm going to do it anyway,' he said. 'There's a bus stop right outside the school and the lessons are on Tuesdays and Thursdays.'

Lizzie turned over the little leaflet. 'I would do it to support you Bill, but honestly I just don't have the money.' Her eyes were enormous. It would be wonderful to have her sitting beside him mouthing the words, learning the language.

'I'll pay for your course,' Bill Burke said. Now he would definitely have to go to another bank and get a loan.

They were nice in the other bank and sympathetic. They had to do the same themselves, they all had to borrow elsewhere. There was no problem about setting it up.

'You can get more than that,' the helpful young bank official said, just as Bill would have said himself.

'I know, but the bit about paying it back… I seem to have so many calls each month.'

'Tell me about it,' said the boy. 'And the price of clothes is disgraceful. Anything you'd want to be seen in costs an arm and a leg-'

Bill thought of the jacket, and he thought of his parents and Olive. He'd love to give them some little end of summer treat. He got a loan exactly twice what he had gone into the bank intending to borrow.

Grania told Bill that her father was absolutely delighted about her recruiting two new members for the class. There were twenty-two already. Things were looking good and still a week to go. They had decided that even if they didn't make the full thirty they would have the first term's lessons anyway so as not to disappoint those who had enrolled, and to avoid embarrassing themselves at the very outset.

'Once it gets going there might be word of mouth,' Bill said.

'They say there's usually a great fall-off after lesson three,' Grania said. 'But let's not be downhearted. I'm going to work on my friend Fiona tonight.'

'Fiona who works in the hospital?' Bill had a feeling that Grania was match-making for him here. She always mentioned Fiona in approving terms, just after something Lizzie had done turned out to have been particularly silly or difficult.

'Yeah, you know about Fiona, I'm always talking about her Great friend of mine and Brigid's. We can always say we're staying with her when we're not, if you know what I mean.'

'I know what you mean, but do your parents?' Bill asked.

'They don't think about it, that's what parents do. They put these things to the back of their minds.'

'Is Fiona asked to cover for you often?'

'Not for me since… well since that night with Tony ages ago. You see, it was the very next day I discovered about him being such a rat and taking my father's job. Did I tell you?'

She had, many times, but Bill was very kind. 'I think you said that the timing was bad.'

'It couldn't have been worse,' Grania fumed. Tf I had known earlier I wouldn't have given him the time of day, and if it were later then I might have been so committed to him that there was no turning back.' She fumed at the unfairness of it all.

'Suppose you did decide to go back to him, would that finish your father off entirely?'

Grania looked at him sharply. Bill must be psychic to know that she had tossed and turned all last night thinking that she might approach Tony O'Brien again. He had left the ball so firmly in her court and he had sent encouraging messages in the form of postcards. In a way it was discourteous not to respond to him in some manner. But she had thought of the damage it would do to her father. He had been so sure that the post of Principal was his; he must have felt it more keenly than he had shown. 'You know I was thinking about that,' Grania said slowly. 'And I worked out that I might wait a bit, you know, until things are better in my dad's life. Then he might be able to face up to something like that.'

'Does he talk about things with your mother, do you think?'

Grania shook her head. 'They hardly talk at all. My mother's only interested in the restaurant and going to see her sisters. Dad spends most of his time doing up a sort of study for himself. He's very lonely these days, I couldn't bear to bring anything else on him. But maybe if these evening classes are a huge success and he gets a lot of praise for that… then I could face him with the other thing. Were I to go ahead with it, of course.'

Bill looked admiringly at Grania. Like himself she was more confident than her parents, and also like him she didn't want to upset them. 'We have so much in common,' he said suddenly. 'Isn't it a pity that we don't fancy each other.'

'I know, Bill.' Crania's sigh was heartfelt. 'And you're a very good looking guy, specially in that new jacket. And you've got lovely shiny brown hair and you're young, you won't be dead when I'm forty. Isn't it awful that we couldn't fancy each other but I don't, not even a bit.'

'I know,' Bill said. 'Neither do I, isn't it a crying shame?'

As a treat he decided to take the family to lunch, out to the seaside. They took the train called the DART.

'We're darting out to the seaside,' Olive told several people on the train and they smiled at her. Everyone smiled at Olive, she was so eager. They explained to her that DART meant Dublin Area Rapid Transit but she didn't take it in.

They walked down to look at the harbour and the fishing boasts. There were still summer visitors around and tourists snapping the scene. They walked through the windy main street of the little town and looked at the shops. Bill's mother said it must be wonderful to live in a place like this.

'When we were young anyone could have afforded a place out here,' Bill's father said. 'But it seemed very far away in those days and the better jobs were nearer the city so we didn't come.'

'Maybe Bill would live somewhere like this one day when he got promotion,' his mother suggested, almost afraid to hope.

Bill tried to see himself living in one of the new flats or the old houses here with Lizzie. What would she do all day as he commuted into Dublin City on the DART? Would she have friends out here as she had everywhere? Would they have children? She had said one boy and one girl, and then curtains. But that was a long time ago. Whenever he brought the subject up nowadays she was much more vague. 'Suppose you got pregnant now,' Bill had suggested one night. 'Then we'd have to advance our plans a bit.'

'Absolutely wrong, Bill sweetheart,' she had said. 'We would have to cancel all our plans.'

And he saw for the first time the hint of hardness behind her smile. But of course he dismissed this notion. Bill knew that Lizzie wasn't hard. Like any woman she feared the dangers and accidents of her own body. It wasn't fair really the way it was organised. Women could never be as relaxed about love-making, knowing it might result in something unexpected like pregnancy.

Olive was not a good walker and his mother wanted to visit the church anyway so Bill and his father walked up to the Vico Road, an elegant curved road that swept the bay which had often been compared to the Bay of Naples. A lot of the roads here had Italian names like Vico and Sorrento, and there were houses called La Scala, Milano, Ancona. People who had travelled had brought back memories of similar seaside views. Also it was full of hills like they said the Italian coastline was.

Bill and his father looked at the gardens and homes and admired them without envy. If Lizzie had been here she would have said it was unfair for some people to have houses like that, with two big cars parked outside. But Bill who worked as a bank clerk, and his father who sliced bacon and wearing plastic gloves inserted it into little transparent bags and weighed them out at so many grams each, were able to see these properties without wanting them for themselves.

The sun shone and they looked far down. The sea was

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shimmering. A few yachts were out. They sat on the wall and Bill's father puffed a pipe.

'Did it all turn out as you wanted when you were young?' Bill said.

'Not all of course, but most of it.' His father puffed away.

'Like what bits?'

'Well, having such a good job and keeping it in spite of everything. That was something I'd never have bet money on if I was a gambling man. And then there was your mother accepting me, and being such a marvellous wife, and making us such a great home. And then there was Olive and you, and that was a great reward to us.'

Bill felt a strange choking sensation. His father lived in an unreal world. All these things were blessings? Things to be delighted with? An educationally subnormal daughter. A wife who could barely fry an egg and this was called making a great home? A job that they would never get anyone of his competence to do, and to do so well…

'Dad, why am I part of the good bits?' Bill asked.

'Come on now, you're just asking for praise.' His father smiled at him as if the lad had been teasing him.

'No, I mean it, why are you pleased with me?'

'Who could ask for a better son? Look at the way you take us all out for a day's trip today with your hard earned money, and you contribute to the house plenty, and you're so good to your sister.'

'Everyone loves Olive.'

'Yes they do, but you are specially good to her. Your mother and I have no fears and worries. We know that in the fullness of time when we've gone to Glasnevin cemetery, you'll look after Olive.'

Bill heard himself speak in a tone he didn't recognise as his own. 'Ah, don't you know Olive will always be looked after. You would never worry about a thing like that, would you?'

'I know there are plenty of homes and institutions, but we know that you'd never send Olive off to a place like that.'

And as they sat in the sun with the sea shimmering below a little breeze came up and blew around them and it went straight into Bill Burke's heart. He realised what he had never faced in his twenty-three years of living. He knew now that Olive was his problem, not just theirs. That his big simple sister was his for life. When he and Lizzie married in two years' time, when he went abroad with

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Lizzie to live, when theif-two children were born, Olwe would be part of their family

His father and mother might live for another twenty years. Olive would only be forty-five then, with the mind of a child. He felt very cold indeed.

'Come on, Dad, Mam will have said three rosaries in the church and they'll be in the pub waiting for us.'

And indeed there they were, Olive's big face shining to see her brother come in.

'That's Bill, the bank manager,' she said.

And everyone in the pub smiled. As they would always smile at Olive when they didn't have to take her on for life.

Bill went up to Mountainview to register for the Italian lesson. He realised with a heavy heart how lucky he had been that his father had saved money to send him to a smaller and better school. In Bill's school there were proper games pitches and the parents had paid a so-called Voluntary Subscription to maintain some of the frills and extras that would never be known in Mountainview.

He looked at the shabby paint and the ugly bicycle shed. Few boys who went to school here would find it easy to get into the bank as he had done. Or was he just being snobbish? Perhaps things had changed. Perhaps he was guiltier than others because he was trying to keep a system going in his mind. It was something he could talk to Grania about. Her father taught here after all.

It was not something he could talk to Lizzie about.

Lizzie had become excited about the lessons. 'I'm telling everyone that we'll be speaking Italian shortly,' she laughed happily. For an instant she reminded him of Olive. The same innocent belief that once you mentioned something that was it, it had happened, and you were somehow in command. But who could compare the beautiful feckless wild-eyed Lizzie to poor Olive, the lumpen slow smiling sister who would be his for evermore?

Part of Bill hoped that Lizzie would change her mind about the lessons. That would be a few pounds saved anyway. He was beginning to feel panicky about the amount of his salary that was promised in debts before he took home anything at all at the end of the month. His new jacket gave him pleasure, but not that much pleasure. Possibly it had been a foolish extravagance that he would live to regret.

'What a beautiful jacket, is it pure wool?' asked the woman at the desk. She was old of course, over fifty. But she had a nice smile and she felt the sleeve just above his wrist.

'Yes it is,' Bill said. 'Light wool, but apparently you pay for the cut. That's what I was told.'

'Of course you do. It's Italian isn't it?' Her voice was Irish but slightly accented, as if she had lived abroad. She seemed genuinely interested. Was she the teacher? Bill had been told that they were going to have a real Italian. Was this the first cut-back?

'Are you the teacher?' he asked. He hadn't parted with his money yet. Possibly this was not the week to hand over fees from Lizzie and himself. Suppose it was a cheapskate kind of thing. Wouldn't that have been typical? Just to throw his money away foolishly without checking.

'Yes indeed. I am Signora. I lived twenty-six years in Italy, in Sicilia. I still think in Italian and dream in it. I hope that I will be able to share all this with you and the others who come to the class.'

Now it was going to be harder still to back out. Bill wished he wasn't such a Mister Nice Guy. There were people in the bank who would know exactly how to get out of this situation. The sharks, he and Grania called them.

Thinking of Grania reminded him of her father. 'Do you have enough numbers to make the class workable?' he asked. Perhaps this could be his out. Maybe the class would never take place.

But Signora's face was alive with enthusiasm. 'Si si, we have been so fortunate. People from far and near have heard about it. How did you hear, Signer Burke?'

Tn the bank,' he said.

'The bank.' Signora's pleasure was so great he didn't want to puncture it. 'Imagine, they know of us in the bank.'

'Will I be able to learn bank terms, do you think?' He leaned across the table his eyes seeking reassurance in her face.

'What kind exactly?'

'You know, the words we use in banking…' But Bill was vague, he didn't know the terms he might use in banking in Italy one day.

'You can write them down for me and I could look them up for you,' Signora explained. 'But to be very truthful the course will not concentrate on banking terms. It will be more about the language and the feel of Italy. I want to make you love it and know it a little so that when you go there it will be like going home to a friend.'

'That will be great,' Bill said, and handed over the money for Lizzie and himself.

'Martedi,' Signora said.

'I beg your pardon?'

'Martedi., Tuesday. Now you know one word already.'

'Martedi,' Bill said and walked to the bus stop. He felt that even more than his fine wool, well cut jacket, this was good money being thrown away.

'What will I wear for the evening class?' Lizzie asked him on Monday night. Only Lizzie would want to know that. Other people might want to know whether to bring notebooks or dictionaries or name badges.

'Something that won't distract everyone from their studies,' Bill suggested.

It was a pretty vain hope and a foolish suggestion. Lizzie's wardrobe did not include clothes that would not distract. Even now at the end of summer she would have a short skirt that would show her long tanned legs, she would have a tight top and a jacket loosely around her shoulders.

'But what exactly?'

He knew it wasn't a question of style. It was a matter of choosing a colour. 'I love the red,' he said.

Her eyes lit up. It was very easy to please Lizzie. 'I'll try it on now,' she said, and got her red skirt and red and white shirt. She looked marvellous, fresh and young, like an advertisement for shampoo with her golden hair.

'I could wear a red ribbon in my hair?' She seemed doubtful.

Bill felt a huge protective surge well up in him. Lizzie really did need him. Owlish and obsessed with paying debts as he was, she would be lost without him

'Tonight's the night,' he told Grania at work next day.

'You'll tell me honestly, won't you? You'll tell me what it's like.' Grania seemed very serious. She was wondering how it would go for her father, whether he might look good or just foolish.

Bill assured her he would tell the truth, but somehow he knew it was unlikely. Even if it was a disaster Bill would not feel able to blow the whistle. He would probably say that it was fine.

Bill did not recognise the dusty school annexe when they arrived. The place had been transformed. Huge posters festooned the walls, pictures of the Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum, images of the Mona Lisa and of Michelangelo's David, and mixed amongst them mighty vineyards and plates of Italian food. There was a table covered in red, white and green crepe paper which held paper plates covered with cling film.

They seemed to have real food in them, little pieces of salami and cheese. There were paper flowers too, each one with a big label giving its name. Carnations were garofani… Somebody had taken immense pains.

Bill hoped that it would all work out well. For the strange woman with the odd-coloured red and grey hair called simply Signora, for the kind, hovering man in the background who must be Grama's father, for all the people who sat awkwardly, and nervously around waiting for it to start. All of them with some hope or dream like his own. None of them, by the look of it, wanting to make a career in international banking.

Signora clapped her hands and introduced herself. 'Mi chiamo Signora. Come si chiamat' she asked the man who must be Crania's father.

'Mi chiamo Aidan,' he said. And so on around the classroom.

Lizzie loved it. 'Mi chiamo Lizzie,' she cried and everyone smiled admiringly as if she had achieved a great feat.

'Let's try to make our names more Italian. You could say: 'Mi chiamo Elizahetta.'

Lizzie loved that even more and could hardly be stopped from repeating it.

Then they all wrote Mi chiamo and their names on huge pieces of paper and pinned them on. And they learned how to ask each other how they were, what time it was, what day it was, what date, where they lived.

'Chi e?' pointing at Bill.

'Gttglielmo,' the class all shouted back.

Soon they knew everyone's names in Italian and the class had visibly relaxed. Signora handed out pieces of paper. There were all the phrases they had been using, familiar to the sound, but they would never have been able to pronounce them had they seen them written first.

They went through them over and over, what day, what time, what is your name, and they answered them. People's faces were taking on a look of near smugness.

'Bene,' said Signora. 'Now we have ten minutes more.' There was a gasp. The two hours could not truly be over. 'You have all worked so hard there is a little treat, but we have to pronounce the salami before we eat it, and the formaggio.'

Like children, the thirty adults fell on the sausage and cheese and pronounced the words.

'Giovedi,' Signora was saying.

'Giovedi,' they were all chorusing. Bill began to put the chairs away neatly by the wall in a stack. Signora seemed to look at Crania's father as if to know whether this was what was needed. He nodded quietly. Then the others helped. In minutes the classroom was tidy. The porter would have little to do in terms of clearing up.

Bill and Lizzie went out to the bus stop.

'Ti amo,' she said to him suddenly.

'What's that?' he asked.

'Oh go on, you're the one with the brains,' Lizzie said. She was smiling fit to break his heart. 'Go on guess. Ti… what's that?'

'It's "you", I think,' said Bill.

'And what's "amo"?'

'Is it love?'

'It means I love you't'

'How do you know?' He was amazed.

'I asked her just before we left. She said they were the most beautiful two words in the world.'

'They are, they are,' said Bill.

Perhaps the Italian classes might work after all.

'It was really and truly great,' Bill told Grania next day.

'My father came home high as a kite, thank God,' Grania said.

'And she's really good, you know, she makes you think you can speak the language in five minutes.'

'So you're off to run the Italian section then,' Grania teased.

'Even Lizzie liked it, she was really interested. She kept saying the sentences over and over on the bus, everyone was joining in.'

'I'm sure they were.' Grania was clipped.

'No, stop being like that. She took much more notice of it than I thought she would. She calls herself Elizabetta now.' Bill was proud.

'I bet she does,' Crania said grimly. I'd also like to bet she'll have dropped out by lesson three.'

As it happened Grania was right, but not because Lizzie wasn't interested. It was because her mother came to Dublin.

'She hasn't been for ages and I have to meet her off the train,' she said to Bill apologetically.

'But can't you tell her you'll be back at half past nine?' Bill begged. He felt sure that if Signorina Elizabetta were to miss out on one lesson that would be it. She would claim that she was far too far behind to catch up.

'No honestly Bill, she doesn't come to Dublin very often. I have to be there.' He was silent. 'You care about your mother enough to live with her for heaven's sake, why shouldn't I meet mine at Heuston Station? It's not much to ask.'

Bill was very reasonable. 'No,' he agreed. 'It's not.'

'And Bill, could you lend me the money for a taxi? My mother hates travelling on a bus.'

'Won't she pay for the taxi?'

'Oh don't be so mean, you're mean and tight-fisted and penny-pinching.'

'That's not fair, Lizzie. It's not true and it's not fair.'

'Okay,' she shrugged.

'What do you mean, "Okay"?'

'Just that. Enjoy the lesson, give my love to Signora.'

'Have the money for the taxi.'

'No, not like that, not with a bad grace.'

'I'd love you and your mother to travel by taxi, I'd love it. It would make you feel happy and generous and welcoming. Please take it, Lizzie, please.'

'Well, if you're sure.'

He kissed her on the forehead. 'Will I meet your mother this time?'

'I hope so, Bill, you know we wanted you to last time but she had so many friends around. They took all her time. She knows so many people, you see.'

Bill thought to himself that Lizzie's mother might know a lot of people but none of them well enough to meet her at the railway station with a car or taxi. But he didn't say it.

'Dov'e la bella Elizabetta'?' Signora asked.

'La bella Elizabetta e andata alia stazione,' Bill heard himself say. 'La madre di Elizabetta arriva stasera.'

Signora was overwhelmed. 'Benissimo, Guglielmo. Bravo, bravo.'

'You've been cramming, you little sneak,' said an angry-faced thickset fellow with Luigi on his blue name tag. His real name was Lou.

'We did andato last week, it was on the list, and we did stasera the first day. They're all words we know. I didn't cram.'

'Oh Jesus, keep your shirt on,' said Lou, who frowned more than ever and joined with the class shouting that in this piazza there were many beautiful buildings. 'There's a lie for a start,' he muttered, looking out the window at the barrack-like school yard.

'It's getting better, they are painting it up,' Bill said.

'You're a real cheerful Charlie, aren't you?' Lou said. 'Everything's always bloody marvellous as far as you're concerned.'

Bill longed to tell him that everything was far from cheerful, he was trapped in a house where everyone depended on him, he had a girlfriend who didn't love him enough to introduce him to her mother, he had no idea how he was going to pay his term loan next month.

But of course he said none of these things. Instead he joined in the chorus chanting that in questa piazza ci sono molti belli edifici. He wondered where Lizzie and her mother had gone. He hoped beyond reason that she hadn't taken her mother to a restaurant and cashed a cheque. This time there would be real trouble in the bank.

They had little bits of bread with topping of some sort on them. Signora said they were crostini. 'What about the vino? someone asked.

'I wanted to have vino, vino rosso, vino bianco. But it's a school you see, they don't want any alcohol on the premises. Not to give a bad example to the children.'

'A bit late for that round here,' Lou said.

Bill looked at him with interest. It was impossible to know why a man like that was learning Italian. Although it was difficult to see why any of them were there, and he felt sure that a lot of them must puzzle about Lizzie, there seemed to be no reason that anyone could fathom why Lou, now transformed to Luigi, should come to something that he obviously despised, two nights a week, and glower at everyone from beginning to end. Bill decided he would have to regard it as part of the rich tapestry of life.

One of the paper flowers was broken and on the floor.

'Can I have this, Signora?' Bill asked.

'Certo, Guglielmo, is it for la bellissima Elizabettat'

'No, it's for my sister.'

'Mia sorella, mia sorella, my sister,' Signora said. 'You are a kind, good man, Guglielmo.'

'Yeah, but where does that get you these days?' Bill asked as he went out to the bus stop.

Olive was waiting for him at the door. 'Speak in Italian,' she cried. 'Ciao, sorella,' he said. 'Have a garofano. I brought it for you.' The look of pleasure on her face made him feel worse than he had been feeling already, which had been pretty bad.

Bill was taking sandwiches to work this week. There was no way he could afford even the canteen.

'Are you okay?' Grania asked him concerned. 'You look tired.'

'Oh, we international linguists have to learn to take the strain,' he said with a weak smile.

Grania looked as if she were about to ask him about Lizzie but changed her mind. Lizzie? Where was she today? With her mother's friends maybe, having cocktails in one of the big hotels. Or somewhere down in Temple Bar discovering some new place that she would tell him about, eyes shining. He wished she would ring and speak to him, ask about last night at the class. He would tell her how she had been missed and called beautiful. He would tell her about the sentence he had made up, saying she had gone to the station to meet her mother. She would tell him what she did. Why this silence?

The afternoon seemed long and tedious. After work he began to worry. A whole day never passed like this without any contact. Should he go round to her flat? But then if she were entertaining her mother, might she not regard this as intrusive? She had said she hoped they would meet. He mustn't force it.

Grania was working late too. 'Waiting for Lizzie?' she asked.

'No, her mother's in town, she's probably tied up. Just wondering what to do.'

'I was wondering what to do too. Great fun being in the bank, isn't it? When the day ends you're such a zombie you can't think what to do next.' Grania laughed at the whole notion of it.

no

I

'You're always rushing here and there, Grania.' He sounded envious.

'Well, not tonight. I haven't a notion of going home. My mother will be on her way out to the restaurant, my father disappeared into his study and Brigid like some kind of wild animal because she's put on weight again. She's kicking the scales and saying that the house is full of the smell of frying, and she talks about food for about five hours each evening. She'd make your hair go white overnight listening to her.'

'Is she really worried about it?' Bill was always so kind and interested in people's problems.

'I don't know whether she is or not. She's always looked the same to me, a bit squarish but fine. When she has her hair done and she's smiling she's as good as anyone, but there's this dreary litany of a pound here or a kilo there or a zip that broke or tights that split. Jesus, she'd drive you insane. I'm not going home to listen to that, I tell you.'

There was a pause. Bill was on the point of asking her to have a drink when he remembered his finances. This would be a good excuse to go home on his season ticket and spend not a single penny.

At that moment Grania said: 'Why don't I take you to the pictures and chips, my treat?'

'I can't do that, Grania.'

'Yes you can. I owe you for signing up for those classes, it was a great favour.' She made it sound reasonable.

They went through the film listings in the evening paper and argued good naturedly about what might be good and what might be rubbish. It would have been so easy to be with someone like this all the time, Bill thought yet again. And he felt sure that Grania was thinking the same thing. But when it wasn't there it wasn't there. She would remain loving this awkward older man and endure the problems that lay ahead when her father found out. He would stay with Lizzie who had his heart broken morning, noon and night. That's what happened to people.

When he got back home his mother had an anxious face. 'That Lizzie's been here,' she said. 'Whatever time you came in you were to go to her flat.'

'Is anything wrong?' He was alarmed. It wasn't like Lizzie to in come to the house, not after her uncertain welcome on her one official visit.

'Oh, I'd say there's plenty wrong, she's a troubled girl,' his mother said.

'But was she sick, had anything happened?'

'Troubled in herself, I mean,' his mother repeated.

He knew he would get nothing but a general mood of disapproval, so he went down the road and caught a bus in the other direction.

She was sitting there in the warm September night outside the house where she had her bedsitter. There were big stone steps leading up to the door, and Lizzie sat hugging her knees swaying backwards and forwards. To his relief she wasn't crying and didn't seem upset or in a state.

'Where were you?' she asked accusingly.

'Where were you? Bill said. 'You are the one who says I'm not to call you, not to turn up.'

'I was here.'

'Yes, well I was out.'

'Where did you go?' <

'To the pictures,' he said.

'I thought we had no money, we weren't meant to be doing anything normal like going to the pictures.'

'I didn't pay. Grania Dunne took me as a treat.'

'Oh yes?'

'Yes. What's wrong, Lizzie?'

'Everything,' she said.

'Why did you come to my house?'

'I wanted to see you, to make things right.'

'Well, you succeeded in frightening the life out of my mother and out of me. Why didn't you ring me at work?'

'I was confused.'

'Did your mother arrive?'

'Yes, she did.'

'And did you meet her?'

'Yes.' Her voice was very flat.

'And take the taxi?'

'Yes.'

'So, what's wrong?'

'She laughed at my flat.'

'Oh Lizzie. Come on. You didn't drag me all the way here, twenty-four hours later, to tell me that, did you?'

'Of course,' she laughed.

'It's her way, it's your way… people like you and your mother laugh all the time, it's what you do.'

'No, not that kind of laughing.'

'Well, what kind?'

'She just said it was too funny and asked could she go now that she'd seen it. She said I'd never let the taxi go and marooned her in this neck of the woods, had I?'

Bill was sad. Lizzie had obviously been very upset. What a thoughtless bloody woman. She hardly ever saw her daughter, couldn't she have been nice for the few hours she was in Dublin?

'I know, I know,' he said soothingly. 'But people always say the wrong thing, they're known for it. Come on, let's not worry about it, let's go upstairs. Hey, come on.'

'No, we can't.'

She was going to need a bit of persuading.

'Lizzie, I have people in the bank all day from nine o'clock in the morning saying the wrong thing, they're not evil people, they just upset others. The trick is not to let them. And then when I go home my mother tells me she's worn out pouring tinned sauce over the frozen chicken, and my father tells me of all the chances he never had as a boy and Olive tells anyone who will listen that I am the head of the bank. And sometimes it's a bit hard to take, but you just put up with it, that's what it's all about.'

'For you yes, but not for me.' Again her voice was very dead.

'So did you have a row? Is that it? It'll pass, family rows always do. Honestly Lizzie.'

'No, we didn't exactly have a row.'

'Well?'

'I had her supper ready. It was chicken livers and a miniature of sherry, and I had the rice all ready too. I showed it to her and she laughed again.'

'Yes well, as I said…'

'She wasn't going to stay, Bill, not for supper. She said she had only called in to keep me quiet. She was going to some art gallery, some opening, some exhibition. She'd be late. She tried to push past me.'

'Urn… yes…?' Bill didn't like this at all.

'

'So, I couldn't take it any more.'

'What did you do, Lizzie?' He was amazed that he could keep so calm.

'I locked the door and threw the key out the window.'

'You what'?'

'I said now you have to stay and sit and talk to your daughter. I said, now you can't get out and run away as you've run away from us all, all your life, from Daddy and from the rest of us.'

'And what did she do?'

'Oh, she got into a terrible temper and kept screaming and beating the door and saying I was cracked and like my father and you know, the usual.'

'No I don't know. What else?'

'Oh, what you'd expect.'

'And what happened then?'

'Well she wore herself out, and eventually she did have supper.'

'And was she still shouting then?'

'No, she was just worried in case the house went on fire and we'd be burned to a crisp. That's what she kept saying, burned to a crisp.'

Bill's mind was working slowly but surely. 'You did let her out eventually.'

'No, I didn't. Not at all.'

'But she's not still there?'

'Yes she is.'

'You can't be serious, Lizzie.'

She nodded several times. 'I'm afraid I am.'

'How did you get out?'

'The window. When she was in the bathroom.'

'She slept there?'

'She had to. I slept in the chair. She had the whole bed.' Lizzie sounded defensive.

'Let me get this straight. She came here yesterday, Tuesday, at seven o'clock and it's now eleven o'clock at night on Wednesday and she's still here, locked in against her will?'

'Yes.'

'But God almighty, why?'

'So that I could talk to her. She never makes time to talk to me. Never, not once.'

'And has she talked to you? I mean now that she's locked in?'

'Not really, not in a satisfactory way, she just keeps giving out and saying I'm unreasonable, unstable, whatever.'

'I don't believe this, Lizzie, I don't. She's been there not only all night but all day and all tonight?' His head was reeling.

'What else could I do? She never has a moment, always in a rush… to go somewhere else, to meet other people.'

'But you can't do this. You can't lock people in and expect them to talk.'

'I know it mightn't have been the right thing to do. Listen, I was wondering could you come and talk to her… She doesn't seem very reasonable.'

'Me, talk to her? MeY

'Well, you did say you wanted to meet her, Bill. You asked several times.'

He looked into the beautiful troubled face of the woman he loved. Of course he had wanted to meet his future mother-in-law. But not when she was locked into a bedsitter. Not when she had been kidnapped for over thirty hours and was about to call the Guards. This was going to be a meeting which called for diplomacy like Bill Burke had never known to exist.

He wondered how his heroes in fiction would have handled it and knew with a great certainty that nobody would ever have put them in a position where they might have to.

They walked up the stairs to Lizzie's flat. No noise came from inside.

'Could she have got out?' Bill whispered.

'No. There's a sort of bar under the window. She couldn't have opened it.'

'Would she have broken the glass?'

'No, you don't know my mother.'

True, Bill thought, but he was about to get to know her under very strange circumstances indeed. 'Will she be violent, rush at me or anything?'

'No, of course not.' Lizzie was scornful of his fears.

'Well, speak to her or something, tell her who it is.'

'No, she's cross with me, she'd be better with someone new.' Lizzie's eyes were huge with fear.

Bill squared his shoulders. 'Um, Mrs. Duffy, my name is Bill Burke, I work in the bank,' he said. It produced no response. 'Mrs

Duffy, are you all right? Can I have your assurance that you are calm and in good health?'

'Why should I be either calm or in good health? My certifiably insane daughter has imprisoned me in here and this is something she will regret every day, every hour, from now until the end of her life.' The voice sounded very angry, but strong.

'Well, Mrs. Duffy, if you just stand back from the door I will come in and explain this to you.'

'Are you a friend of Elizabeth's?'

'Yes, a very good friend. In fact I am very fond of her.'

'Then you must be insane too,' said the voice.

Lizzie raised her eyes. 'See what I mean,' she whispered.

'Mrs. Duffy, I think we can discuss this much better face to face. I am coming in now, so please stand well away.'

'You are not coming in. I have put a chair under the door handle in case she was going to bring back some other drug addicts or criminals like you. I am staying here until somebody conies to rescue me.'

'I have come to rescue you,' Bill said desperately.

'You can turn the key all you like, you won't get in.'

It was true, Bill found. She had indeed barricaded herself in.

'The window?' he asked Lizzie.

'It's a bit of a climb but I'll show you.'

Bill looked alarmed. 'I meant you to go in the window.'

'I can't, Bill, you've heard her. She's like a raging bull. She'd kill me.'

'Well, what will she do to me, suppose I did get in? She thinks I'm a drug addict.'

Lizzie's lip trembled. 'You said you'd help me,' she said in a small voice.

'Show me the window,' said Bill. It was a bit of a climb and when he got there he saw the pole that Lizzie had wedged under the top part of the window. He eased it out, opened the window, and pulled the curtain back. A blonde woman in her forties, with a mascara-stained face, saw him just as he got in and ran at him with a chair.

'Stay away from me, get off, you useless little thug,' she cried.

'Mummy, Mummy,' Lizzie shouted from outside the door.

'Mrs. Duffy, please, please.' Bill took up the lid of the bread bin to defend himself. 'Mrs. Duffy, I've come to let you out. Look here's the key. Please, please put the chair down.'

He did indeed seem to be offering her a key; her eyes appeared to relax slightly. She put down the chair, and watched him warily.

'Just let me open the door, and Lizzie can come in and we can all discuss this calmly,' he said, moving towards the door.

But Lizzie's mother had picked up the kitchen chair again. 'Get away from that door. Who knows what kind of a gang there is? I've told Lizzie I have no money, I have no credit cards… it's useless kidnapping me. No one will pay a ransom. You've really picked the wrong woman.' Her lip was trembling; she looked so like her daughter that Bill felt the familiar protective attitude sweeping over him.

'It's only Lizzie outside, there's no gang. It's all a misunderstanding.' His voice was calming.

'You can say that again. Locked in here with that lunatic girl since last night and then she goes off and leaves me here, all on my own, wondering what's next in the door, and you come in the window with a bread bin coming at me.'

'No, no, I just picked that up when you picked up the chair. Look, I'll put it down now.' His voice was having a great effect. She seemed ready to talk reason. She put the red kitchen chair down and sat on it, exhausted, frightened and unsure what to do next.

Bill began to breathe normally. He decided to let the moment last rather than introducing any new elements into it like opening the door. They looked at each other warily.

Then there was a cry from outside. 'Mummy? Bill? What's happening? Why aren't you talking, shouting?'

'We're resting,' Bill called. As an explanation he wondered was it adequate.

But Lizzie seemed to think so. 'Okay,' she said from outside.

'Is she on some kind of drugs?' her mother asked.

'No. Heavens no, not at all.'

'Well, what was it all about? All this locking me in, saying she wanted to talk and then not talking any sense.'

'I think she misses you,' Bill said slowly.

'She'll be missing me a lot more from now on in,' said Mrs. Duffy.

Bill looked at her, trying to take her in. She was young and slim, she looked a different generation to his own mother. She wore a

'

floaty kind of caftan dress, with some glass beads around the neckline. It was the kind of thing you saw in pictures of New Age people, but she didn't have open sandals or long flowing hair. Her curls were like Lizzie's, but with little streaks of grey. Apart from her tearstained face she could have been going to a party. Which was of course what she had been doing when she was waylaid.

'I think she was sorry that you had grown a bit apart,' Bill said. There was a snort from the figure in the caftan. 'Well, you know, you live so far away and everything,'

'Not far enough, I tell you. All I did was ask the girl to come out and meet me for a quick drink and she insists on coming to the station in a taxi, and bringing me here. I said, well only for a little while because we had to go to Chester's opening… Where Chester thinks I am now is beyond worrying about.'

'Who is Chester?'

'He's a friend, for God's sake, a friend, one of the people who lives near where I live, he's an artist. We all came up, no one will know what happened to me.'

'Won't they think of looking for you here - in your daughter's house?'

'No, of course not, why would they?'

'They know you have a daughter in Dublin?'

'Yes, well maybe. They know I have three children but I don't bleat on and on about them, they wouldn't know where Elizabeth lived or anything.'

'But your other friends, your real friends?'

'These are my real friends,' she snapped.

'Are you all right in there?' Lizzie called.

'Leave it for a bit, Lizzie,' Bill said.

'By God, you're going to pay for this, Elizabeth,' her mother called.

'Where are they staying - your friends?'

'I don't know, that's the whole bloody problem, we said we'd see how it went at the opening and maybe if Harry was there we might all go to Harry's. He lives in a big barn, we once stayed there before. Or if all else failed Chester would know some marvellous little B & Bs for half nothing.'

'And will Chester have called the Guards, do you think?'

'Why on earth should he have done that?'

'To see what had happened to you.'

'The Guards?'

'

'Well, if he was expecting you and you had disappeared.'

'He'll think I just drifted off with someone at the exhibition. He might even think I hadn't bothered to come up at all. That's what's so bloody maddening about it all.'

Bill let out a sigh of relief. Lizzie's mother was a floater and a drifter. There would not be a full-scale alert looking for her. No Garda cars would cruise by, eyes out for a blonde in a caftan. Lizzie would not spend the rest of the night in a cell in a Garda station.

'Will we let her in, do you think?' He managed to make it appear that they were together in this.

'Will she go on with all that stuff about never talking and never relating and running away?'

'No, I'll see to it that she doesn't, believe me.'

'Very well. But don't expect me to be all sunshine and light after this trick she's pulled.'

'No, you have every right to be upset.' He moved past her to the door. And there was Lizzie cowering outside in the dark corridor. 'Ah, Lizzie,' Bill said in the voice you would use if you found an unexpected but delightful guest on your doorstep. 'Come in, won't you. And perhaps you could make us all a cup of tea.'

Lizzie scuttled by him into the kitchen, avoiding the eye of her mother.

'Wait until your father hears about this carry-on,' her mother said.

'Mrs. Duffy, do you take your tea with milk and sugar?' Bill interrupted.

'Neither, thank you.'

'Just black for Mrs. Duffy,' Bill called as if he were giving a command to the staff. He moved around the tiny flat tidying things up, straightening the counterpane on the bed, picking up objects from the floor, as if establishing normality in a place which had temporarily abandoned it. Soon they were sitting, an unlikely threesome, drinking mugs of tea.

'I bought a tin of shortbread,' Lizzie said proudly, taking out a tartan-patterned box.

'They cost a fortune,' Bill said aghast.

'I wanted to have something for my mother's visit.'

'I never said I was coming to visit, that was all your idea. Some idea it was, too.'

'Still, they're in a tin,' Bill said. 'They could last for a long time.'

'Are you soft in the head?' Lizzie's mother suddenly asked Bill.

'I don't think so. Why do you ask?'

'Talking about biscuits at a time like this. I thought you were meant to be the one in charge.'

'Well, isn't it better than screaming and talking about needing and relating and all the things you said you didn't want talked about?' Bill was stung with the unfairness of it.

'No it's not, it's insane if you ask me. You're just as mad as she is. I've got myself into a lunatic asylum.'

Her eyes darted to the door, and he saw her grip bag beside it. Would she make a run for it? Would that perhaps be for the best? Or had they gone so far into this that they had better see it through to the end. Let Lizzie tell her mother what was wrong, let her mother accept or deny all this. His father had always said that they should wait and see. It seemed a poor philosophy to Bill. What were you waiting for? What would you see? But his father seemed pleased with the end product, so perhaps it had its merits.

Lizzie munched the biscuit. 'These are beautiful,' she said. 'Full of butter, you can tell.' She was so endearing, like a small child. Could her mother not see that in her too?

Bill looked from one to the other. He hoped he wasn't imagining that the mother's face seemed to be softening a little.

'It's quite hard, Lizzie, in ways, a woman alone,' she began.

'But you didn't have to be alone, Mummy, you could have had us all with you, Daddy and me and John and Kate.'

'I couldn't live in a house like that, trapped all day waiting for a man to come home with the wages. And then your father often didn't come home with the wages, he went to the betting shop with them. Like he does still over in Galway.'

'You didn't have to go.'

'I had to go because otherwise I would have killed somebody, him, you, myself. Sometimes it's safer to go and get a bit of air to breathe.'

'When did you go?' Bill asked conversationally, as if he were enquiring about the times of trains.

'Don't you know, don't you know every detail of the wicked witch who ran away abandoning everyone?'

'No I don't, actually. I didn't even know you had ever gone until this moment. I thought you and Mr. Duffy had separated amicably and that all your children had scattered. It seemed very grown up and what families should do.'

'What do you mean, what families should do?' Lizzie's mother looked at him suspiciously.

'Well, you see, I live at home with my mother and father and I have a handicapped sister, and honestly I can't ever see any way of not being there, or nearby anyway, so I thought what Lizzie's family had was very free… and I kind of envied it.' He was so transparently honest. Nobody could put on an act like that.

'You could just get up and go,' Lizzie's mother suggested.

'I suppose so, but I wouldn't feel easy about it.'

'You've only one life.' They were both ignoring Lizzie now.

'Yes, that's it. I suppose, if we had more than one then I wouldn't feel so guilty.'

Lizzie tried to get back into the conversation. 'You never write, you never stay in touch.'

'What's there to write about, Lizzie? You don't know my friends. I don't know yours, I don't know John's or Kate's. I still love you and want the best for you even though we don't see each other all the time.' She stopped, almost surprised at herself that she had said this much.

Lizzie was not convinced. 'You couldn't love us otherwise you'd come to see us. You wouldn't laugh at me and this place I live in, and laugh at the idea of staying with me, not if you loved us.'

'I think what Mrs. Duffy means…' Bill began.

'Oh, for Jesus' sake call me Bernie.' Bill was so taken aback he forgot his sentence. 'Go on, you were saying what I meant was… What do I mean?'

'I think you mean that Lizzie is very important to you, but you have sort of drifted away a bit, what with West Cork being so far from here… and that last night was a bad time to stay because your friend Chester was having an art exhibition, and you wanted to be there in time to give him moral support. Was it something like that?' He looked from one to the other with his round face creased in anxiety. Please may she have meant something like this, and not have meant that she was going for the Guards or that she was never going to see Lizzie as long as she lived.

'It was a bit like that,' Bernie agreed. 'But only a bit.'

Still, it was something, Bill thought to himself. 'And what Lizzie meant when she threw away the key was that she was afraid life was passing too quickly and she wanted a chance to get to know you and talk properly, make up for all the lost time, wasn't that it?'

'That was it,' Lizzie nodded vigorously.

'But God almighty, whatever your name is…'

'Bill,' he said helpfully.

'Yes, well, Bill, it's not the act of a sane person to lure me here and lock me in.'

'I didn't lure you here, I borrowed the money from Bill to get a taxi for you. I invited you here, I bought shortbread and bacon and chicken livers and sherry. I made my bed for you to sleep in. I wanted you to stay. That wasn't all that much, was it?'

'But I couldn't.' Bernie Duffy's voice was gentler now.

'You could have said you'd come back the next day. You just laughed. I couldn't bear that, and then you got crosser and crosser and said awful things.'

'I wasn't talking normally because I wasn't talking to a normal person. I was really shaken by you, Lizzie. You seemed to be losing your mind. Truly. You weren't making any sense. You kept saying that the last six years you had been like a lost soul…'

'That's just the way it was.'

'You were seventeen when I left. Your father wanted you to go to Galway with him, you wouldn't… You insisted you were old enough to live in Dublin, you got a job in a dry cleaner's, I remember. You had your own money. It was what you wanted. That was what you said.'

'I stayed because I thought you'd come back.'

'Back to where? Here?'

'No, back to the house. Daddy didn't sell it for a year, remember?'

'I remember, and then he put every penny he got for it on horses that are still running backwards somewhere on English racetracks.'

'Why didn't you come back, Mummy?'

'What was there to come back ro? Your father was only interested in a form book, John had gone to Switzerland, Kate had gone to New York, you were running with your crowd.'

'I was waiting for you, Mummy.'

'No, that's not true, Lizzie. You can't rewrite the whole thing. Why didn't you write and tell me if that was the way it was?'

There was a silence.

'You only liked hearing from me if I was having a good time, so I

told you about the good times. On postcards and letters. I told you when I went to Greece, and to Achill Island. I didn't tell you about wanting you to come back in case you got annoyed with me.'

'I would have liked it a hell of a lot more than being hijacked, imprisoned…"

'And is it nice where you are in West Cork?' Again Bill was being conversational and interested. 'It always sounds a lovely place to me, the pictures you see of the coastline.'

'It's very special. There are a lot of free spirits there, people who have gone back to the land, people who paint, express themselves, make pottery.'

'And do you specialise in any of the arts… er… Bernie?' He was owlish and interested, she couldn't take offence.

'No, not myself personally, but I have always been interested in artistic people, and places. I find myself stifled if I'm cooped up anywhere. That's why this whole business…'

Bill was anxious to head her off the subject. 'And do you have a house of your own or do you live with Chester?'

'No, heavens no,' she laughed just like her daughter laughed, a happy peal of mirth. 'No, Chester is gay, he lives with Vinnie. No, no. They're my dearest friends. They live about four miles away. No, I have a room, a sort of studio I suppose, outhouse it once was, off a bigger property.'

'That sounds nice, is it near the sea?'

'Yes, of course. Everywhere's near the sea. It's very charming. I love it. I've been there for six years now, made a real little home of it.'

'And how do you get money to live, Bernie? Do you have a job?'

Lizzie's mother looked at him as if he had made a very vulgar noise. 'I beg your pardon?'

'I mean, if Lizzie's father didn't give you any money you have to earn a living. That's all.' He was unrepentant.

'It's because he works in a bank, Mummy.' Lizzie apologised. 'He's obsessed with earning a living.'

Suddenly it became too much for Bill. He was sitting in this house in the middle of the night trying to keep the peace between two madwomen and they thought that he was the odd one because he actually had a job and paid his bills and lived according to the rules. Well, he had had just about enough. Let them sort it out. He would go home, back to his dull house, with his sad family.

He would never be transferred into international banking no matter how much he learned about 'How are you' and 'beautiful buildings' and'red carnations'. He would not try any more to make selfish people see some good in each other. He felt an entirely unfamiliar twitching in his nose and eyes, as if he were about to cry.

There was something about his face that both women noticed at the same time. It was as if he had opted out, left them.

'I didn't mean to laugh at your question,' Lizzie's mother said. 'Of course I have to earn money. I do some help in the home where I have my studio, you know, cleaning, light housework, and when they have parties I help with the… well, with the clearing up. I love ironing, I always have, so I do all their ironing too, and for this I don't have to pay any rent. And of course they give me a little spending money too.'

Lizzie looked at her mother in disbelief. This was the arty lifestyle, mixing with the great and the rich, the playboys and the glittery set who had second homes in the south-west of Ireland. Her mother was a maid.

Bill was in control of himself again. 'It must be very satisfying,' he said. 'Means you can have the best of both worlds, a nice place to live, independence, and no real worries about how to put food on the table.'

She searched his face for sarcasm, but did not find any. 'That's right,' Bernie Duffy said eventually. 'That's the way it is.'

Bill thought he must speak before Lizzie blurted out something that would start them off again. 'Perhaps sometime when the weather gets finer Lizzie and I could come down and see you there. It would be a real treat for me. We could come on the bus, and change at Cork city.' Eager, boyish and planning it as if this were a social call long overdue.

'And, are you two… I mean, are you Lizzie's boyfriend?'

'Yes, we are going to get married when we are twenty-five, two years' time. We hope to get a job in Italy so we are both learning Italian at night.'

'Yes, she told me that amongst all the other ramblings,' Bernie said.

'That we were getting married?' Bill was pleased.

'No, that she was learning Italian. I thought it was more madness.'

There seemed little more to be said. Bill stood up as if he were a normal guest taking his leave of a normal evening. 'Bernie, as you may have noticed it's very late now. There won't be more buses running, and it might be difficult to find your friends even if there were buses. So I suggest that you stay here tonight, at your own wish of course, with the key in the door. And then tomorrow when you've both had a good rest, you and Lizzie, say goodbye to each other nice and peaceably and I probably won't see you until next summer when it would be lovely if we could come and see you in West Cork.'

'Don't go,' Bernie begged. 'Don't go. She's nice and quiet while you're here but the moment you are out the door she'll be ranting and raving and saying she was abandoned.'

'No, no. It won't be a bit like that now.' He spoke with conviction. 'Lizzie, could you give your mother the key? Now Bernie, you keep that and then you know you can come and go as you please.'

'How will yon get home, Bill?' Lizzie asked.

He looked at her in surprise. She never usually asked or seemed to care that he had to walk three miles when he left her at night.

'I'll walk, it's a fine starry night,' he said. They were both looking at him. He felt an urge to say something more, to make the peaceful moment last. 'At Italian class last night Signora taught us a bit about the weather, how to say it's been a great summer. E' stata una magnifica estate.'

'That's nice,' Lizzie said. 'E' stata una magnifica estate.' She repeated it perfectly.

'Hey, you got it in one, the rest of us had to keep saying it over.' Bill was impressed.

'She always had a great memory, even as a little girl. You said a thing once and Elizabeth would remember it always.' Bernie looked at her daughter with something like pride.

On the way home Bill felt quite light-hearted. A lot of the obstacles that had seemed huge were less enormous now. He didn't need to fear some classy mother in West Cork who would regard a lowly bank clerk as too humble for her daughter. He didn't have to worry any more that he might be too dull for Lizzie. She wanted safety and love and a base and he could give her all of those things. There would of course be problems ahead. Lizzie would not find it easy to live on a budget. She would never change in her attitude to spending and wanting things now. All he had to do was to try and make it happen somehow within reason. And to head her towards work. If her dizzy mother actually earned a living doing other people's ironing and cleaning, then perhaps Lizzie's own goal posts might move.

Attitudes might change.

They might even go to Galway and visit her father sometime. Let her know that she was already part of a family, she didn't have to pretend and wish. And that soon she would be part of his family.

Bill Burke walked on through the night as other people drove by in cars or hailed taxis. He had no envy for any of them. He was a lucky man. So all right, he had people who needed him. And people who relied on him. But that was fine. That meant he was just that sort of person, and maybe in the years to come his son would be sorry for him and pity him as Bill pitied his own father. But it wouldn't matter. It would only mean that the boy wouldn't understand. That was all.

Kathy Clarke was one of the hardest working girls in Mountainview. She frowned with concentration in class, she puzzled things out, she hung back and asked questions. In the staffroom they often made good-natured fun of her. 'Doing a Kathy Clarke' meant screwing up your eyes at a notice on the bulletin board trying to understand it.

She was a tall awkward girl, her navy school skirt a bit too long, none of the pierced ears and cheap jewellery of her classmates. Not really bright but determined to do well. Almost too determined. Every year they had parent-teacher meetings. Nobody could really remember who came to ask about Kathy.

'Her father's a plumber,' Aidan Dunne said once. 'He came and put in the cloakroom for us, great job he made of it too, but of course it had to be paid for in cash. Didn't tell me till the end… nearly passed out when he saw the cheque book.'

'I remember her mother never took the cigarette out of her mouth during the whole chat,' said Helen the Irish teacher. 'She kept saying what good will all this do her, will it earn her a living.'

'That's what they all say.' Tony O'Brien the Principal-Elect was resigned. 'You're surely not expecting them to talk about the sheer intellectual stimulation of studying for its own sake.'

'She has a big sister who comes too,' someone else remembered. 'She's the manageress in the supermarket, I think she's the only one who understands about poor Kathy.'

'God, wouldn't it be a great life if the only worries we had were about them working too hard and frowning too much with concentration,' said Tony O'Brien, who as Principal-Elect had many more trying problems on his desk every day. And not only on his desk.

In his life of moving on from one woman to another there had been very few women he had wanted to stay with, and now that it had finally happened and he had met one, there was this goddamned complication. She was the daughter of poor Aidan Dunne who had thought that he was going to be Principal. The misunderstanding and the confusions would have done credit to a Victorian melodrama.

Now young Grania Dunne wouldn't see him because she accused him of having humiliated her father. It was farfetched and wrong, but the girl believed it. He had left the decision to her, saying for the first time in his life that he would remain unattached waiting until she came back to him. He sent her joky postcards to let her know that he was still there, but there was no response. Perhaps he was stupid to go on hoping. He knew how many other fish there were in the sea, and he had never been short of female fishes in his life.

But somehow none of them had the appeal of this bright eager girl with the dancing eyes and the energy and quick response that made him feel genuinely young again. She hadn't thought he was too old for her, not that night she had stayed. The night before he knew who she was and that her father had expected the job that could never be his.

The last thing Tony O'Brien had expected as Principal of Mountainview was that he would live a near-monastic life at home. It was doing him no harm, early nights, less clubbing, less drinking. In fact he was even trying to cut down on his smoking in case she came back. At least he didn't smoke in the mornings now. He didn't reach out of the bed, eyes closed, hands searching for the packet, he managed to wait till break and have his first drag of the day in the privacy of his own office with a coffee. That was an advance. He wondered should he send her a card with a picture of a cigarette on it saying 'Not still smoking,' but then she might think he was totally cured which he was far from being. It was absurd how much of his thoughts she took up.

And he had never realised what an exhausting job it was running a school like Mountainview, the parent-teacher meetings and Open Nights were only two of the many things that cried out for his being there.

He had little time left to worry about the Kathy Clarkes of this world. She would leave school, get some kind of a job; maybe her sister might get her into the supermarket. She would never get third-level education. There wasn't the background, there wasn't the brains. She would survive.

None of them knew what Kathy Clarke's home life was like. If they thought at all, they might have assumed that it was one of the houses on the big sprawling estate with too much television and fast food and too little peace and quiet, too many children and not enough money coming in. That would be the normal picture. They could not know that Kathy's bedroom had a built-in desk and a little library of books. Her elder sister Fran sat there every evening until homework was finished. In winter there was a gas heater with portable cylinders of bottled gas which Fran bought at a discount in the supermarket.

Kathy's parents laughed at the extravagance, all the other children had done their homework at the kitchen table and hadn't it been fine? But Fran said it had not been fine. She had left school at fifteen with no qualifications, it had taken her years to build her way up to a position of seniority and there were still huge gaps in her education. The boys had barely scraped by, two working in England and one a roadie with a pop group. It was as if Fran had a mission to get Kathy to make more of herself than the rest of the family.

Sometimes Kathy felt she was letting Fran down. 'You see, I'm not really very bright, Fran. Things don't come to me like they do to some of them in the class. You wouldn't believe how quick Harriet is.'

'Well, her father's a teacher, why wouldn't she be bright?' Fran sniffed.

'Yes, this is what I mean, Fran. You're so good to me. When you should be dancing you give time to hearing my homework, and I'm so afraid I'll fail all my exams and be a disgrace to you after all your work.'

'I don't want to go dancing,' Fran would sigh.

'But you're still young enough surely to go to discos?' Kathy was sixteen, the baby of the family, Fran was thirty-two, the eldest. She really should be married now with a home of her own like all her friends were, and yet Kathy never wanted Fran to leave. The house would be unthinkable without her. Their mam was out a lot in town, getting things done was what it was called. In fact it was playing slot machines.

There would have been very few comforts in this house if Fran were not there to provide them. Orange juice for breakfast, and a hot meal in the evening. It was Fran who bought Kathy's school uniform and who taught the girl to polish her shoes and to wash her blouses and underwear every night. She would have learned nothing like this from her mother.

Fran explained the facts of life to her and bought her the first packet of Tampax. Fran said that it was better to wait until you found someone you liked a lot to have sex with rather than having it with anyone just because it was expected.

'Did you find someone you liked a lot to have it with?' the fourteen-year-old Kathy had asked with interest.

But Fran had an answer for that one too. 'I've always thought it best not to talk about it, you know the magic sort of goes out of it once you start speaking about it,' she said, and that was that.

Fran took her to the theatre, to plays in the Abbey, the Gate and the Project. She brought her up and down Grafton Street and through the smart shops as well. 'We must learn to do everything with an air of confidence,' Fran said. 'That's the whole trick, we mustn't look humble and apologetic as if we hadn't a right to be here.'

There was never a word of criticism from Fran about their parents. Sometimes Kathy complained: 'Mam takes you for granted, Fran, you bought her a lovely new cooker and she still never makes anything in it.'

'Ah, she's all right,' Fran would say.

'Dad never says thank you when you bring him home beer from the supermarket. He never brings you home a present.'

'He's not the worst,' Fran said. 'It's not a great life with your head stuck down pipes and round S bends all the time.'

'Will you get married, do you think?' Kathy asked her once, anxiously.

'I'll wait until you're a grown up then I'll put my mind to it.' Fran laughed when she said it.

'But won't you be too old?'

'Not at all. By the time you're twenty I'll only be thirty-six, in my prime,' she assured her sister.

'I thought you were going to marry Ken,' Kathy had said.

'Yes, well I didn't. And he went to America, so he's out of the picture.' Fran was brisk.

Ken had worked in the supermarket too and was very go-ahead. Mam and Dad said that he and Fran were sure to make a go of it. Kathy had been very relieved when Ken had left the picture.

At the summer parent-teacher meeting Kathy's father wasn't able to go. He said he had to work late that night.

'Please, Dad, please. The teachers want a parent there. Mam won't come, she never does, and you wouldn't have to do anything, only listen and tell them it's all fine.'

'God, Kathy, I hate going into a school, I feel out of place.'

'But Dad, it's not as if I had done anything bad and they were giving out about me, I just want them to think you're all interested.'

'And we are, we are, child… but your mother's not herself these days and she'd be worse than useless and you know the way they go on about smoking up there, it sets her back… maybe Fran will go again. She'd know more than we would anyway.'

So Fran went and spoke about her little sister to the tired teachers who had to see legions of parents in a confessional situation and give a message of encouragement laced with caution to all of them.

'She's too serious,' they told Fran. 'She tries too hard, she might take more in if she were to relax more.'

'She's very interested, really she is,' Fran protested. 'I sit with her when she does her homework, she never neglects any of it.'

'She doesn't play any games, does she?' The man who was going to be the new headmaster was nice. He seemed to have the vaguest knowledge of the children and spoke in generalities. Fran wondered if he really remembered them all or was making wild guesses.

'No, she doesn't want to take the time from her studying, you see.'

'Maybe she should.' He was brusque and good-natured about it.

'I don't think she should continue with Latin,' the pleasant Mr. Dunne said.

Fran's heart fell. 'But Mr. Dunne, she tries so hard. I never studied it myself and I'm trying to follow it in the book with her and she really does put in hours on it.'

'But you see, she doesn't understand what it's about.' Poor Mr. Dunne was trying hard not to offend her.

'Could I get her a couple of private lessons? It would be great for her to have Latin in her Leaving. Look at all the places she could go with a subject like that.'

'She may not get the points for University.' It was if he was letting her down lightly.

'But she has to. None of us have got anywhere, she must get a start in life.'

'You have a very good job yourself, Miss Clarke. I see you when I go to the supermarket, couldn't you get Kathy a job there?'

'Kathy will never work in the supermarket.' Fran's eyes were blazing.

'I'm sorry,' he said quietly.

'No, I'm sorry, it is very kind of you to take such an interest.

Please forgive me for shouting like this. Just advise me what would be best for her.'

'She should do something that she would enjoy, something she wouldn't have to strain at,' Mr. Dunne said. 'A musical instrument, has she shown any interest?'

'No.' Fran shook her head. 'Nothing like that. We're all tone deaf, even the brother who's working for a pop group.'

'Or painting?'

'I can't see it myself, she'd only fret over that too, to know was she getting it right.' It was easy to talk to this kind man, Mr. Dunne. It was probably hard for him to tell parents and family that a child wasn't bright enough to get third-level education. Maybe his own children were at university and he wished that others would also get the chance. And it was good of him to care that poor Kathy should be happy and relaxed. She hated being so negative to all his suggestions. The man meant so well. He must have great patience too, being a teacher.

Aidan looked back at the thin handsome face of this girl who showed much more interest in her sister than either of the parents could summon up. He hated having to say that a child was slow, because truthfully he felt guilty about it. He always thought that if the school were smaller, or there were better facilities, if there were bigger libraries, extra tuition when called for, maybe then there would be far fewer slow pupils. He had discussed this with Signora when they planned the Italian classes. She said it had a lot to do with people's expectations. It took more than a generation of free education to stop people believing there were barriers and obstacles in the way.

It had been the same in Italy, she said. She had seen the children of a local hotelier and his wife grow up. The village had been small and poor, nobody ever thought that the children from the little school there should do more than their fathers or mothers had. She had taught them English only so that they could greet tourists and be chambermaids or waiters. She had wanted so much more for them. Signora understood what Aidan wanted for the people around Mountainview school.

She was such an easy person to talk to. They had many a coffee as they planned the evening classes. She was undemanding company, asking no questions about his home and family, telling little of her own life in that Jerry Sullivan household. He had even told her about the study he was making for himself.

'I'm not very interested in possessions,' Signora said. 'But a lovely quiet room with light coming in a window and a desk in good wood, and all your memories, and books and pictures on a wall… that would be very satisfying indeed.' She spoke as if she were a gypsy or a bag lady who might never aspire to something so wonderful, but would appreciate it as a reward for others.

He would tell her about this Kathy Clarke, the girl with the anxious face trying hard because her sister expected so much and thought she was clever. Maybe Signora would come up with an idea, she often did.

But he took his mind away from the pleasant chats he had with her and so enjoyed and back to the present. There was a long night ahead of him. 'I'm sure you'll think of something, Miss Clarke.' Mr. Dunne looked beyond her to the line of parents still to be seen.

'I'm very grateful to you all here.' Fran sounded as if she meant it. 'You really do give your time, and care about the children. Years ago when I was at school it wasn't like that, or maybe I'm only making excuses.' She was serious and pale-faced. Young Kathy Clarke was lucky to have such a concerned sister.

Fran went to the bus stop hands in pockets and head down. She had to pass an annexe on the way out and saw a notice up advertising Italian lessons next September. A course to introduce you to the colours and paintings and music and language of Italy. It promised to be fun as well as educational. Fran wondered whether something like that might be a good idea. But it was too dear. She had so many outgoings. It would be very hard to pay a whole term in advance. And suppose Kathy decided to take the whole thing too seriously like she had taken everything else. Then it might be a case of the cure being worse than the disease. No, she would have to think of something else. Fran sighed and walked to the bus stop.

There she met Peggy Sullivan, one of the women who worked at the checkout. 'They'd put years on you, these meetings, wouldn't they?' said Mrs. Sullivan.

'There's a lot of hanging about certainly, but it's better than when we were young and no one knew where we were half the time. How's your own little fellow getting on?' As manageress Fran had made it her business to know personally as many of the staff as possible. She knew that Peggy had two children, both of them severe trials. A grown-up daughter who didn't get on with the father and a youngster who wouldn't open a book.

'Well, Jerry's not going to believe this but apparently he's much improved. They all said it. He's started to join the human race again, as one of them put it.'

'That's a bit of good news.'

'Well it's all down to this cracked one we have living with us. Not a word to anyone, Miss Clarke, but we have a lodger, half Italian half Irish. Says she was married to an Italian and he died but that's not true at all. I think she's a nun in disguise. But anyway, didn't she take an interest in Jerry and she has him a changed man, it would appear.' Peggy Sullivan explained that Jerry hadn't understood that poetry was meant to mean something until Signora came to the house, and this had made all the difference. His English teacher was delighted with him. And he hadn't understood that History really happened and now he did, and that had made all the difference.

Fran thought sadly that her own sister on whom she had lavished such attention had not realised that Latin was a language people spoke. Perhaps this Signora might open doors for her, too. 'What does she do for a living, your lodger?' she asked.

'Oh, you'd need a fleet of detectives to find out. A bit of sewing here and a bit of work up in a hospital I believe, but she's going to be teaching an Italian class here in the school next term and she's high as a kite over it. You'd think it was the World Cup she'd won all by herself, singing little Italian songs. She's spending the whole summer getting ready for it. Nicest woman that ever wore shoe leather, but off the wall I tell you, off the wall.'

Fran decided there and then. She would sign up for the course. She and Kathy would go there every Tuesday and Thursday, they'd bloody learn Italian that's what they'd do, and they'd enjoy doing it, with this madwoman who was singing songs and getting ready for it so excitedly. It might make the poor, nervous, tense Kathy relax a bit, and it might help Fran to forget Ken who had gone to America without her.

'They said Kathy was a great girl,' Fran said proudly at the kitchen table.

Her mother, despondent over some heavy losses at the machines, tried to show enthusiasm. 'Well, why wouldn't they? She is a great girl.'

'They didn't say anything bad about me?' Kathy asked.

'No, they didn't. They said you were great at your homework and that it was a pleasure to teach you. So now!'

'I'd like to have been there, child, it's just that I didn't think I'd get off in time.' Kathy and Fran forgave their Dad. It didn't matter now.

'I have a great treat for you, Kathy, we're going to learn Italian. Yourself and myself.'

If she had suggested they fly to the moon nothing could have surprised the Clarke family more.

Kathy flushed with pleasure. 'The two of us?'

'Why not? I always fancied going to Italy, and wouldn't my chances of picking up an Italian fellow be much better if I could speak the language!'

'Would I be able for it?'

'Of course you would, it's for eejits like myself who haven't learned anything, you'd probably be top of the class, but it's meant to be fun. There's this woman and she's going to play us operas and show us pictures and give us Italian food. It'll be terrific.'

'It's not very dear, is it, Fran?'

'No, it's not, and look at the value we'll get from it,' said Fran, who was already wondering was she verging on madness to have made such an announcement.

During the summer Ken settled himself in the small town in New York State. He wrote again to Fran. 'I love you, I will always love you. I do understand about Kathy but couldn't you come out here? We could have her out for holidays, you could teach her then. Please say yes before I get a little service flat for myself. Say yes and we'll get a little house. She's sixteen, Fran, I can't wait another four years for you.'

She wept over the letter but she couldn't leave Kathy now. This had been her dream, to see one of the Clarkes get to University. True, Ken had said wait until their children were born then they could plan it from the word go, to give them all the chances in the world, but Ken didn't understand. She had invested too much in Kathy. The girl was not an intellectual, but she was not stupid. If she had been born to wealthy parents she would have had all the advantages that would cushion her. She would get her place in University merely because there would be enough time, there would be books in the house, people would have expectations. Fran had raised Kathy's hopes. She couldn't go now, and leave her to her mother who would look up vaguely from the gambling machines and her father who would mean well but see no further than the next cash-in-hand job for the few simple comforts he wanted from life.

Kathy would drown without her.

It was a warm summer, visitors came to Ireland in greater numbers than before. The supermarket arranged special picnic lunches that people could take out to the park. It had been Fran's idea, and it was a great success.

Mr. Burke at the bacon counter had been doubtful. 'I don't want to go on about being in this business man and boy, Miss Clarke, but really I can't think it's a good idea to slice bacon and fry it and serve it cold in a sandwich. Why wouldn't they make do with nice lean ham like they always did?'

'There's a taste now, Mr. Burke, that people like their bacon crispy and you see if we keep the pieces nice and warm and fill the sandwiches as they come in, I can tell you they'll want more and more.'

'But suppose I cut it and it's fried and nobody buys it, what then, Miss Clarke?' He was such a nice man, anxious and very willing to please but fearful of change.

'Let's give it a three-week trial, Mr. Burke, and see,' she said.

She had been totally correct. People flocked for the great sandwiches. They lost money on them, of course, but that didn't matter; once you got people into the supermarket they bought other things on the way to the checkout.

She took Kathy to the Museum of Modern Art and on her day off they went on a three-hour bus tour of Dublin. Just so that we know about where we live, Fran had said. They loved it, the two Protestant cathedrals that they had never been inside, and they drove around the Phoenix Park and they looked on proudly as the Georgian doors and fanlight windows were pointed out.

'Imagine, we're the only Irish people on the bus,' Kathy whispered. 'This is all ours, the others are visitors.'

And without being too bossy Fran organised the sixteen-year-old to get a smart yellow cotton dress, and to get her hair cut. At the end of the summer she was tanned and attractive looking, her eyes had lost the haunted look.

Kathy did have friends, Fran noticed, but not close, giggly friends as she had known when she was young, what seemed like a whole generation ago. Some of these friends went to a noisy disco on a Saturday, a place that Fran knew about from the youngsters at work.

She knew enough to know it was not at all well run and that drugs circulated freely. She always happened to be passing by at one o'clock in the morning to collect her sister. She asked Barry, one of the young van drivers in the supermarket, to pick her up on several of these Saturdays and to drive past the disco. He had said it wasn't a place for a youngster.

'What can I do?' Fran shrugged at him. 'Tell her not to go and she feels a victim. I think I'm lucky that I can have you to act as an excuse to get her home.' Barry was a great kid, mad for overtime since he wanted to buy a motorbike. He said he had saved enough for one third of it, as soon as he had half the price he'd go and choose it, and then when he had two-thirds he would buy it and pay the rest later.

'And what do you want it for, Barry?' Fran asked.

'For freedom, Miss Clarke,' he said. 'You know, freedom, all that air rushing past and everything.'

Fran felt very old. 'My sister and I are going to learn Italian,' she told him one night as they waited outside the disco, edging the advent of his motorbike nearer.

'Oh that's great, Miss Clarke. I'd like to do that myself. I went to the World Cup, I made the greatest of friends, the nicest people you'd meet in a day's walk, Miss Clarke, much the way we'd be, I often think, if we had the weather.'

'Maybe you'll learn Italian too.' She spoke absently. She was watching tough-looking people come out of the disco. Why did Kathy and her friends want to go there? Imagine the freedom they had at sixteen, to go to such places, compared to her day.

'I might if I have the bike paid for, because one of the first places I'm going to take it is Italy,' Barry said.

'Well, it's up in Mountainview School and it begins in September.' She spoke in a slightly distracted tone because she had just seen Kathy, Harriet and their friends come out. She leaned over and hooted the horn. Immediately they looked over. The regular

Saturday lift home was becoming part of the scene. What about the parents of all these girls, she thought? Did any of them care? Was she just a fusspot herself? Lord, but it would be such a relief when the term started again and all these outings were over.

The Italian classes began on a Tuesday at seven o'clock. There had been a letter from Ken that morning. He was settled in his little apartment; a flat didn't mean a flat, it meant a flat tyre over there. The stock control was totally different. There were no deals with suppliers; you paid what was asked. People were very friendly, they invited him around to their homes. Soon it would be Labour Day and they would have a picnic to define that the summer was over. He missed her. Did she miss him?

There were thirty people in the class. Everyone got a huge piece of cardboard to put their names on but this marvellous woman said they should be called by the Italian version. So Fran became Francesca, and Kathy Caterina. They had great games of shaking hands and asking people what their names were. Kathy seemed to be enjoying it hugely. It would be worth it in the end, Fran said, putting the memory of Ken going to Labour Day picnics out of her mind.

'Hey, Fran, do you see that guy who says Mi chiamo Bartolo-raeo? Isn't that Barry from your supermarket?' It was indeed. Fran was pleased, the overtime must have been good enough to sort out the bike. They waved at each other across the room.

What an extraordinary assortment of people. There was that elegant woman, surely she was the one who gave those huge lunches at her house. What on earth could she be doing at a place like this? And the beautiful girl with the golden curls Mi chiamo Ehzabetta and her nice staid boyfriend in his good suit. And the dark, violent-looking Luigi and the older man called Lorenzo. What an amazing mixture.

Signora was delightful. 'I know your landlady,' Fran said to her when they were having little snacks of salami and cheese.

'Yes, well Mrs. Sullivan is a relation, I am a relation,' Signora said nervously.

'Of course. How stupid, yes, I know she is.' Fran was reassuring. It was her own father's lifestyle, she knew it well. 'She said you were very helpful to her son.'

Signora's face broke into a wide smile. She was very beautiful when she smiled. Fran didn't think she could be a nun. She was sure Peggy Sullivan had got it wrong.

They loved the lessons, Fran and Kathy. They went together on the bus laughing like children at their mispronunciations and at the stories Signora told them. Kathy told the girls at school and they could hardly believe it.

There was an extraordinary bond amongst the people in the class. It was as if they were on a desert island and their only hope of rescue was to learn the language, and remember everything they were taught. Possibly because Signora believed that they were all capable of great feats they began to believe it too. She begged them to use the Italian words for everything, even if they couldn't form the whole sentence. They found themselves saying that they had to get back to the casa or that the camera was very warm or that they were stanca instead of tired.

And all the time Signora watched and listened, pleased but not surprised. She had never thought that anyone faced with the Italian language would feel anything but delight and enthusiasm for it. With her was Mr. Dunne, whose special project all this was. They seemed to get on together very well.

'Maybe they were friends from way back,' Fran wondered.

'No, he's got a wife and grown-up children,' Kathy explained.

'He could still have a wife and be her friend,' Fran said.

'Yes, but I think he could be having it off with her, they're always giving special little smiles. Harriet says that's a dead giveaway.' Harriet was Kathy's friend at school who was very interested in sex.

Aidan Dunne watched the flowering of the Italian class with a pleasure that he had not known possible. Week after week they came to the school, bicycles, motorbikes, vans and bus, even the amazing woman in the BMW. And he loved planning the various surprises for them too. The paper flags they made, she would give everyone a blank flag then call out colours that they were to fill in. Each person would hold up a flag and the rest of the class had to call out the colours. They were like children, eager enthusiastic pupils. And when the class was over that tough-looking fellow, called Lou or Luigi or whatever, used to help tidy up, tough type, the last one you'd ever think would be hanging around to tidy up, put away boxes and stack chairs.

But that was Signora for you. She had this simple way of expecting the best and getting it. She had asked him if she could make cushion covers for him.

'Come and see the room,' Aidan suggested suddenly.

'That's a good idea. When will I come?'

'Saturday morning. I've no school, would you be free?'

'I can be free any time,' she said.

He spent all Friday evening cleaning and polishing his room. He took out the tray with the two little red glasses that came from Murano, beside Venice. He had bought a bottle of Marsala. They would toast the success of the room and the classes.

She came at midday and brought some sample fabrics. 'I thought that yellow would be right from what you told me,' she said, holding up a glowing rich colour. Tt costs a little more a metre than the others, but then it's a room for life, isn't it?'

'A room for life,' Aidan repeated.

'Do you want to show it to your wife before I begin?' she asked.

'No, no. Nell will be pleased. I mean, this is my room really.'

'Yes, of course.' She never asked questions.

Nell was not at home that morning, nor were either of his daughters. Aidan hadn't told them of the visit, and he was glad they weren't there. Together he and Signora toasted the success of the Italian class and the Room for Life.

'I wish you could teach in the school itself, you can create such enthusiasm,' he said admiringly.

'Ah, that's only because they want to learn.'

'But that girl Kathy Clarke, they say she's as bright as a button these days, all due to the Italian classes.'

'Caterma … a nice girl.'

'Well, I hear that she has them all entertained in the classroom with stories of your class, they all want to join.'

'Isn't that wonderful?' said Signora.

What Aidan did not report, because he didn't know it, was that Kathy Clarke's description of the Italian class included an account of his playing footsie with the ancient Italian teacher, and that he looked at her with the adoring eyes of a puppy. Kathy's friend Harriet said she had always suspected it. It was the quiet ones that you had to watch. That's where real passion and lust were lurking.

Miss Quinn was taking a history class and was anxious to relate things to the modern day. Something the children might recognise. Telling them the Medicis were patrons of the arts was no use, she called them sponsors. That would mean something.

'Can anyone think of the people that they sponsored?' she asked.

They looked at each other blankly.

'Sponsor?' Harriet asked. 'Like a drinks company or an insurance company?'

'Yes. You must know the names of some of the famous artists of Italy, don't you?' The history teacher was young, she was not yet hardened to how much children had forgotten or what they had never known.

Quietly Kathy Clarke stood up. 'One of the most important was Michelangelo. When one of the Medicis was Pope Sixtus V he asked Michelangelo to do the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and he wanted all the different scenes.' In a calm confident voice she told the class about the scaffolding that was built, the rows and the fallings-out. The problems that there still were keeping the colours alive.

There was no frown, there was just enthusiasm. Since she had obviously gone further than Miss Quinn the young history teacher could have attempted, it was soon time to bring it to an end.

'Thank you for that, Katherine Clarke, now can anyone else name any other artist of the period?'

Kathy's hand went up again. The teacher looked around to see if there was any other taker but there was no one. The boys and girls looked on amazed as Kathy Clarke explained about Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, five thousand pages of them, all in mirror writing maybe because he was left-handed or maybe because he wanted them kept secret. And how he applied to the Duke of Milan for a job saying he could design cannon-proof ships in war time and statues in peace time.

Kathy knew all this and was telling it as if it was a story.

'Jesus Mary and Joseph, those Italian culture classes must be something else,' said Josie Quinn in the staffroom.

'What do you mean?' they asked.

'I've had Kathy Clark standing up giving me a run-down of the Renaissance like nobody's ever heard.'

Across the room Aidan Dunne who had dreamed up the classes stirred his coffee and smiled to himself. A big happy smile.

It brought them even closer together, Kathy and Fran, the hours spent at the Italian class. Matt Clarke came home from England in the autumn to tell them that he was getting married to Tracey from Liverpool but that they weren't having much of a do, they were going to go to the Canaries instead. Everyone was relieved that it didn't mean a trek to England for the wedding. They giggled a bit when they heard that the honeymoon was going to be before, not after, the marriage.

Matt thought it was sensible. 'She wants a suntan for the wedding snaps, and of course if we hate each other out there then we can call it off,' he said cheerfully.

Matt gave his mother money for the slot machines and took his father for a few pints. 'What's all this business about learning Italian?' he asked.

'Search me,' said his father. 'I can't make head nor tail of it. Fran is worn out above in the supermarket early mornings, late nights. The fellow she was going with has gone off to the States. I haven't a notion why she wants to bring all this on herself, specially since they say over in the school that young Kathy works too hard already. But they're mad about it. Planning to go there next year and all. So let them at it.'

'Kathy's turning into a grand little looker, isn't she?' Matt said.

'I suppose she is. Do you know, seeing her every day I never noticed,' his father said with an air of surprise.

Kathy was indeed becoming more attractive. At school her friend Harriet commented on it. 'Do you have a fellow or something at this Italian class? You seem different somehow.'

'No, but there are lots of older men there all right,' Kathy laughed. 'Very old, some of them. We have to pair into couples to do the asking for a date bit. It's a scream. I had this man, he must be about a hundred, called Lorenzo. Well, I think it's Laddy in real life. Anyway Lorenzo says to me "E libera questa sera}" and he rolls his eyes and twirls an imaginary moustache and everyone was sick with laughter.'

'Go on. And does she teach you anything really useful like How's about it and what you'd say?'

'Sort of.' Kathy searched her memory for the phrase. 'There's things like Vive solo or sola, that's do you live alone. And there's one I can't quite remember… Deve rincasare questa notte? Do you have to go home tonight.'

'And she's the old one y6 see in the libjrary sometimes, with the funny coloured hair?'

'Yes, Signora.'

'Imagine,' said Harriet. Things were getting stranger all the time.

'Do you still go to those classes in Mountainview, Miss Clarke?' Peggy Sullivan was handing in her till's takings.

'They're really terrific, Mrs. Sullivan. Do pass that on to Signora, won't you? Everyone just loves them. Do you know that nobody at all has fallen out of the class. That must be unheard of.'

'Well, she sounds very cheerful about them, I must say. An extraordinarily secretive person, of course, Miss Clarke. Claims she was married to some Italian for twenty-six years in a village out there… never a letter from Italy… not a picture of him in sight. And it turns out she has a whole family living in Dublin, a mother in those expensive flats down by the sea, a father in a home and brothers and sisters all over the place.'

'Yes, well…' Fran didn't want to hear anything even mildly critical or questioning about Signora.

'It just seems odd, doesn't it. What's she living in one room in our estate for if she has all this family dotted all over the place?'

'Maybe she doesn't get on with them. It could be as simple as that.'

'She goes to see her mother every Monday and her father twice a week up in the home. She wheels him out in his chair, one of the nurses told Suzi. She sits and reads to him under a tree and he just sits and stares ahead, even though he makes an effort to talk to the others who only come once in a blue moon.'

'Poor Signora,' said Fran suddenly. 'She deserves better than that.'

'Well she does, now that you say it, Miss Clarke,' said Peggy Sullivan.

She had good reason to be grateful to this strange visitor, nun or not a nun. She had been a great influence on their lives. Suzi got on great with her and came home much more regularly, Jerry regarded her as his own private tutor. She had made net curtains for them and matching cushion covers. She had painted the dresser in the kitchen and planted window boxes. Her room was immaculate and neat as a new pin. Sometimes Peggy Sullivan had gone in to investigate. As one would. But Signora seemed to have acquired no more possessions than those she had when she arrived. She was an extraordinary person. It was good that they all liked her in the class.

Kathy Clarke was the youngest of her students by far. The girl was eager to learn and asked about the grammar which the others didn't know or didn't bother about. She was attractive, too, in that blue-eyed, dark-haired way that she had never seen in Italy. There the dark beauties all had huge brown eyes.

She wondered what Kathy would do when she left school. Sometimes she saw the girl studying in the library. She must have hopes of getting a third-level education.

'What does your mother think you might do when you leave school?' she asked Kathy one evening when they were all tidying up the chairs after the lesson. People stayed and chatted, no one was anxious to run away, which was good. She knew for a fact that some of them went for a drink in a pub up the hill and others for coffee. It was all as she had hoped.

'My mother?' Kathy seemed surprised.

'Yes, she seems so eager and enthusiastic about everything,' Signora said.

'No, she doesn't really know much about the school or what I'm doing. She doesn't go out much, she'd have no idea what there was to do or study or anything.'

'But she comes here to the class with you, doesn't she, and she goes out to work in the supermarket? Mrs. Sullivan where I stay says she's the boss.'

'Oh, that's Fran. That's my sister,' Kathy said. 'Don't let her hear you said that, she'd go mad.'

Signora looked puzzled. 'I'm so sorry, I get everything wrong.'

'No, it's an easy mistake.' Kathy was anxious for the older woman not to be embarrassed. 'Fran's the oldest of the family, I'm the youngest. Of course you thought that.'

She didn't say anything to Fran about it. No point in making Fran go to the mirror to look for lines. Poor Signora was a bit absent-minded, and she did get a lot of things wrong. But she was so marvellous as a teacher. Everyone in the class including Bartolomeo, the one of the motorbike, loved her.

Kathy liked Bartolomeo, he had a lovely smile and he told her all about football. He asked where she went dancing and when she told him about the disco in the summer he said it was a date when it came to half term and they could go out dancing again, he'd tell her a good place.

She reported this to Harriet. 'I knew you joined that class just for sex,' Harriet said. And they laughed and laughed over it long after anyone else would have thought it remotely funny.

There was a bad rainstorm in October, and a leak came in the roof of the annexe where the evening class was held. With huge solidarity they all managed to cope with it by getting newspapers, and moving tables out of the way and finding a bucket in one of the cloakrooms. All the time they shouted Che tempaccio at each other and Che brutto tempo. Barry said he would wait outside in his rain gear at the bus stop and flash his lights when the bus arrived so that everyone would not get soaked to the skin.

Connie, the woman with the jewellery that Luigi said would buy a block of flats, said she could give four people a lift. They scrambled into her beautiful BMW - Guglielmo, the nice young man from the bank, his dizzy girlfriend Elizabetta, Francesca and young Caterina. They went first to Elizabetta's flat and there was a lot of chorusing of ciao and arrivederci as the two young lovers scampered up the steps in the rain.

And then it was on to the Clarkes' house. Fran in front gave directions. This was not the kind of territory that would be familiar to Connie. When they got there Fran saw her mother putting out the dustbin, a cigarette still in her mouth despite the rain that would fall on it and make it soggy, the same scuffed slippers and sloppy housecoat that she wore all the time. She then felt ashamed of herself for feeling ashamed of her mother. Just because she was getting a lift in a smart car didn't mean that she should change all her values. Her mother had had a hard life and had been generous and understanding when it was needed.

'There's Mam getting drenched. Wouldn't the bins have done in the morning?' Fran said.

'Che tempaccio, che tempaccio,' Kathy said dramatically.

'Go on, Caterina. Your Granny's holding the door open for you,' Connie said.

'That's my mother,' Kathy said.

There was so much rain, so much confusion of banging doors and clattering dustbins nobody seemed to take much notice.

Inside the house Mrs. Clarke was looking with surprise and i

disgust at her wet cigarette. 'I got drowned waiting for you to come in from that limousine.'

'God, let's have a cup of tea,' said Fran, running to the kettle.

Kathy sat down suddenly at the kitchen table.

'Due tazze di te,' Fran said in her best Italian. 'Come on, Kathy. Con latte? Con zuccheroY

'You know I don't take milk and sugar.' Kathy's voice was remote. She looked very pale. Mrs. Clarke said there was no point in a person staying up if this is all you were to hear, she was going off to her bed and to tell that husband of hers when and if he ever came in from the pub not to be leaving any frying pan to clean up in the morning.

She was gone, complaining, coughing and creaking up the stairs.

'What is it, Kathy?'

Kathy looked at her. 'Are you my mother, Fran?' she asked.

There was a silence in the kitchen. They could hear the flushing of the lavatory upstairs and the rain falling on the concrete outside.

'Why do you ask this now?'

'I want to know. Are you or aren't you?'

'You know I am, Kathy.' A long silence.

'No, I didn't know. Not until now.' Fran came towards her, reaching out. 'No, go away from me. I don't want you to touch me.'

'Kathy you knew, you felt it, it didn't need to be said, I thought you knew.'

'Does everyone else know?'

'What do you mean everyone else? The people who need to, know. You know how much I love you, how I'd do everything on earth for you and get you the best that I could get.'

'Except a father and a home and a name.'

'You have a name, you have a home, you have another father and mother in Mam and Dad.'

'No I haven't. I'm a bastard that you had and never told me about.'

'There's no such word as bastard, as you well know. There's no such thing any more as an illegitimate child. And you were legally part of this household since the day you were born. This is your home.'

'How could you…' Kathy began.

'Kathy, what are you saying - that I should have given you away to strangers for adoption, that I should have waited until you were eighteen before I got to know you and only then if you sought me out?'

'And all of these years letting me think that Mam was my mother. I can't believe it.' Kathy shook her head as if to clear it, to take this new and frightening idea out of her mind.

'Mam was a mother to you and to me. She welcomed you from the day she knew about you. She said won't it be grand to have another baby round here. That's what she said and it was. And, Kathy, I thought you knew.'

'How would I have known? We both called Mam and Dad Mam and Dad. People said you were my sister and that Matt and Joe and Sean were my brothers. How was I to know?'

'Well, it wasn't a big thing. We were all together in the house, you were only seven years younger than Joe, it was the natural way to do things.'

'Do all the neighbours know?'

'Some of them maybe, they've forgotten I imagine.'

'And who was my father? Who was my real father?'

'Dad is your real father in that he brought you up and looked after both of us.'

'You know what I mean.'

'He was a boy who was at a posh school and his parents didn't want him to marry me.'

'Why do you say was? Is he dead?'

'No he's not dead, but he's not part of our lives.'

'He's not part of your life, he might be part of mine.'

'I don't think that's a good idea.'

'It doesn't matter what you think. Wherever he is, he's still my father. I have a right to know him, to meet him, to tell him I'm Kathy and that I exist because of him.'

'Please have some tea. Or let me have some anyway.'

'I'm not stopping you.' Her eyes were cold.

Fran knew she needed more tact and diplomacy than had ever been called on in work. Even the time when one of the director's children, there on a holiday job, was found pilfering. This was vastly more important.

'I'll tell you every single thing you want to know. Everything,' she said, in as calm a voice as she could manage. 'And if Dad comes in in the middle of it I suggest we move up to your room.'

Kathy's room was much bigger than Fran's. It had the desk, the bookshelf, the hand basin that had been put in lovingly by the plumber in the house years ago.

'You did it all from guilt, didn't you, the nice room, the buying my uniform and the extra pocket money and even the Italian classes. You paid for it all because you were so guilty about me.'

'I have never had a day's guilt about you in my life,' Fran said calmly. She sounded so sure that she stopped Kathy in the slightly hysterical tone she was taking. 'No, I have felt sad for you sometimes, because you work so hard and I hoped I would be able to give you everything to start you off well. I worked hard so that I could always provide a good living for you. I've saved a little every single week in a building society, not much but enough to give you independence. I have loved you every day of my life, and honestly it got kind of blurred whether you were my sister or my daughter. You're just Kathy to me and I want the very, very best for you. I work long and hard to get it and I think about it all the time. So I assure you whatever I feel I don't feel guilty.'

Tears came into Kathy's eyes. Fran reached her hand over tentatively and patted the hand that clutched the mug of tea.

Kathy said, 'I know, I shouldn't have said that. I got a shock, you see.'

'No, no it's all right. Ask me anything.'

'What's his name?'

'Paul. Paul Malone.'

'Kathy Malone?' she said wonderingly.

'No, Kathy Clarke.'

'And how old was he then?'

'Sixteen. I was fifteen and a half.'

'When I think of all the bossy advice you gave me about sex and how I listened.'

'Look back on what I said, you'll find that I didn't preach what I didn't practise.'

'So you loved him, this Paul Malone?' Kathy's voice was very scornful.

'Yes, very much. Very much indeed. I was young but I thought I knew what love was and so did he, so I won't dismiss it and say it was nonsense. It wasn't.'

'And where did you meet him?'

'At a pop concert. We got on so well then I used to sneak out to

I

meet him from school sometimes and we'd go to the pictures, and he was meant to be having extra lessons so he could skip that. And it was a wonderful happy time.'

'And then?'

'And then I realised I was pregnant, and Paul told his mother and father and I told Mam and Dad and all hell broke out everywhere.'

'Did anyone talk about getting married?'

'No, nobody talked about it. I thought about it a lot up in the room that's your room now. I used to dream that one day Paul would come to the door with a bunch of flowers and say that as soon as I was sixteen we would marry.'

'But it didn't happen, obviously?'

'No, it didn't.'

'And why did he not want to stay around and support you even if you didn't marry?'

'That was part of the deal.'

'Deal?'

'Yes. His parents said that since this was an unlikely partnership and that there was no future in it, it might be kindest for everyone to cut all ties. That's what they said. Cut all ties or maybe sever all ties.'

'Were they awful?'

'I don't know, I'd never met them until then, any more than Paul had met Mam and Dad'

'So the deal was that he was to get away with it, father a child and never see her again.'

'They gave four thousand pounds, Kathy, it was a lot of money then.'

'They bought you off!'

'No, we didn't think it was like that. I put two thousand in a building society for you. It's grown a lot as well as what I added myself, and we gave the other two thousand pounds to Mam and Dad because they would be bringing you up.'

'And did Paul Malone think that was fair? To give four thousand pounds to get rid of me?'

'He didn't know you. He listened to his parents, they told him sixteen was too young to be a father, he had a career ahead of him, it was a mistake, he must honour his commitment to me. That's the way they saw it.'

'And did he have a career?'

'Yes, he's an accountant.'

'My father the accountant,' Kathy said.

'He married and he has children now, his own family.'

'You mean he has other children?' Kathy's chin was in the air.

'Yes, that's right. Two, I believe.'

'How do you know?'

'There was an article about him in a magazine not long ago, you know, lifestyles of the rich and famous, that is.'

'But he's not famous.'

'His wife is, he married Marianne Hayes.' Fran waited to see the effect this would have.

'My father is married to one of the richest women in Ireland?'

'Yes.'

'And he gave a measly four thousand pounds to get rid of me.'

'That's not the point. He wasn't married to her then.'

Tt is the point. He's rich now, he should give something.'

'You have enough, Kathy, we have everything we want.'

'No, of course I haven't everything I want, and neither do you,' Kathy said, and suddenly the tears that were waiting came and she cried and cried, while Fran, whom she had thought for sixteen years was her sister, stroked her head and her wet cheeks and her neck with all the love a mother could give.

The next morning at breakfast Joe Clarke had a hangover.

'Will you give me a can of cold Coca Cola from the fridge, Kathy, like a good girl? I've a bugger of a job to do today out in Killiney, and the van will be here for me any minute.'

'You're nearer to the fridge than I am,' Kathy said.

'Are you giving me cheek?' he asked.

'No, I'm just stating a fact.'

'Well, no child of mine is going to be stating facts in that tone of voice, let me tell you,' he said, face flushed with anger.

'I'm not a child of yours,' Kathy said coldly.

They didn't even look up startled, her grandparents. These old people she had thought of as her mother and father. The woman went on reading the magazine and smoking, the man grumbled. 'I'm as good as any other goddamn father you ever had or will have. Go on, child, give me the Coke now to save me getting up, will you.'

And Kathy realised that they weren't in the business of secrecy or pretending. Like Fran, they had assumed she knew the state of affairs. She looked across at Fran standing with a rigid back looking out the window.

'All right, Dad,' she said, and got him the can and a glass to pour it into,

'There's a good girl,' he said, smiling at her as he always did. For , him nothing had changed.

'What would you do if you discovered you weren't your parents' child?' Kathy asked Harriet at school.

'I'd be delighted, I tell you that.'

'Why?'

'Because then I won't grow up to have an awful chin like my mother and my grandmother, and I wouldn't have to listen to Daddy droning on and on about getting enough points in the Leaving.' Harriet's father, a teacher, had great hopes that she would be a doctor. Harriet wanted to own a night club.

They let the matter drop.

'What do you know about Marianne Hayes?' Kathy asked later.

'She's like the richest woman in Europe, or is it only Dublin? And she's good looking too. I suppose she bought all those things like good teeth and a suntan and all that shiny hair.'

'Yeah, I'm sure she did.'

'Why are you interested in her?'

'I dreamed about her last night,' Kathy said truthfully.

'I dreamed that I had sex with a gorgeous fellow. I think we should get started on it, you know we are sixteen.'

'You're the one who said we should concentrate on our studies,' Kathy complained.

'Yeah, that was before this dream. You look awful pale and tired and old, don't dream about Marianne Hayes again, it's not doing you any good.'

'No, it's not,' Kathy agreed, thinking suddenly of Fran with her white face and the lines under her eyes, and no suntan and no holidays abroad. She thought of Fran saving money every week for her for sixteen years. She remembered Fran's boyfriend Ken going off to America, had he too found some rich woman? Someone who wasn't a plumber's daughter who had dragged herself up to the top in a supermarket, someone who wasn't struggling to support an illegitimate child. Ken had known about her. It didn't appear that Fran had gone to any trouble to keep it all a secret.

As she had said last night there were many, many households all over Dublin where the youngest child was really a grandchild. And Fran had said that in many cases the mother had not stayed at home, the eldest sister had left to start a new life. It wasn't fair.

It just wasn't fair that Paul Malone should have his pleasure and no responsibility. Three times that day in class she was reprimanded for not paying attention. But Kathy Clarke had no interest in her studies. She was planning how she should best visit Paul Malone.

'Talk to me,' Fran said that evening.

'What about? You said there was nothing more to say.'

'So nothing's changed?' Fran asked. Her eyes were anxious. She didn't have expensive creams to take away the lines on her face. She never had anyone to help her bring up a child. Marianne Hayes, now Marianne Malone, must have had help everywhere. Nurses, nannies, au pairs, chauffeurs, tennis coaches. Kathy looked at her mother with a level glance. Even though her world had turned upside down she wouldn't add this to Fran's trouble. 'No, Fran,' she lied. 'Nothing's changed.'

It wasn't hard to find out where Paul and Marianne lived.

There was something about them in a paper almost every week. Everyone knew of their house. But she didn't want to go and see him at home. She must go to his office. Talk to him in a businesslike way. There was no need to involve his wife in what she wanted to say.

Armed with a phonecard she began to telephone large accountancy firms. On the second call she got the name of where he worked. She had heard of the company, they were accountants to all the film stars and theatre people. This was a show business kind of place. Not only did he have all the money, he had all the fun too.

Twice she went to the offices and twice her courage failed. The building was so enormous. She knew they only occupied floors five and six, but somehow she didn't have the confidence. Once in she could talk to him, tell him who she was, how her mother had worked and saved. She would beg for nothing. She would point out the injustice, that was all. But the place was too impressive. It overawed her. The commissionaire in the foyer, the girls at the information desk downstairs who called up to see if you were allowed access to the prestige offices above.

She would need to look different to get past these groomed dragons at the desk if she were to meet Paul Malone. They wouldn't let a schoolgirl in a navy skirt up to see a senior accountant, particularly one married to a millionaire.

She telephoned Harriet.

'Can't you bring in some posh clothes of your mother's tomorrow to school?'

'Only if you tell me why.'

'I'm going to have an adventure.'

'A sexual adventure?'

'Possibly.'

'Do you want nighties and knickers then?' Harriet was very practical.

'No, a jacket. And gloves even.'

'God Almighty,' said Harriet. 'This must be something very kinky altogether.'

Next day the clothes arrived slightly crushed in a games bag. Kathy tried them on in the girls' cloakroom. The jacket was fine but the skirt seemed wrong.

'Where's the adventure?' Harriet was breathless with excitement.

'In an office, a smart office.'

'You could sort of hitch your skirt up, you know the school one. It would look okay if it was meant to be short. Will he be undressing you or will you be doing it yourself?'

'What? Oh, yes, I'll be doing it myself.'

'That's all right then.' Together they made Kathy look like someone who might gain access anywhere. She had already taken Fran's lipstick and eyeshadow.

'Don't put it all on now,' Harriet hissed.

'Why not?'

'I mean you've got to go to class, they'll know something's up if you go in like that.'

'I'm not going to class. You're to say you got a message that I had the flu.'

'No. I don't believe it.'

'Go on, Harriet. I did it for you when you wanted to go down and see the pop stars.'

'But where are you going at nine o'clock in the morning?'

'To the office to have the adventure,' Kathy said.

'You are something else,' said Harriet, whose mouth was round in admiration.

This time she didn't falter.

'Good morning. Mr. Paul Malone, please.'

'And the name?'

'The name will mean nothing to him but if you could say it is Katherine Clarke, come here about the matter of Frances Clarke, a client from a long time ago.' Kathy felt that this was an office where people had full names not Kathys and Frans.

'I'll speak to his secretary. Mr. Malone doesn't see anyone without an appointment.'

'You may tell her that I will wait until he's free.' Kathy spoke with a quiet intensity that was far more effective than her attempts to dress for the part.

One of the gorgeous receptionists seemed to shrug slightly at the other and make the call in a low voice.

'Miss Clarke, would you care to speak to Mr. Malone's secretary?' she said eventually.

'Certainly.'

Kathy walked forward, hoping that her school skirt would not fall suddenly below Harriet's mother's jacket.

'It's Penny here. Can I help you?'

'Have you been given the relevant names?' Kathy said. How wonderful that she remembered that word relevant. It was a great word, it covered everything.

'Well, yes… but this is not actually the point.'

'Ah, but I think it is. Please mention these names to Mr. Malone and please tell him that it will not take very long. Only ten minutes at the very most of his time, but I will wait here until he can see me.'

'We don't make appointments like this.'

'Please give him the names.' Kathy felt almost dizzy with excitement.

She waited politely for three more minutes then there was a buzz.

'Mr. Malone's secretary will meet you on the sixth floor,' said one of the goddesses at the desk.

'Thank you so much for your help,' said Kathy Clarke, hitching up her school skirt and going into the lift that would take her to meet her father.

'Miss Clarke?' Penny said. Penny was like someone from a beauty contest. She wore a cream-coloured suit and had very high-heeled black shoes. Around her neck she wore a thick black necklace.

'That's right.' Kathy wished she were better looking and older and well dressed.

'Come this way, please. Mr. Malone will see you in the conference room. Coffee?'

'That would be very nice, thank you.'

She was shown into a room with a pale wood table, and eight chairs around it. There were paintings on the wall, not just pictures behind glass like they had in school but real paintings. There were flowers on the windowsill, fresh flowers, arranged that morning. She sat and waited.

In he came, young, handsome, younger looking than Fran although he had been a year older.

'Hallo,' he said, with a big smile from ear to ear.

'Hallo,' she said. There was a silence.

At that moment Penny arrived with the coffee. 'Shall I leave it?' she asked, dying to stay.

'Thanks, Pen,' he said.

'Do you know who I am?' she asked when Penny had left.

'Yes,' he said.

'Were you expecting me?'

'Not for about two or three more years to be honest.' His grin was attractive.

'And what would you have done then?'

'What I'll do now - listen.'

It was a clever thing to say, he was leaving it all to her.

'Well, I just wanted to come and see you,' she said a little uncertainly.

'Absolutely,' he said.

'To know what you looked like.'

'And now you do.' He was warm as he said it, he was warm and welcoming. 'What do you think?' he asked.

'You look fine,' she said reluctantly.

'And so do you, very fine,' he said.

'I only just found out, you see,' she explained.

'I see.'

'So, that's why I had to come and talk to you.'

'Sure, sure.' He had poured them coffee and left her to add milk and sugar if she wished.

'You see, until this week I honestly thought I was Mam and Dad's daughter. It's been a bit of a shock.'

'Fran didn't tell you that she was your mother?'

'No, she didn't.'

'Well, when you were younger I can understand, but when you were older, surely…?'

'No, she thought I sort of understood, but I didn't. I thought she was just a marvellous elder sister. I wasn't too bright, you see.'

'You look fine and bright to me.' He seemed genuinely to admire her.

'I'm not, as it happens. I'm a hard worker and I'll get there in the end, but I don't have quick leaps of understanding, not like my friend Harriet. I'm a bit of a plodder.'

'So am I, as it happens. You take after your father then.'

It was such an extraordinary moment there in this office. He was admitting he was her father. She felt almost light-headed. But she had no idea where to go now. He had taken away all her arguments. She thought he would have blustered, and denied things and excused himself. But he had done nothing like this.

'You wouldn't have got a job like this if you were just a plodder.'

'My wife is very wealthy, I am a charming plodder, I don't upset people. In a way that's why I am here.'

'But you got to be an accountant all by yourself before you met her, didn't you?'

'Yes, I got to be an accountant, not here exactly. And I hope you'll meet my wife one day, Katherine. You'll like her, she's a very, very nice woman.'

'It's Kathy, and I couldn't like her. I am sure she is very nice, but she wouldn't want to meet me.'

'Yes, if I tell her I would like it. We do things to please each other, I would meet someone to please her.'

'But she doesn't know I exist.'

'Yes, she does. I told her, a long time ago. I didn't know your name but I told her that I had a daughter, a daughter I didn't see, but would probably meet when she was grown up.'

'You didn't know my name?'

'No. When all the business happened Fran said she would just tell me if it was a girl or a boy, that was all.'

'That was the deal?' Kathy said.

'You put it very well. That was the deal.'

'She's very kind about you, she thinks you were great in all this.'

'And what message does she send me?' He was very relaxed, gentle, not watchful or anything.

'She has no idea I'm here.'

'Where does she think you are?'

'At school up in Mountainview.'

'Mountainview? Is that where you are?'

- 'There isn't much money out of four thousand pounds sixteen years ago to send me to a posh place,' Kathy said with spirit.

'So you know about the deal?'

'I heard it all at the same time, in one night. I realised she was not my sister and that you had sold me.'

'Is that how she put it?'

'No. It's how it is, she puts it differently,'

'I'm very sorry. It must have been a bad, bleak kind of thing to hear.'

Kathy looked at him. That's exactly what it had been. Bleak. She had thought about the unfairness of the deal. Her mother was poor, and could be paid off. Her father was the son of privileged people and didn't have to pay for his fun. It had made her think the system was always loaded against people like her, and always would be. Odd that he understood exactly the feeling.

'Yes, it was. It is.'

'Well, tell me what you want from me. Tell me and we can talk about it.'

She had been going to demand everything under the sun for Fran and for herself. She had been going to make him realise that it was too late in the twentieth century for the rich to get away with everything. But somehow it wasn't easy to say all this to the man who sat easily and warmly giving every impression of being pleased to see her rather than horrified.

'I'm not sure yet what I want. It's all a bit soon.'

'I know. You haven't had time to work out how you feel yet.' He didn't look relieved or off the hook, he sounded sympathetic.

'It's still hard for me to take in, you see.'

'And for me, meeting you too. That's hard to take in.' He was putting himself in the same boat.

'Aren't you annoyed I came?'

'No, you couldn't be more wrong. I'm delighted you came to see me. I'm only sorry that life was hard up to now and then it got worse with this shock. That's what I feel.'

She felt a lump in her throat. He couldn't have been more different than she had thought. Was it possible that this man was her father? That if things had been different he and Fran would have been married and she would be their eldest girl?

He took out a business card and wrote a number on it. 'This is my direct line. Ring this and you won't have to go through the whole system,' he said. It seemed almost too slick, as if he were arranging not to have explanations. Avoiding the people at work knowing about his nasty little secret.

'Aren't you afraid I might ring you at home?' she asked, sorry to break the mood of his niceness but determined that she would not allow herself to be conned by him.

He still had his pen in his hand. 'I was about to write down my home number as well. You can call me any time.'

'And what about your wife?'

'Marianne will be happy to speak to you too, of course. I shall tell her tonight that you came to see me.'

'You're very cool, aren't you?' Kathy said with a mixture of admiration and resentment.

'I'm calm, I suppose, on the exterior, but inside I'm very excited. Who wouldn't be? To meet a handsome grown-up daughter for the first time and to realise that it was because of me you came into the world.'

'And do you ever think of my mother?'

'I thought of her for a while, as we all think of our first love, and more than that because of what happened and because you had been born. But then since it wasn't going to happen, I went on and thought of other things and other people.'

It was the truth, Kathy couldn't deny that.

'What will I call you?' she asked suddenly.

'You call Fran, Fran, can't you call me Paul?'

'I'll come and see you again, Paul,' she said, standing up to leave.

'Any time you want me I'll be here, Kathy,' said her father.

They put out a hand each but when they touched he drew her to him and hugged her. Tt will be different from now on, Kathy,' he said, 'Different and better.'

As she went back to school in the bus Kathy scraped off her lipstick and eyeshadow. She rolled up Harriet's mother's jacket in to the canvas bag and went along to rejoin the classes.

'Well?' hissed Harriet.

'Nothing.'

'What do you mean nothing?'

'Nothing happened.'

'You mean you took all that gear and went to his office and he didn't touch you?'

'He sort of hugged me,' Kathy said.

'I expect he's impotent,' Harriet said wisely. 'In the magazines you always hear of women writing in about that sort of thing, there seems to be a lot of it about.'

'It could be, I suppose,' said Kathy, and took out her geography text book.

Mr. O'Brien, who still took senior geography even though he was Principal, looked at her over his half glasses. 'Your flu better all of a sudden, Kathy?' he said suspiciously.

'Yes, thank God, Mr. O'Brien,' Kathy said. It wasn't actually rude or defiant, but she spoke to him as an equal not a pupil.

That child had come on a lot since the beginning of term, he said to himself. He wondered had it anything to do with the Italian classes, which by some miracle had proved not to be the total disaster he had predicted but a huge success.

Mam had gone to Bingo, Dad was at the pub. Fran was at home in the kitchen.

'You're a bit late, Kathy. Everything all right?'

'Sure, I took a bit of a walk. I learned all the parts of the body for class tonight. You know, she's going to put us into pairs and ask Dov'è il gomito and you have to touch your partner's elbow.'

Fran was pleased to see her happy. 'Will I make us a toasted sandwich to give us energy for all this?'

'Great. Do you know the feet?'

'I piedi. I learned them at lunchtime,' Fran grinned. 'We're going to be teacher's pets, you and I.'

'I went to see him today,' Kathy said.

'Who?'

'Paul Malone.'

Fran sat down. 'You're not serious.'

'He was very nice, very nice indeed. He gave me his card. Look, he gave me his direct line and his home number.'

'I don't think it was a wise thing to do,' Fran said eventually.

'Well, he seemed quite pleased. In fact he said he was glad I did.'

'He did?'

'Yes. And he said I could come any time and go to his house and meet his wife if I wanted to.' Fran's face seemed empty suddenly. As if all the life had gone out of it. It was as if someone had put a hand into her head and switched something off. Kathy was puzzled. 'Well, aren't you pleased? There was no row, no scene, just normal and natural as you said it was. He understood that it had all been a bit of a shock, and he said from now on it would be different. Different and better, those were his words.'

Fran nodded, it was as if she wasn't able to speak. She nodded again and got out the words. 'Yes, that's good. Good.'

'Why aren't you glad? I thought this is what you'd like.'

'You have every right to get in touch with him and to be part of all he has. I never meant to deny you that.'

'It isn't a question of that.'

'It is a question of that. You're right to feel short-changed when you see a man like that who has everything, tennis courts, swimming pools, chauffeurs probably.'

'That's not what I was looking for,' Kathy began.

'And then you come back to a house like this, and go to a school like Mountainview and you're meant to think that going to some bloody evening class that I scrimp and save for is a treat. No wonder you hope things are going to be… what is it, different and better?'

Kathy looked at her in horror. Fran thought she wanted Paul Malone instead of her. That she had been swayed and dazzled by a momentary meeting with a man she had not heard of until a few days ago.

'It's only better because now I know everything. Nothing else will change,' she tried to explain.

'Of course.' Fran was clipped and tight now. She was spreading the cheese on bread, with two slices of tomato each and putting it under the grill as if she were a robot.

'Fran, stop. I don't want any of that. Listen, don't you understand? I had to see him. You were right, he's not a monster, he's nice.'

'I'm glad I told you.' f

'But you've got it wrong. Look, ring him yourself, ask him. It's not that I want to be with him rather than you. It's only just to see him the odd time. That's all. Talk to him on the phone then you'll understand.'

'No.'

'Why? Why not? Now that I've sort of paved the way.'

'Sixteen years ago I made a bargain. There was a deal I would not contact them again, and I never did.'

'But I didn't make that deal.'

'No, and am I criticising you? I said you had every right. Isn't that what I said?' Fran served them the cheese on toast and poured a glass of milk each.

Kathy felt inexpressibly sad. This kind woman had slaved for her, making sure that there was everything she needed. There would have been no pints of nice cold milk at the ready, no hot suppers cooked, if it were not for Fran. Now she had even let slip that she had scrimped and saved for the Italian classes. No wonder she was hurt and upset at the thought that Kathy might, after all this sacrifice, be prepared to forget the years of love and commitment. That she might be blinded by the unaccustomed thought of access to real wealth and comfort.

'We should go now for the bus,' Kathy said.

'Sure, if you want to.'

'Of course I want to.'

'Right then.' Fran put on a coat which had seen better days. She changed into her good shoes, which weren't all that good. Kathy remembered the soft Italian leather shoes that her father wore. She knew that they were very, very expensive.

'Avanti,' she said. And they ran for the bus.

At the lesson Fran was paired with Luigi. His dark menacing frown seemed somehow more sinister than ever tonight.

'Dov'è il cuore'?' Luigi asked. His Dublin accent made it hard to know which part of the body he was talking about. ','/ cuore,' said Luigi again, annoyed. ','/ cuore, the most important part of the body, for God's sake.'

Fran looked at him vaguely. 'Non so,' she said.

'Of course you know where your bloody cuore is.' Luigi was getting more unpleasant by the moment.

Signora helped her out. 'Con calma per favore,' Signora came in to make the peace. She lifted Fran's hand and put it on her heart. 'Ecco il cuore.'

'It took you long enough to find it,' Luigi grumbled.

Signora looked at Fran. She was quite different tonight. Normally she was part of everything and encouraging the child to participate as well.

Signora had checked with Peggy Sullivan. 'Did you tell me that Miss Clarke was the mother of the sixteen-year-old girl?' she asked.

'Yes, she had her when she was only that age herself. Her mam brought the girl up, but she's Miss Clarke's child, it's well known.'

Signora realised that it had not been known to Kathy. But they were both different this week. Perhaps it was known now. Guiltily she hoped she had played no part in it.

Kathy waited a week before she called Paul Malone on his private line.

'Is this a good time to talk?' she asked.

'I have someone with me at the moment but I do want to speak, so please can you hold on a moment?' She heard him getting rid of someone else. An important person maybe. A well-known personality, for all she knew.

'Kathy?' His voice was warm and welcoming.

'Did you mean it that we could meet somewhere sometime, not rushed like in an office?'

'Of course I meant it. Will you have lunch with me?'

'Thank you, when?'

'Tomorrow. Do you know Quentin's?'

'I know where it is.'

'Great. Will we say one o'clock? Does that fit in with school?'

'I'll make it fit in with school.' She was grinning and she felt him smile too.

'Sure, but I don't want you getting into trouble.'

'No, I'll be fine.'

'I'm glad you rang,' he said.

She washed her hair that night and dressed with care, her best school blouse and she had taken the stain remover to her blazer.

'You're meeting him today,' Fran said as she watched Kathy polish her shoes.

'I've always said you should have been in Interpol,' Kathy said.

'No, you've never said that.'

'It's just for lunch.'

'I told you, it's your right if you want to. Where are you going?'

'Quentin's.' She had to tell the truth. Fran would have to know sooner or later. She wished he hadn't picked somewhere quite as posh, somewhere so far from their ordinary world.

Fran managed to find the words of encouragement. 'Well, that will be nice, enjoy it. All of it.'

Kathy realised how little part in their lives Mam and Dad seemed to play these days, they were just there in the background. Had it always been like that and she just hadn't noticed? She told the duty teacher that she had a dentist's appointment.

'You have to show these in writing,' the teacher said.

'I know, but I was so frightened thinking about it I forgot to take the card. Can I bring it to you tomorrow?'

'All right, all right.'

Kathy realised that it had paid off to have been a good hardworking pupil all those years. She was not one of the school troublemakers. She could get away with anything now.

Naturally she told Harriet that she was skipping classes.

'Where are you going this time? To dress up as a nurse for him?' Harriet wanted to know.

'No, just to lunch in Quentin's,' she said proudly.

Harriet's jaw fell open. 'Now you are joking.'

'Not a bit of it, I'll bring you back the menu this afternoon.'

'You have the most exciting sex life of anyone I ever met,' Harriet said in envy.

It was dark and cool and very elegant.

A good looking woman in a dark suit came forward to meet her.

'Good afternoon, I'm Brenda Brennan and you're most welcome. Are you meeting somebody?'

Kathy wished she could be like this, she wished that Fran could. Confident and assured. Maybe her father's wife was like this. Something you had to be born to, not something that could be learned. Still, you could learn to pretend to be confident.

'I am meeting a Mr. Paul Malone. He said he'd book a table for one o'clock, I'm a little early.'

'Let me show you to Mr. Malone's table. A drink while you're waiting?'

Kathy ordered a Diet Coke. It came in a Waterford Crystal glass with ice and slices of lemon. She must remember every moment of it for Harriet.

He came in nodding to this table and smiling at that one. A man stood up to shake his hand. By the time he got to her he had greeted half the place.

'You look different, lovely,' he said.

'Well, at least I'm not wearing my friend's mother's jacket and a ton of make-up to get past reception,' she laughed.

'Should we order quickly? Do you have to rush back?'

'No, I'm at the dentist, it can take ages. Do you have to rush back?'

'No, not at all.'

They got the menus and Ms Brennan came to explain the dishes of the day. 'We have a nice insalata di mare,' she began.

'Gamberi, calamari?' Kathy asked before she could stop herself. Only last night they had been doing all the sea food… 'Gamheri, prawns, calamari, squid…'

Both Paul and Brenda Brennan looked at her in surprise.

'I'm showing off. I go to Italian evening classes.'

'I'd show off if I knew all that off the top of my head," Ms Brennan said. 'I had to learn them from my friend Nora who helps us write the menus when we have Italian dishes.' They seemed to look at her admiringly, or maybe she was just getting big-headed.

Paul had his usual, which was a glass of wine mixed with mineral water.

'You didn't have to bring me to somewhere as smart as this,' she said.

'I'm proud of you, I wanted to show you off.'

'Well, it's just Fran thinks… I suppose she's jealous that I can go to somewhere like this with you. I'd never go anywhere except Colonel Sanders or MacDonalds with her.'

'She'd understand. I just wanted to bring you somewhere nice to celebrate.'

'She says it's my right and she said I was to enjoy it all. That's what she said this morning, but I think in her heart she's a bit upset.'

'Does she have anyone else, any boyfriend or anything?' he asked. Kathy looked up surprised. 'What I'm trying to say… it's none of my business but I hope she has. I'd hoped she would have married and given you sisters and brothers. But if you don't want to tell me then don't, because as I say I don't have any right to ask.'

'There was Ken.'

'And was it serious?'

'You'd never know. Or at least I'd never know, because I see nothing, understand nothing. But they went out a lot, and she used to laugh when he came to the house in the car to collect her.'

'And where is he now?'

'He went to America,' Kathy said.

'Was she sorry, do you think?'

'Again I don't know. He writes from time to time. Not so much lately but he did a lot in the summer.'

'Could she have gone?'

'It's funny you should say that… she asked me once if I'd like to go and live in some small town in the backwoods of America. It's not New York City or anywhere. And I said Lord no, give me Dublin any day, at least it's a capital city.'

'Do you think she didn't go with Ken because of you?'

'I never thought of that. But then all that time I thought she was my sister. Perhaps that could have had something to do with it.' She looked troubled now and guilty.

'Stop worrying about it, if it's anyone's fault it's mine.' He had read her thoughts.

'I asked her to ring you but she won't.'

'Why? Did she give a reason?'

'She said because of the deal… she was going to keep her part of the bargain, you kept yours.'

'She was always straight as a die,' he said.

'So it looks as if you two will never talk.'

'We'll never get together and walk into the sunset, that's for sure, because we're both different people now. I love Marianne and she may or may not love Ken, or she'll love someone else. But we will talk, I'll see to that. Now you and I are going to have a real lunch as well as solving the problems of the world.'

He was right, there wasn't much more to be said. They talked of school and show business, and the marvellous Italian classes, and his two children who were seven and six.

As they paid the bill the woman at the cash desk looked at her with interest. 'Excuse me, but is that a Mountainview blazer you're wearing?' Kathy looked guilty. 'It's just that my husband teaches there, that's how I recognise it,' she continued.

'Oh really, what's his name?'

'Aidan Dunne.'

'Oh, Mr. Dunne's very nice, he teaches Latin and he set up the Italian classes,' she told Paul.

'And your name…?' the woman behind the desk asked.

'Will be for ever a mystery. Girls who take time off for lunch don't want tales brought back to their teachers.' Paul Malone's smile was charming but his voice was steely. Nell Dunne at the cash desk knew she was being criticised for taking too much interest. She just hoped that Ms Brennan hadn't overheard.

'Don't tell me about it,' Harriet yawned. 'You had oysters and caviar,'

'No. I had carciofi and lamb. Mr. Dunne's wife was on the cash desk, she recognised the blazer.'

'Now you're done for,' said Harriet with a smirk.

'Not a bit of it, I didn't tell her who I was.'

'She'll know. You'll be caught.'

'Stop saying that, you don't want me to be caught, you want me to go on having these adventures.'

'Kathy Clarke, I tell you if I had been burned at the stake I'd have said you were the last person on earth to have adventures.'

'That's the way it goes,' said Kathy cheerfully.

'Personal call for Miss Clarke on line three,' went the tannoy. Fran looked up in surprise. She moved into the surveillance room, a place where they could see shoppers without being seen themselves.

She pressed the button and got line three. 'Miss Clarke, Supervisor,' she said.

'Paul Malone,' said the voice.

'Yes?'

I'd love to talk. I don't suppose you'd like to meet?'

'You're right, Paul. No bitterness, just no point.'

'Fran, can I talk to you a little on the phone?'

'It's a busy time.'

'It's always a busy time for busy people.'

'Well, you've said it.'

'But what's more important than Kathy?'

'To me, nothing.'

'And she is hugely important to me too, but…'

'But you don't want to get too involved.'

'Absolutely wrong. I would love to get as involved as I can, but you brought her up, you made her what she is, you are the person who cares for her most in the world. I don't want to muscle in suddenly. I want you to tell me what would be best for her.'

'Do you think I know? How could I know? I want everything in the world for her, but I can't get it. If you can get more, then do it, get it, give it to her.'

'She thinks the world of you, Fran.'

'She's pretty taken with you too.'

'She's only known about me a week or two, she's known you all her life.'

'Don't break her heart, Paul. She's a great girl, she's had such a shock. I thought she sort of knew, guessed, absorbed it or something. It's not such an unusual situation around here. But apparently not.'

'No, but she's coped with it. She's got your genes. She can cope with things, fair or unfair.'

'And yours too, lots of courage.'

'So what will we do, Fran?'

'We have to leave it to her.'

'She can have as much of me as she wants, but I promise you I won't try to take her away from you.'

'I know.' There was a silence.

'And are things… well, all right?'

'Yeah, they're, well, all right.'

'She tells me you're both learning Italian, she spoke Italian in the restaurant today.'

'Good for her,' Fran sounded pleased.

'Didn't we do well in a way, Fran?'

'We sure did,' she said, and hung up before she burst into tears.

'What are carciofi, Signora?' Kathy asked at Italian class. 'Artichokes, Caterina. Why do you ask?'

'I went to a restaurant and they had them on the menu.'

'I wrote that menu for my friend Brenda Brennan,' Signora said proudly. 'Was it Quentin's?'

'That's right, but don't tell Mr. Dunne. His wife works there, a bit of a prune, I think.'

'I believe so,' said Signora.

'Oh, by the way, Signora, you know the way you said you thought Fran was my mother and I said she was my sister?'

'Yes, yes…' Signora was ready to apologise.

'You were quite right, I hadn't understood,' Kathy said, as if it were the most natural mistake in the world anyone could have made, mistaking a mother for a sister.

'Well, it's good to have it all sorted out.'

'I think it is good,' Kathy said.

'It must be.' Signora was serious. 'She's so young, and so nice and you'll have her around for years and years, much longer than if she were an older mother.'

'Yes. I wish she'd get married, then I wouldn't feel so responsible for her.'

'She may in time.'

'But I think she missed her chance. He went to America. I think she stayed because of me.'

'You could write to him,' said Signora.

Signora's friend Brenda Brennan was thrilled to hear how well the classes were going. 'I had one of your little pupils in the other day, well, she was wearing a Mountainview blazer and said that she was learning Italian.'

'Did she have artichokes?'

'How do you know these things, you must be psychic!'

'That's Kathy Clarke… She's the only child, the rest of them are grown ups. She said that Aidan Dunne's wife works there. Is that right?'

'Oh, this is the Aidan you talk about so much. Yes, Nell is the cashier. Odd sort of woman, I don't know what she's at, to be honest.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, highly efficient, honest, quick. Nice mechanical smile at the customers, remembers their names. But she's miles away.'

'Miles away where?'

'I think she's having an affair,' Brenda said eventually.

'Never. Who with?'

'I don't know, she's s

'Well, well.'

Brenda shrugged it off. 'So if you're thinking of making a play for her husband, go ahead, the wife isn't going to be able to cast any stones at you.'

'Heavens, Brenda, what an idea. At my age. But tell me, who was Kathy Clarke having lunch with in your elegant restaurant?'

'It's funny… she was with Paul Malone, you know, or maybe you wouldn't, very trendy accountant married to all that Hayes money. Buckets of charm.'

'And Kathy was with him?'

'I know. She could have been his daughter,' Brenda said. 'But honestly, the longer I work in this business the less surprised I am about anything.'

'Paul?'

'Kathy, it's been ages.'

'Will you come to have lunch with me, my treat? Not Quentin's.'

'Sure, where do you suggest?'

'I won a voucher at Italian class to this place, lunch for two including wine.'

'I can't have you missing school like this.'

'Well, I was going to suggest a Saturday, unless that's a problem.'

'It's never a problem, I told you that.'

She showed him the prize she had won at the Italian class. Paul Malone said he was very pleased to have been chosen as her guest.

'I want to put something to you. It's got a bit to do with money but it's not begging.'

'You put it to me,' he said.

She told him about this flight to New York for Christmas. Ken would pay most of it but he literally didn't have all of it and he couldn't borrow out there; it wasn't like here where people sort of lived on credit.

'Tell me about it,' said Paul Malone the accountant.

'He was so pleased when I wrote and told him that I knew about everything now, and I was so sorry if I had stood in their way. He wrote back and said that he loved Fran to bits and that he had been thinking of coming back to Ireland for her but he felt he would have messed it up all ways if he did that. Honestly, Paul, I couldn't let you see the letter because it's private but you'd love it, you really would, you'd be pleased for her.'

'I know I would.'

'So I'll tell you exactly how much it is. It's about three hundred pounds. I know it's enormous. And I know all that's in this building society account Fran has for me, so you see it's only a loan. When we get them together I can give it straight back to you.'

'How will we give it so that it doesn't look the way it is?'

'You'll do it.'

'I'd give you anything, Kathy, and your mother too. But you can't take away people's pride.'

'Could we send it to Ken?'

'That might be taking away his pride.'

There was a silence. The waiter came to ask were they enjoying the meal.

'Benissimo,' Kathy said.

'My… my young friend has taken me here on a voucher she won at Italian class,' Paul Malone said.

'You must be clever,' said the waiter.

'No, I'm just good at winning things,' Kathy said.

Paul looked as if an idea had just struck him. 'That's it, you could win a couple of air tickets,' he suggested.

'How could I do that?'

'Well, you won us two lunches here.'

'That's because Signora organised it that someone in the class should get a prize.'

'Well, maybe I could organise it that someone could win two air tickets.'

'It would be cheating.'

'It would be better than being patronising.'

'Can I think about it?'

'Don't think too long, we have to set up this imaginary competition.'

'And should we tell Ken?'

don't think so,' said Paul. 'What do you think?'

'I don't think he has any need to know the whole scenario,' Kathy said. It was a phrase Harriet used a lot.

O C

When Lou was fifteen, three men with sticks had come into his parents' shop, taken all the cigarettes, the contents of the till and, as the family cowered behind the counter, there came the noise of a Garda car.

Quick as a flash Lou said to the biggest of the men, 'Out the back, over the wall.'

'What's in it for you?' the fellow hissed.

'Take the fags, leave the money. Go.'

And that's exactly what they did.

The Guards were furious. 'How did they know there was a back way?'

'They must have known the area,' Louis shrugged.

His father was very angry indeed. 'You let them away with it, you bloody let them away, the Guards could have had them in gaol if it hadn't been for you.'

'Get real, Da.' Lou always spoke like a gangster anyway. 'What's the point? The prisons are full, they'd get the Probation Act, and they'd come back and smash the place up. This way they owe us. It's like paying protection money.'

'Living in a bloody jungle,' his father said. But Lou was certain he had done the right thing, and secretly his mother agreed with him.

'No point in attracting trouble,' was her motto. Delivering aggressive thieves with sticks to the Guards would have been attracting trouble as far as she was concerned.

Six weeks later a man came in to buy cigarettes. About thirty, burly with a nearly shaved head. It was after school and Lou was serving.

'What's your name?' the man asked.

Lou recognised the voice as the one that had asked him what was in it for him. 'Lou,' he said.

'Do you know me, Lou?'

Lou looked him straight in the eye. 'Not from a bar of soap,' he said.

'Good lad, Lou, you'll be hearing from us.' And the man who had taken over fifty packets of cigarettes six weeks ago while waving a stick paid nice and politely for his packet. Not long after, the big man came in with a plastic bag. 'Leg of lamb for your mother, Lou,' he said and left.

'We won't say a thing to your father,' she said, and cooked it for their Sunday lunch.

Lou's father would have said that they would not appreciate someone distributing the contents of their shop around the neighbourhood like some modern day Robin Hood, and presumably the butcher's shop that had been done over felt the same.

Lou and his mother thought it easier not to go too far down that road. Lou thought of the big man as Robin Hood and when he saw him around the place he would just nod at him. 'Howaya.'

And the big man would laugh back at him and say, 'How's it going, Lou?'

In a way Lou hoped that Robin would get in touch again. He knew that the debt had been paid by the gift of the lamb. But he felt excited at the thought of being so close to the underworld. He wished Robin would give him some kind of task. He didn't want to do a smash and grab himself. And he couldn't drive a getaway car. But he did want to be involved in something exciting.

The call didn't come while he was at school. Lou was not a natural student, at sixteen he was out of the classroom and into the Job Centre without very much hope there either. One of the first people he saw was Robin studying the notices on the board.

'Howaya, Robin,' Lou said, forgetting that was only a made up name.

'What do you mean, Robin?' the man asked.

'I have to call you something. I don't know your name so that's what I call you.'

'Is it some kind of a poor joke?' The man looked very bad-tempered indeed.

'No, it's like Robin Hood, you know the fellow…' his voice trailed away. Lou didn't want to talk about Merry Men in case Robin thought he might be saying he was gay, he didn't want to say a band or a gang. Why had he ever said the name at all?

'As long as it's not a reference to people robbing things…'

'Oh God no, NO,' Lou said, as if such an idea was utterly repulsive.

'Well then,' Robin seemed mollified.

'What is your real name?'

'Robin will do fine, now that we know there's no misunderstanding.'

'None, none.'

'Good, well how are things, Lou?'

'Not great, I had a job in a warehouse but they had stupid rules about smoking.'

'I know, they're all the same.' Robin was sympathetic. He could read the story of a boy's first job ending after a week. It was probably his own.

'I'll tell you, there's a job here.' He pointed at an advertisement offering a cleaning job in a cinema.

'It's for girls, isn't it?'

'It doesn't say, you can't say nowadays.'

'But it would be a desperate job.' Lou was disappointed that Robin thought so little of him as to point him in such a lowly direction.

'It could have its compensations,' Robin said, looking vaguely into the distance.

'What would they be?'

'It could mean leaving doors open.'

'Every night? Wouldn't they cop on?'

'Not if the bolt was just pulled slightly back.'

'And then?'

'And then if other people, say, wanted to go in and out, they would have a week to do so.'

'And after that?'

'Well, whoever had that cleaning job could move on in a bit, not too quickly, but in a bit. And would find that people were very grateful to him.'

Lou was so excited he could hardly breathe. It was happening. Robin was including him in his gang. Without another word he went up to the counter and filled in the forms for the post as cleaner.

'Whatever made you take a job like that?' his father said.

'Someone's got to do it,' Lou shrugged.

He cleaned the seats and picked up the litter. He cleaned the lavatories and used scouring powder to get rid of the graffiti. Each evening he loosened the bolt on the big back door. Robin didn't even have to tell him which, it was quite obvious that this was the only way that people could get in.

The manager was a nervous, fussy little man. He told Lou that the world was a wicked place now, totally different from when he was growing up.

'True enough,' Lou said. He didn't engage in much conversation. He didn't want to be remembered one way or another after the event.

The event happened four days later. Thieves had got in, broken into the little covered-in cash desk and got away with the night's takings. They had sawn through a bolt, apparently. They must have been able to reach through a crack in the door. The Guards asked was there any way that the door could have been left unlocked but the nervous fussy manager, who was by this stage nearly hysterical and confirmed in his belief of the wickedness of the world, said that was ridiculous. He always checked at night and why would they have had all the sawing if they had got in an open door. Lou realised they organised that to protect him. Nobody could finger the new cleaner as being the inside contact.

He stayed on at the cinema, carefully locking the newly fitted bolt for two weeks to prove that he was in no way connected. Then he told the manager he had got a better position.

'You weren't the worst of them,' the manager said, and Lou felt slightly ashamed because he knew that in a way he was the worst of them. His predecessors hadn't opened the doors to admit the burglars. But there was no point whatsoever in feeling guilty about that now. What was done was done. It was a matter of waiting to see what happened next.

What happened next was that Robin came in to buy a pack of cigarettes and handed him an envelope. His father was in the shop so Lou took it quietly without comment. Only when he was alone did he open it. There were ten ten-pound notes. A hundred pounds for loosening a bolt four nights in succession. As Robin had promised, people were being grateful to him.

Lou never asked Robin for a job. He went about his own work, taking bits here and there. He felt sure that if he were needed he would be called on. But he longed to run into the big man again. He never saw Robin any more at the Job Centre.

He felt sure that Robin was involved in the job at the supermarket where they had got almost the entire contents of the off licence into a van and away within an hour of late closing. The security firm just couldn't believe it. There was no evidence of an inside job.

Lou wondered how Robin had managed it, and where he stashed what he stole. He must have premises somewhere. He had gone up in the world since the time years ago when he had come into their shop. Lou had only been fifteen. Now he was nearly nineteen. And in all that time he had only done one job for big Robin.

He met him again unexpectedly at a disco. It was a noisy place and Lou hadn't met any girls he fancied. More truthfully he hadn't met any girls who fancied him. He couldn't understand it, he was being as nice as anything, smiling, buying them drinks, but they went for mean-looking fellows, people who scowled and frowned. It was then he saw Robin dancing with a most attractive girl. The more she smiled and shimmered at him the deeper and darker and more menacing Robin appeared to be. Maybe this was the secret. Lou practised his frown as he stood at the bar, frowning at himself in the mirror, and Robin came up behind him.

'Looking well, Lou?'

'Good to see you again, Robin.'

'I like you, Lou, you're not a pushy person.'

'Not much point. Take it easy, I always say.'

'I hear there was a bit of trouble in your parents' shop the other day.'

How had Robin heard that? 'There was, kids, brats.'

'Well they've been dealt with, the hide has been beaten off them, they won't touch the place again. Small call to our friends the Cardai telling them where the stuff can be found, should be sorted out tomorrow.'

'That's very good of you, Robin, I appreciate it.'

'Not at all, it's a pleasure.' he said. Lou waited. 'Working at the moment?'

'Nothing that can't be altered if needs be,' Lou said.

'Busy place here, isn't it?' Robin nodded at the bar where they stood. Ten-pound notes and twenty-pound notes were flashing back and forward. The night's takings would be substantial.

'Yeah, I'd say they have two guys and an Alsatian to take all that to a night safe.'

'As it happens they don't,' said Robin. Lou waited again. 'They have this van that drives the staff home, about three in the morning, and the last to be left off is the manager, who looks as if he's carrying a duffel bag with his gear in it but that's the takings.'

'And does he put it in a safe?'

'No, he takes it home and someone comes to his house to pick it up a bit later and they put it in a safe.'

'Bit complicated, isn't it?'

'Yeah, but this is a tough kind of an area.' Robin shook his head disapprovingly. 'No one would want to be driving a security van round here, too dangerous.' Robin frowned darkly, as if this were a monstrous shadow over their lives.

'And most people don't know this set-up, about the manager with the sports bag?'

'I don't believe it's generally known at all.'

'Not even to the driver of the van?'

'No, not at all.'

'And what would people need, do you think?'

'Someone to reverse in front of the van accidentally, and-prevent the van leaving the lane for about five minutes.' Lou nodded. 'Someone who has a car and a clean driving licence and a record of coming here regularly.'

'That would be a good idea.'

'You have a car?'

'Sadly no, Robin, a licence yes, a record of coming here but not a car.'

'Were you thinking of buying one?'

'I was indeed, a second-hand car… thinking a lot, but it hasn't been possible.'

'Until now.' Robin raised a glass to him.

'Until now,' Lou said. He knew he must do nothing until he heard from Robin. He felt very pleased that Robin had said he liked him. He frowned vaguely at a girl nearby and she asked him to dance. Lou hadn't felt so good for a long time

Next day his father said that you wouldn't believe it but the Guards had found every single thing that had been taken by those young pups. Wasn't it a miracle? Three days later a letter and hire purchase agreement form came from a garage. Mr. Lou Lynch had paid a deposit of two thousand pounds and agreed to pay a monthly sum. The car could be picked up and the agreement signed within the next three days.

'I'm thinking of getting a car,' Lou told his parents.

'That's great,' said his mother.

'Bloody marvellous what people can do on the dole,' his father said.

'I'm not on the dole as it happens,' Lou said, stung.

He was working in a big electrical appliances store, carrying fridges and microwaves out to the back of people's cars. He had always hoped it might be the kind of place where Robin would come and find him. How could he have guessed it would be in a discotheque?

He drove his car around proudly. He took his mother out to Glendalough one Sunday morning, and she told him that when she was a young girl she always dreamed that she might meet a fellow with a car but it never happened.

'Well, it's happened now, Mam,' he said soothingly.

'Your Da thinks you're on the take, Lou, he says there's no way you could have a car like this on what you earn.'

'And what do you think Ma?'

'I don't think at all, son,' she said.

'And neither do I, Ma,' he said.

It was six weeks before he ran into Robin again. He called to the big store and bought a television. Lou carried it to his car for him.

'Been going to that disco regularly?'

'Twice, three times a week. They know me by name now.'

'Bit of a dump though.'

'Still. You've got to dance somewhere, drink somewhere.' Lou knew that Robin liked people to be relaxed.

'Very fair point. I was wondering if you'd be there tonight?'

'Certainly I will.'

'And maybe not drink anything because of breathalysers.'

'I think a night on the mineral water's very good for everyone from time to time.'

'Maybe I'd show you a good place to park the car there tonight.'

'That would be great.' He asked no other details, that was his strength. Robin seemed to like him wanting as little information as possible.

About ten o'clock that night he parked the car where Robin indicated. He could see how it would obstruct the exit from the alley into the main road if he pulled out. He realised he would be in full view of everyone in the staff van. The car would have to stall.

And refuse to start despite his apparent best efforts. But there were about five hours before that happened.

So he went into the disco, and within fifteen minutes he met the first girl that he ever thought he could love and live with for the rest of his life. Her name was Suzi and she was a tall, stunning redhead. It was her first time at the disco, she told him. But she was beginning to vegetate at home in her flat, and she decided she would go out and see what the night brought.

And the night had brought Lou. They danced and they talked, and she said she loved that he drank mineral water, so many fellows just stank of beer. And he said he did drink beer sometimes but not in great quantities.

She worked in a cafe in Temple Bar, she told him. They liked the same kind of films and they liked the same music and they loved curries and they didn't mind swimming in the cold sea in the summer and they each hoped to go to America one day. You can learn a lot about other people in four and a half hours if you are sober. And everything that Lou learned about Suzi he liked. Under normal circumstances he would have driven her home.

But these were not normal circumstances. And the only reason that he had a car at all was that the circumstances were so very far from normal.

I'd offer you a lift home but I have to meet this guy here a bit later.' Could he say that, or would it be suspicious later when he was questioned? Because questioned he would be. Could he walk her home and then come back? That might have been possible, but Robin wanted him to establish his presence as being on the scene all night.

I'd really like to see you again, Suzi,' he said.

'Well, I'd like that, too.'

'So will we say tomorrow night? Here, or somewhere quieter?'

'So is tonight over now?' Suzi asked.

'For me it is, but listen, tomorrow night can go on as long as we like it to.'

'Are you married?' Suzi asked.

'No, of course I'm not. Hey, I'm only twenty. Why would I be married?'

'Some people are.'

'I'm not. Will I see you tomorrow?'

'Where are you going now?'

'To the men's room.' -""' rf

'Do you do drugs, Lou?'

'Jesus, I don't. What is this, an interrogation?'

'It's just that you've been going to the loo all night.' It was true he had, just to get himself noticed, seen, remembered.

'No, I don't. Listen, sweetheart, you and I'll have a great night out tomorrow, go wherever you want, I mean it.'

'Yeah,' she said.

'No, not Yeah… Yes. I mean it.'

'Goodnight, Lou,' she said, hurt and annoyed. And picked up her jacket and walked out into the night.

He longed to run after her. Was there ever such bad timing? How miserably unfair it all was.

The minutes crept by until it was time for action, then he went to his car, the last to leave the club. He waited until the minivan filled and the lights went on. At that very moment he shot backwards in its path. Then he revved the engine over and over, flooding it, ensuring that it wouldn't start.

The operation worked like clockwork. Lou looked at none of it, all the time he played the part of a man desperate to start his car, and when he realised that dark figures had climbed a wall and got away he watched astounded as the scarlet-faced manager came running out crying help and wanting the Guards and panicking utterly.

Lou sat helpless in the car. 'I can't get it out of here, I'm trying.'

'He's one of them' shouted somebody, and strong hands held him, bouncers, barmen, until they realised who it was.

'Hey, that's Lou Lynch,' they said releasing him.

'What is all this, first my car won't start and then you all jump on me. What's happening?'

'The takings have been snatched, that's what's happened.' The manager knew his career was over. He knew there would be hours ahead with the Guards. And there were, for everybody.

One of the Guards recognised Lou's address. 'I was up there not long back, a crowd of kids broke in and stole all before them.'

'I know, Guard, and my parents were very grateful you retrieved it all.'

The Guard was pleased to be so publicly praised for what had been, after all, a tip-off out of the blue. Lou was regarded as the most unlucky accident to have happened for a long time. The staff told detectives that he was a very nice fellow, couldn't be involved in anything like that. He got a good report from the big electrical store, his car payments were up to date, he hadn't an ounce of alcohol in his body. Lou Lynch was in the clear.

But he didn't spend all the next day thinking about Robin and wondering when the next envelope would come and how much it would contain. He thought instead about the beautiful Suzi Sullivan. He would have to lie to her and tell her the official account of what had happened. He hoped she wasn't too annoyed with him.

He went to her restaurant in his lunch break with a red rose. 'Thank you for last night.'

There wasn't much of last night,' Suzi complained. 'You were such a little Cinderella we all had to come home early.'

'It won't happen tonight,' he said. 'Unless you want to, of course.'

'We'll see,' said Suzi darkly.

They met almost every night after that.

Lou wanted them to go back to the disco where they had met. He said that it was out of sentimental reasons. In reality it was because he didn't want the staff to think that he never came back again after the Incident.

He heard all about the Incident. Apparently four men with guns had got into the van and told them to lie down. They had taken everyone's carrier bag and left in minutes. Guns. Lou felt a bit sick in his stomach when he heard that. He had thought that Robin and his friends were still in sticks. But of course that was all five years ago, and the world had moved on. The manager lost his job, the system of banking the takings was changed, a huge van with barking dogs picked them up each night. You'd need an army to take that on.

It was three weeks later when he was leaving work that he saw Robin in the car park. There was again an envelope. Again Lou pocketed it without looking.

'Thank you very much,' he said.

'Aren't you going to see what's in it?' Robin seemed disappointed.

'No need to. You've treated me well in the past.'

'There's a thousand quid,' Robin said proudly.

That was something to get excited about. Lou opened the envelope and saw the notes. That's absolutely terrific,' he said.

'You're a good man, Lou, I like you,' said Robin, and drove away.

A thousand pounds in his pocket and the most beautiful redhead in the world waiting for him. Lou Lynch knew he was the luckiest man in the world.

His romance with Suzi developed nicely. He was able to buy her nice things and take her to good places with his stash of money. But it seemed to alarm her when he pulled out twenty-pound notes.

'Hey, Lou, where do you get money like that to throw around?'

'I work, don't I?'

'Yeah, and I know what they pay you in that place. That's the third twenty you've split this week.'

'Are you watching me?'

'I like you, of course I watch you,' she said.

'What are you looking for?'

'I'm hoping not to find that you're some sort of a criminal,' she said quite directly.

'Do I look the type?'

'That's not a yes or a no.'

'And there are some questions to which there are no yes and no answers,' Lou said.

'Okay, let me ask you this, are you involved in anything at the moment?'

'No.' He spoke from the heart.

'And do you plan to be?' There was a pause. 'We don't need it, Lou, you've got a job, I've got a job. Let's not get caught up in something messy.' She had beautiful creamy skin and huge dark green eyes.

'All right, I won't get involved in anything again,' he said.

And Suzi had the sense to let it rest there. She asked no questions about the past. The weeks went on and they saw more and more of each other, Suzi and Lou. She brought him to meet her parents one Sunday lunchtime.

He was surprised by where they lived.

'I thought you were posher than this place,' he said as they got off the bus.

'I made myself seem posher to get the job in the restaurant.'

Her father was not nearly as bad as she had said he was, he supported the right football team and he had cans of beer in the fridge.

Her mother worked in that supermarket that Robin and his friends had done over a while back. She told them the story, and how Miss Clarke the supervisor had always thought there must be someone in the shop who had left the door open for them but nobody knew who it was.

Lou listened, shaking his head at it all. Robin must have people all over the city loosening bolts, parking cars in strategic places. He looked at Suzi, smiling and eager. For the first time he hoped that Robin wouldn't contact him again.

'They liked you,' Suzi said, surprised, afterwards.

'Well, why not? I'm a nice fellow,' Lou said.

'My brother said you had a terrible frown but I told him it was a nervous tic and he was to shut up about it.'

'It's not a nervous tic, it's a deliberate attempt to look important,' Lou said crossly.

'Well, whatever it is, it was all they could find fault with so that's something. When am I going to meet yours?'

'Next week,' he said.

His mother and father were alarmed that he was bringing a girl to lunch. 'I suppose she's pregnant,' his father said.

'She most certainly is not, and there'll be none of that talk when she comes to the house.'

'What kind of things would she eat?' His mother was doubtful.

He tried to remember what he had to eat at the Sullivans' house. 'Chicken,' he said. 'She just loves a bit of chicken.' Even his mother could hardly destroy a chicken.

'They liked you,' he said to her afterwards, putting on exactly the same note of surprise as she had.

'That's good.' She pretended indifference but he knew she was pleased.

'You're the first, you see,' he explained.

'Oh, yeah?'

'No, I mean the first I brought home.'

She patted him on the hand. He had been very, very lucky to have met a girl like Suzi Sullivan.

At the beginning of September he met Robin by accident. But of course it wasn't by accident. Robin was parked near his parents' shop and just got out of the car.