Can you imagine me in the IRA? I don't think there was anyone in Tullamore ever in the IRA. They're all too bloody boring. No, I said, no. And then I told her.'

'And what did she say?' Helen asked.

'She said that I would always be her son no matter what I did, but I was to get back into the car this minute and go back to Dublin and she would deal with my father and she would phone me later on. She couldn't wait to get me out of the house. She was all pale and worried-looking. I think she would have been happier if I had been in the IRA.'

'Oh come on,' Helen said, 'that's not true.'

'OK, that's not fair about the IRA,' Larry said. 'I think she was just shocked and surprised. You know, in my family my brothers and sisters \a151 even the married ones \a151 still haven't told my parents that they are heterosexual. We don't talk about sex. She was nice about it afterwards, and she still is OK about it, but my father just grunts at me in the same way as he did before. At least if I was in the IRA we would have something to talk about. It'd be more normal.'

'And are you and Paul partners?' Helen asked.

'Him? You must be joking,' Larry said.

'You'd want to be mad,' Paul said.

'What? To be with you, or to be with him?' Helen asked.

'With him,' Paul said. 'Or maybe with either of us.'

'So do you have a partner, Larry?' Helen asked.

'Tell them, Larry,' Paul said.

'I do, Helen,' Larry said, 'but I couldn't tell you about it.'

'Go on, Larry,' Paul said.

'I'm sure Mrs Devereux has heard enough,' Larry said.

'Oh, don't worry about me,' the old woman said. 'There's nothing would shock me. When you've gone through life like I have, there's very little you don't know.'

'Funny, it's easier to talk like this in the dark,' Larry said. 'It's like going to Confession, except there's no lighthouse in a confession box.'

'Come on, we're all waiting,' Paul said.

'We'll hear all about Paul later on,' Larry said.

'Tell the story,' Paul said.

'Stop me now if I go on too long,' Larry said. 'There's this big family a few doors down from us at home. There are five girls and four boys. My folks are friends with the parents. The parents are very religious – the father is in the Vincent de Paul and the mother is always saying Novenas. They're nice normal people. Their youngest son lives in Dublin. And I'm with him at the moment. That's been going on a few months. The only thing is that I've also been with the other three, I mean the other three sons. Two of them are married, but that doesn't seem to stop them. It's funny, they're all different. The youngest fellow is great.'

When he had finished speaking there was silence. Helen could see traces of light through the window, but the room was now entirely dark.

'They're a terrific family. It must be something in the genes,' Paul said after a few moments.

'It's in their genes all right,' Larry said. 'And in their Terylene trousers.'

'I've heard everything now,' the old woman said. Her voice was hard and it was louder than it needed to be, as though she were addressing some higher power. 'Four of them! They must be a right crowd.'

'My mother has enough to think about at the moment, I imagine,' Helen said.

'I told you that you wouldn't want to hear it, Mrs Devereux,' Larry said.

'Oh guard your heart, that's my advice to you, guard your heart and be careful of yourself

Just then the light was switched on and Helen's mother stood at the door. 'What are you all doing here in the dark?' she asked.

Helen blinked and covered her eyes against the harshness of the electric light. She wished her mother would turn it off again.

'Declan is after being sick, but it's not too bad,' her mother said. 'I've cleaned it up, it's all right, but I think he might go asleep now. I hope he will. I don't know what you were all doing in the dark.'

'We were talking, Lily, we were talking, and we didn't notice the night coming down,' the grandmother said.

'What were you saying when I came in the door?' Helen's mother asked.

'I was saying to the boys that this is a very hard time and it is nice to have their company,' the grandmother said. Helen watched her as she turned her face towards Larry as if daring him to contradict her. 'That's what I was telling them, Lily,' she said.

The old woman stood up then and looked out at the night. She pulled her chair back and began to draw the curtains slowly until Larry came over to help her. As he approached her, she raised her hand as though to hit him. He moved away from her, laughing.

They made up the beds for Larry and Paul in the small room upstairs while Lily took her leave of them, saying that she had not been able to sleep the previous night, making her mother promise that she would turn on the mobile phone. She said she would be back in the morning. Helen walked out to the car with her.

'I couldn't sleep the first night I came here either,' she said.

'If there is a problem, you will give me a ring, won't you?' her mother said.

'I found it very strange being back here after all this time,' Helen said.

Her mother started the ignition and began to reverse the car in the yard. Helen stood out of her way.

Later, when she returned from Blackwater, where she had phoned Hugh, she found Declan by the Aga in his pyjamas and slippers. Paul and Larry and her grandmother were sitting at the kitchen table looking at a full-page advertisement in the Wexford People for Lily's computer company.

'She's a big noise, your mother,' Paul said.

'Lily was always very independent-minded,' Helen's grandmother said. 'Even when she was a baby, if you picked her up to cuddle her or put her on your knee, she'd want to be let down to crawl around on her own, or walk when she was old enough. You could never tell her what to do. You couldn't even tell her to get up in the morning. She'd be up before you. She was always a great worker and she had great brains, she won a university scholarship. The nuns loved her. I took in bathers first so I could pay for her to go to FCJ in Bunclody, and, you know, she nearly became a nun.'

'I never knew that,' Helen said.

'Oh, the nuns loved her,' her grandmother went on, 'and when she was in her final year and we drove her back up after the Hallowe'en break, they called us in, and they had never looked up or down at us before, oh they were very grand, the nuns, a French order. And Mother Emmanuelle, the grandest of them all, told me that she believed Lily had a vocation. I smiled at her and said that would be the happiest thing for us. It was all smiles until I got out to the car and I said to your grandfather that I was going to pray to God to stop Lily entering the convent.'

'And did you not want her to be a nun?' Paul asked.

'Lily? Our beautiful daughter? Have all her hair cut off? And a veil and a draughty old convent and only doddery old nuns for company? I did not! And I lay awake every night thinking about how to stop her. I knew that we could say nothing to her, that talking to her would make no difference. Your grandfather, who was a very good man and is getting his reward in heaven, said that we should accept God's will, and I said that my not wanting her to be a nun could also be God's will.'

'Good man, Granny,' Declan said.

'So what did you do?' Helen asked.

Her grandmother looked at the floor and said nothing.

The others looked at her in silence, waiting for her to continue.

'I'll make tea,' she said. 'I'm talking too much.'

'No, you're not, you have to tell us,' Declan said.

'I'll make the tea,' Helen said.

'Well, I thought and I thought,' she said, licking her lips. 'And I knew that I had until the end of the Christmas holidays to stop it. And I thought about Lily. You know, when other girls were playing nurses, she had to be the best nurse, and when it came to dressmaking, she'd keep me up all night with patterns and material. She always did what everyone around her did, only more so. It was the same with her studies. She had to be the best and the most enthusiastic. She was with the nuns day and night, so, of course, she wanted to be one of them. And once all that struck me, then I knew what to do. It was just before we collected her for Christmas.'