She had made lasagne and a salad for the birthday meal. Broken thread veins and the lines on her face suggested battles lost and won. The conversation around the dining table was strained. Joan spoke about a book she had read and a televised crime drama she enjoyed watching. Jake found himself filling in the silences that inevitably fell once a topic had been exhausted.

Karin carried the birthday cake to the table. Two waxen numbers six and eight were stuck like miniature plump ladies in the centre. When Joan had blown out the candles Karin sliced the cake and poured tea. No champagne. Her mother was a recovering alcoholic, she had told Jake on the way to the house. Joan could never be trusted, even after twenty-five years. When Jake said that twenty-five years without touching alcohol suggested she was a fully recovered alcoholic Karin shook her head.

‘There’s no such thing,’ she said. ‘The temptation is always there. That’s why I find it so difficult to be around her, especially on days like today.’

She brought Jake into her father’s study to show him Max Moylan’s books. It reminded Jake of a shrine. A museum filled with mementoes of his writing career. One wall was lined with his hardbacks: Max Moylan in Africa, Vietnam, Japan, China, Nepal. His desk was cluttered with pens and notebooks. Photographs casually lying at the side of his typewriter created the impression that he had stepped outside for a breath of air before choosing the ones what would go into his latest work in progress. The air was musty, a blind halfway down on a window that Joan Moylan must never open. Flowers wilted in a vase. Karin replaced them with the fresh bouquet she had brought with her. She stabbed each flower precisely into place and stood back to admire the effect. Uneasy in the fusty atmosphere, he sat on the edge of the desk and watched her at work. Something blue on top of the filing cabinet caught his eye. A stuffed bird in a glass case, wings spread as if it was about to land on a bed of river reeds. One glittering eye was visible, the feathers gleaming.

‘Do you know the legend of the kingfisher?’ Karin asked.

‘I wasn’t aware there was one.’

She lifted the case down and ran a cloth over the dust on the glass. ‘They’re called the halcyon birds.’

‘This one doesn’t look very calm,’ he said.

‘It’s an ancient Greek legend.’ She rubbed harder on the metal base. ‘I’m surprised Nadine never told you about it.’

‘Why should she?’ He tensed at the mention of her name. Living below Nadine was proving more problematic than he had anticipated.

‘Try to keep the noise down,’ she had said when he returned the corkscrew he borrowed the night Feral stayed on after band practice.

‘What noise?’ He had been genuinely surprised. ‘I never hear you.’

‘That’s because I respect your right to a peaceful existence,’ she said in the clipped voice she used when trying to hold on to her temper. ‘You’re no longer playing your guitar in a soundproof room. You must be aware of how sound travels through this house.’

‘I’d no idea you were monitoring my life by sound effects,’ he replied with the same chilling politeness. ‘Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.’

Since then, he returned from Karin’s apartment after Nadine had left for work. Her initial efforts to clear out the attic had stalled and she had not taken him up on his offer to help.

The metal base was shining when Karin replaced the glass case on the filing cabinet. She walked to the bookshelves and pushed one book that was out of alignment into position. ‘Nadine was with us that day,’ she said. ‘We were hiking in Monsheelagh Forest. Would you like to hear the legend that inspired the name of my agency?’

‘Another time. We should go back to your mother.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Joan likes her own company best.’

Karin’s voice had an almost compelling intensity as she related the legend to him. Lovers transformed into kingfishers so that they could be together in death.

‘I understand that kind of love,’ she said when she finished the story. ‘Do you have any sense of its compulsion?’

What exactly was she asking him? He did not understand a love that drew a woman under the waves to join the man she loved. It was a typical Greek tragedy, too dramatic for his taste. He remembered Karin’s words on the plane. She would choose her lover’s arms rather than a life jacket if the plane was plunging downwards.

‘I’ve never wanted to be a kingfisher that badly enough,’ he joked. ‘We really should go back – ’

‘He promised to bring me with him on his next trip,’ she said. ‘We were going to the Sahara to live with nomads. He had it all worked out. How we would tell my mother, persuade her to let me go. I was only fifteen – ’

‘I remember.’

‘I know you do.’ A red telephone on the desk had an old-fashioned rotary dial. She dialled a number, watched the dial rotate and settle again, dialled another. ‘Nadine said I was too young. She sided with my mother. I found that hard to forgive. Have you been talking to her recently?’

The question was so unexpected that he hesitated before replying.

‘Have you?’ she repeated.

‘I spoke to her this morning. She was flying to London. Something to do with Ludicrous…I mean Lustrous. Why?’

The repetitive whirr of the telephone dial was beginning to irritate him. As if sensing his irritation she sat down in the swivel chair behind the desk and slowly spun it from side to side.

‘She threatens me. I don’t mean physically. Just the memory of her… all those years you had together. How can you stay away from each other?’

‘I’ve explained our situation,’ he said. ‘Neither of us can change anything at the moment. The debts…’

‘How do I know you’re telling me the truth?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Married men are programmed to lie. It’s an inevitable consequence of cheating on their wives.’

‘I’m not cheating on Nadine. We made a decision – ’

‘Then maybe you’re cheating on me.’

‘That’s a ridiculous accusation. You’ve no reason to be jealous of Nadine. She’s determined to leave Sea Aster as soon as she can afford to rent her own place. I intend to do the same. We just need time to get our lives together again.’

‘Why don’t you bring me to Sea Aster? Let me see exactly what’s involved in this ‘under the one roof’ arrangement.’ She waggled a finger on each hand to suggest quotation marks.

‘That’s never going to happen, Karin.’ His irritation snapped into anger. ‘Not as long as Nadine is living there. I made a pact with her. It’s the only way we can handle this arrangement. I’m not prepared to break it. I don’t know why we’re having this stupid argument.’

‘Don’t you?’ She steadied the chair and parted her legs, trapped him between them. ‘It really turns me on when you get angry.’

‘I’m not angry. I’m trying to explain…’ The tense clasp of her thighs, her skirt sliding upwards, the glimpse of a blue thong nestling like a feather in the nest of blonde hair, he wanted her with an urgency that made him forget the quiet presence of Joan Moylan in a nearby room.

‘You’re hard and I’m wet… so wet,’ she murmured. ‘I want you inside me right now… right now, Jake.’

He lifted her onto the desk and steadied her as she unzipped him. Her tongue flicked against his ear and all was forgotten as she pulled him under the same riptide of passion that had swept a Greek goddess to her death. It was over in an instant, a pulsating collapse into relief, his hand over her mouth to stop her crying out.

He was flushed, still breathless when they returned to the living room. Joan was watching the evening news. The same stories, austerity, repossession, despair. Jake knew all about halcyon days. The calm before the storm. He sat down on an armchair and stared unseeingly at the screen.