Nathan stopped banging and looked up at her with big blue eyes, a double chin with drool dripping from it. “Dada,” he gurgled in response.

“Yes, you do look like your daddy,” Judith replied, getting to her feet. “Can I get you anything, Jack? A cup of tea, coffee, toast, earplugs?”

“Tea and toast, please. I’ve had enough coffee,” Jack replied, rubbing his face wearily as the banging of saucepans became almost unbearable.

“Nathan, stop,” Judith said firmly, flicking the switch on the kettle. “Come on, let’s change your diaper.”

She lifted him onto a diaper-changing facility in the kitchen and got to work, giving Nathan her house keys to amuse himself with.

Jack looked away, no longer feeling hungry.

“So why aren’t you at work?” Judith asked, holding two pudgy legs together at the ankles as though she were about to stuff a turkey.

“I took the day off.”

“Again?”

He didn’t answer.

“I spoke to Gloria yesterday and she said you’d taken the day off,” Judith explained.

“How did she know?”

Judith pulled a baby wipe from a container. “Now is not the time to start thinking your intelligent partner of eight years is stupid. Oh, what’s that I hear?” She held her hand to her ear and looked off into the distance. Nathan stopped jangling the keys and watched her. “Oh, no, I don’t hear it anymore but I used to hear the sound of wedding bells and the pitter-patter of tiny feet.”

Nathan laughed and continued jangling his keys. Judith popped Nathan back on the floor again, the sound of his feet on the tiles like a duck stepping on puddles.

“Gee, Jack, you’ve gone awful quiet,” she said sarcastically, washing her hands in the kitchen sink, he noted, over a pile of dirty dishes and cups.

“It’s not the right time,” Jack said tiredly, taking the wooden spoon from Nathan, who in turn started screaming, which woke Rachel, who started screaming, which caused Katie to turn up the volume of the television instantly in the living room. “Besides, this place alone is enough of a contraceptive for me.”

“Yes, well, when you marry a man with the name Willie you pretty much know what you’re getting.” In less than one minute Judith had calm again, a cup of tea and a slice of toast on the table before Jack. She finally sat down, removed Rachel from her cot, moved her bathrobe to one side and began breastfeeding while Rachel’s tiny fingers opened and closed in midair, playing an invisible harp with her eyes closed.

“I’ve taken the week off work,” Jack explained. “Arranged it on the way here this morning.”

“You’ve what?” she took a sip of tea. “They let you have more time off?”

“With a bit of persuasion.”

“That’s good. You and Gloria need to spend more time together.” But she could tell by his face that that wasn’t the intention. “What’s going on, Jack?”

He sighed, wanting so much to tell her the story but afraid to do so. “Tell me,” she said gently.

“I came across someone,” he began. “An agency.”

“Yes?” Her voice was low and questioning, like it used to be when he came home from school after being in trouble and was forced to explain such things as why they’d stripped Tommy McGovern naked and tied him to the goalposts in the yard.

“It’s a missing persons agency.”

“Oh, Jack,” she whispered, hand flying to her mouth.

“Well, what harm could it do, Jude? What’s the damage in one more person having a look?”

“This is the damage, Jack. You, taking one more week off from work, Gloria ringing me looking for you.”

“She rang?”

“Ten o’clock last night.”

“Oh.”

“So go on, tell me about the agency.”

“No.” He leaned back in his chair, frustrated. “No, I couldn’t be bothered now.”

“Jack, don’t be such a child and tell me.”

He waited to cool down before speaking again. “I came across the ad in the Yellow Pages and I gave her a call.”

“Who?”

“Sandy Shortt. I explained the case to her and she told me she’d solved cases like this before. We spoke on the phone until late every night last week. She used to be a garda and she got her hands on a few reports we’d never seen.”

Judith raised her eyebrows.

“She wasn’t asking for a penny, Judith, and I believed her. I believed she wanted to help and I believed she could find Donal. She was legit, there’s no doubt about it.”

“Why are you speaking about her like she’s dead?” She smiled and then stopped quickly, looking alarmed. “She’s not dead, is she?”

“No.” Jack shook his head. “But I don’t know where she is. We arranged to meet on Sunday morning in Glin, we passed one another at a petrol station but I didn’t know it was her until after.”

Judith’s forehead wrinkled.

“We’d only ever spoken on the phone, you see.”

“So how do you know it was her?”

“I found her car down by the estuary.”

Judith looked even more flummoxed.

“Look, we were supposed to meet and she left a voice message the night before saying she was on her way over from Dublin, but she didn’t show up. So I looked around the town, asked for her in all the B &Bs and when I couldn’t find her, I went for a walk by the estuary. That’s when I found the car.”

“How can you be sure it was her car?”

Jack opened the bag beside him. “Because this was on the dashboard.” He placed the file on the kitchen table. “So was this,” he said, and placed her diary down. “And this.” Her charged mobile phone. “She labels everything, absolutely everything, I went through her bag, all her clothes, her socks, all labeled. It’s like she’s afraid of losing things.”

Judith was quiet. “You went through her bag?” She shook her head, confused. “But how did you get these from the car? Maybe she was just taking a walk, Jack. What if she returns to her car and all her stuff is missing? Are you crazy taking all this?”

“Then I’ll have some apologizing to do, but it’s been two whole days. That’s a long walk.”

Silence while they both remembered how their mother had been desperately worried after two days of Donal’s silence.

“I rang Graham Turner.”

“What did he say?” she asked, hands holding her face. The same scenario all over again.

“He said that as it had only been over twenty-four hours and because it was in keeping with her usual behavior that he didn’t think there was any cause to worry.”

“Why, what’s her usual behavior?”

“That she comes and goes as she pleases, keeps to herself and doesn’t tell anyone where she’s going,” Jack rattled off tiredly.

“Oh.” Judith looked relieved.

“But that doesn’t mean you park your car in the middle of trees by the estuary and desert it for two days. That’s slightly different from coming and going as she pleases.”

“So let me get this straight,” Judith said slowly. “The missing-persons person is missing?”

Silence.

Judith allowed that thought to roll around in her head, shifting it until it found a place it was comfortable to settle in. She looked contemplative as she moved her jaw from side to side.

Then she snorted and burst out laughing.

Jack sat back in his chair and folded his arms, feeling offended as Judith shook uncontrollably before him. Rachel stopped suckling and watched her bouncing mother, who was now wiping tears from her eyes. Nathan stopped playing with his blocks, stood to watch his mother. His face broke into a gummy smile and he began laughing, clapping his pudgy hands and bouncing his body with delight from the knees up. Eventually, Jack felt the corners of his lips tickle and he joined in, laughing deliriously at the ridiculousness of the situation and feeling such relief to let go after so long, even if only momentarily. Once they’d settled down, Judith began rubbing Rachel gently on her back, so soothingly it made Jack’s eyes feel heavy.

“Look, Judith, maybe Graham is right. Maybe she did just walk away. Maybe she just thought to hell with all this and left her car, left her phone, her diary, her life, and gave up. Maybe she’s this mad, loony woman who does it all the time with the intention of coming back after a while. Maybe she walked away completely but I’m going to find her, she’s going to find Donal, and then she can quit. Then I’ll let her walk away.”