'Have you not told him?'

'We'll let him sleep.'

'He'll be awake.'

As Helen was packing their schoolbooks in the parlour, Declan called her. 'What are you doing?' he asked.

'I'm packing. We're going to Enniscorthy.'

When he looked at her from the bed, she thought that he knew, but she was not sure.

'How are we getting there?'

'Father Griffin.'

He looked at her again and nodded. He got out of the bed and stood on the floor in his pyjamas.

'I want to pack my own schoolbag,' he said.

Somewhere on the road between The Ballagh and Enniscorthy, with Father Griffin driving and Helen in the front seat, she realised that Declan didn't know their father was dead.

'Are Daddy and Mammy already back from Dublin?' he asked.

Even now, twenty years later, as she lay between the sticky nylon sheets with her hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling as the lighthouse flashed on and off, Helen could still feel the terror in the car as neither she nor Father Griffin answered the question. She expected Declan to ask again, but he sat back and said nothing and they drove on towards the town.

Helen desperately did not want to go to Mrs Byrne's house in the Square. Declan was friendly with the two boys, it would be easy for him, but she had no friends there and knew that Mrs Byrne would treat her like a child. Mrs Byrne was like all the shopkeepers' wives in the town: they were always watching everything, always on the lookout, even their smiles were sharp, and she did not want to be under the control of Mrs Byrne or any other Mrs in the town.

They drove past Donoghue's Garage in silence and crossed the bridge and drove up Castle Hill. Helen was determined not to go into Mrs Byrne's house.

When Father Griffin double-parked in the Square and left them alone in the car, Declan asked her nothing and she told him nothing. Mrs Byrne came out, all smiles. She opened the driver's door and put her head into the back of the car.

'Now, Declan,' she said, 'when Thomas and Francis come home for their dinner, maybe they'll both take the afternoon off so you can play upstairs.'

Helen got out of the car and stood beside Mrs Byrne. 'My granny says I'm to go up home and have the place tidy for Mammy.'

'Helen, I'm sure some of the neighbours will do that.'

'Granny said I was to go and Father Griffin was to drive me up and Declan was to stay with you.'

Father Griffin stood there listening carefully. Helen knew that she had sounded too sure of herself for him to disagree. He was a mild man, uncomfortable now and anxious to get away since his car was blocking the traffic.

'So,' Helen said, 'if you could take Declan's things and then we'll see you later.' She was trying to sound brisk, like somebody from the television.

'Hold on a minute,' Father Griffin said, 'and I'll park.'

Declan took his bag from the boot and they stood outside Byrne's shop waiting for Father Griffin.

'Isn't your grandmother very good?' Mrs Byrne said to Helen.

'She's marvellous,' Helen said.

Mrs Byrne looked up and down the street. 'Your poor mammy now will be glad to see you,' she said.

'I'll go and wait in the car,' Helen said, and she walked across the Square to where Father Griffin had parked. As he left the driver's seat, she opened the passenger's door.

'Will you be all right here?' he asked.

'Yes, perfect,' she said confidently.

She watched him walk across the Square and go into Byrnes' with Declan and Mrs Byrne. She knew what he was doing: he was telling Declan that his father was dead. She wondered why he was taking so long. Two passers-by saw her in the car and came over. She rolled down the window.

'Are you waiting for your mammy?' they asked.

'No,' she said. 'No, I'm not.'

'Is she still in Dublin, the poor thing?'

'Yes,' Helen said. She was trying to sound grand, as though used to being accosted by people like this.

'Well, we're very sorry for your trouble.'

'Thank you.' She knitted her brow and rolled up the window.

When Father Griffin came out of Byrnes', he walked with his head down, hunched.

'I'm not sure that we can leave you up there on your own,' he said. 'Mrs Byrne wants you to come back in.'

'Oh, Mummy is very particular. Everything will have to be spick and span for her.'

'But you can't be on your own in the house.'

'No; I'll call on Mrs Russell, she's the one who's closest to Mummy, and she'll come in with me.'

She pretended that she was a Protestant girl being driven to Lymington House by this slow country priest. She knitted her brow again. Father Griffin started the car. She wondered what had happened with Declan, what he was doing now.

'Are you sure you'll be all right?' Father Griffin asked her.

'Perfectly sure, father, perfectly sure. I'll go in and then I'll call on Mrs Russell.'

He drove along John Street and then up Davitt Avenue.

'You can leave me here, father, and we're very grateful to you.'

He drove her to the house. She did not want him to know that she would have to climb in the kitchen window. She would have tried anything to make him drive away.

'I'll take my case from the boot,' she said nonchalantly. 'I left it open. It's better to reverse back down, father, easier than trying to turn here.'

She closed the door of the car and fetched her case and waved at him casually as she opened the garden gate. She walked around the side of the house without looking behind. She stood the case up, using it to reach the ledge of the kitchen window, and then levered herself up until she was able to kneel on the ledge. The clasp on the lock had been broken for years. She pulled the bottom part of the window up with all her strength. It opened just enough for her to lean in on to the draining board beside the sink, and edge her way into the kitchen. As soon as she stood up, she did not wait to close the window but went and opened the front door and found Father Griffin, as she expected, still sitting in his car looking at the house. With her right hand, she motioned him imperiously to go. She shut the door again and put her back to it, and closed her eyes. When she went into the front room and looked out of the window, she saw that he was already reversing the car; he was on his way. Now she had the house to herself.

She listened: there was no sound at all. She had never noticed silence before. It was five months since she had been in this house. She looked around the room, touched the cold tiles of the fireplace, sat on one of the armchairs. She walked into the back room and opened the curtains. It was the stillness which surprised her, the emptiness. She had thought about these rooms so much in Cush, she now expected them to come to life for her, but they did nothing. She opened the back door and collected the suitcase from under the kitchen "window; she came back in and closed it. She sat in the back room and thought about Mrs Byrne's big living-room over the shop, and everybody being nice to her because her father had died, and she shivered.

She was glad she had come back here. When she put her hand on the kitchen door handle, she had realised that her father's hand would have touched it too, his fingerprints or the print of the palm of his hand had probably \a151 no, definitely \a151 been left there. His hand was dead now, lying cold in his coffin. And this house, every inch of it, had his traces imprinted on it: the chair where he sat, the cups and glasses he used must still have some trace of him, the knives and forks he touched, in all the years he would have touched every one of them. She went to the front door and touched the handle and lock that he must have touched.