"Her GP refers her."

"Except he won't," Lydia said.

"Can you sort her out with an MRI scan?" Ronnie narrowed his eyes at Buddy Scutt.

"Aaaah." Buddy shifted in his chair. "I suppose I could."

"Why didn't you do it before now?" Ronnie hissed.

"Yeah," Murdy sneered. "Why didn't you?"

"I didn't think there was anything wrong with her. Neither did you."

"I'm not a doctor."

"I'm not her son."

"We could sue you for this," Murdy said.

"Boys, boys, less bickering please." Conall shook his head. "You're all to blame. Lydia's the only one who's tried to help."

"I can fight my own battles," Lydia said hotly.

But, obviously, she couldn't.

Conall had dozed off in an armchair and slept away the afternoon, and only when the evening shadows began to fall, did Lydia wake him.

"We're going home," she said.

" 'Kay." A bit dazed, he stood up.

They'd driven less than a mile when he pulled into the service station. Lydia, still in her short tight dress from the night before, attracted a lot of attention, as she prowled the aisles, gathering up smoothies and bags of popcorn.

At the check-out she rejoined Conall, who was trying to control an armload of ice creams and sweets.

"Give me them," she said. "I'll pay. Least I can do."

They sat, parked outside, eating their Magnums. He crunched briskly through his, shattering the chocolate coating without a second thought.

"I like to eat mine slooowww." She flashed a glance from under her lashes-then she stopped. It wasn't right to torment him. "Thanks, you know, for this. Driving me down and staying all day. How did you know about MRI scans?"

"I got Eilish to find out. Didn't take her long. Your mum should have had one months ago. I don't know why she didn't."

"Because her doctor is a gobshite and my brothers didn't want to know."

"They know now."

"Yeah, well . . . thanks for saying it. And thanks for last night."

"Did you like Float?" Conall started on his second Magnum.

She thought about it. "Not really. It was sort of sleazy. I just wanted to go because I couldn't."

"We always want what we can't have."

"Like you with me."

He laughed but didn't answer.

"You've money, you've a house in Wellington Road, you're . . . you know . . ." She waved a hand up and down his body.

"What?"

"For an old bloke, you're not bad-looking. You could get plenty of girls. Why are you hanging around, pestering me?"

"You're nice-looking." He paused. "Very nice-looking. And even though you're not pleasant, you're interesting. Like a David Cronenberg film. Crash." He crooked an eyebrow but the reference was lost on her.

"When will it all go weird and I'll suddenly be mad about you?"

"Actually, I would have thought it would have happened by now. Most girls . . . me coming to see their sick mother. And rescuing you, doing the middle-of-the-night drive. That stuff is normally pretty effective."

"So when will you go off me?"

It was starting to happen already. Last night in Float-had it only been last night?-had shown him how mismatched they were. "When I've had sex with you."

She laughed. At least he was honest.

Eventually, she spoke. "All right."

"All right what?"

"Sex. Let's do it."

"You fancy me?"

She hesitated. "I think I might. A bit." She paused again. "I guess I'm curious." Suddenly anxious, she asked. "But you won't be all saggy and old-looking? I'm used to young, fit blokes."

"I'm forty-two, not eighty-two. I have good genes. And a personal trainer."

"But look at the crap you eat."

"I've a fast metabolism."

"Okay, just so long as it's not like Night of the Living Dead."

"Let's just forget this. You're not into it-"

"No, I want to." Then she added, "I think."

Suddenly, she was being pulled toward him and his mouth lowered itself to meet hers. He smelled different. More grown-up. Gilbert had been a great man for statement aftershaves, ones that surrounded him like a pungent cloud, base notes and top notes and God knows what else spattering everywhere. Andrei smelled of man-body and sweat and lust. But Conall smelled of . . . sophisticated lives. He smelled of old leather and wood smoke and parquet floor. He smelled of money. And ice cream, but only briefly.

Lydia waited. She paid attention to how she was responding. Yes, it was working. The smell of his skin and the heat of his hand on her waist.

"You've done this before," she said, when they broke away.

"So . . ." he said slowly, ". . . have you."

Right, she definitely fancied him.

Their heart vibrations are not in harmony. Lydia's beat is a nanosecond behind Conall's, so the end of hers bites off the start of his. But it's an interesting, edgy, overlapping one-two rhythm that in many ways is more seductive than harmony. Fascinating.

Day 25 . . .

"Good evening," Jemima said. "Celtic Psychic Line."

"Mystic Maureen?"

"Speaking, my dear."

"Aha! It is you, at long last! I recognize that posh voice. I've spoken to twelve, fecking twelve, so-called Maureens, trying to find you."

Yes, Jemima had to admit that the company liked to put about the fiction that there was just one wise old woman employed by Celtic Psychic Line instead of several appallingly badly paid women doing shift work on their own phone.

"I've rung loads of times trying to get you and all I got was these liars who know nothing about anything. I was afraid I'd never find you. I thought you'd, like, died or something."

Jemima had reduced quite dramatically her number of shifts. Fionn was the cause. Between accompanying him to the set and attempting to douse his out-of-control womanizing and keeping a lid on the enmity between him and Grudge, well, she was quite sapped.

"I spoke to you about a month ago and everything you predicted for me came true."

"Assuming it was happy events I foresaw, then I am overjoyed. But, as I'm sure I told you at the time, I have no psychic ability. There is no such thing."

"My name is Sissy? Do you remember me? You told me I'd meet a man in the ticket queue in BusAras."

"I assure you I most certainly did not. I would never say something as specific as that. As I remember, we did a quick overview of your life, and I told you to brush your hair, smile at people and endeavor to see past the surface. That at first impression a man may seem like a . . . the word you used was tool, as I recall, and his hair may be, to fall back on your description, gank-"

"You said that a decent heart would beat beneath his hideous orange hoodie."

"I said that a decent heart may beat beneath his hideous orange hoodie. I offered no guarantees. I simply urged a more open-minded attitude."

"How did you know he'd be wearing a hideous orange hoodie?"

"I did not. The description was yours. I am eighty-eight years of age. What would I know of hoodies?"

"You said BusAras. That I'd meet him there."

"I acknowledge that we discussed that you take the bus for weekend trips to your family. I said, and I believe it to be true, that stations are places where romance tends to flourish, that travelers are less likely to be hidebound by their day-to-day identity. It's mere common sense."

"I brushed my hair, I smiled, I saw past the surface. I met a man! It all happened just like you said it would."

"Overjoyed, my dear." She would like to get off the line now; she was quite wearied by this silliness. She had only taken this job to save young girls from wasting their hard-earned cash. The last thing she had wanted was to convince them that it worked.

"Pick a card for me," Sissy said. "Is Jesse the man of my dreams?"

Jemima picked a card. Fidelity. "Yes."

"Will we have children?"

Jemima picked the next card. "Yes."

"How many?"

"Two. A boy, then a girl."

"What will we call them? Only joking!"

"Finian and Anastasia."

Sissy gasped. In an urgent whisper, she said, "Oh. My. God. How did you know that? No one could know that. You're amazing."

"I know nothing. I simply plucked two names from the ether."

"But they were my grandparents' names. My daddy's mammy and daddy. They were my favorites! Oh, I used to go and stay with them when I was small and I never had to eat proper food. They gave me Marietta cookies stuck together with butter for my breakfast and I used to squeeze them together and the butter would come out of the holes and-Oh my God, I've got tingles all over. It's not like they're regular names, like Paddy and Mary. It's not as if you could have taken a chance."

"A lucky guess." She was so very tired.

"Not a lucky guess. You're a genius. You should have your own show."

"Dear heart, you must go now. You've been charged so much money already. I bid you goodnight."

Day 25 . . .

The drive took just over an hour, not long-it was ten in the evening and the traffic was light-but still long enough for Lydia to think about what she was going to do. It was a good thing, she concluded. She did fancy Conall, she was nearly sure of it, and it would cure her of Andrei. If she was sleeping with Conall, she'd stop sleeping with Andrei; that's just the way she was. She didn't multitask when it came to men. Some people, specifically Shoane, loved the intrigue of having two or three men on the go. She took great pleasure in going straight from one bed to the next and she set herself secret challenges, like sleeping with all three in a twenty-four-hour period. But, for some reason, Lydia didn't enjoy the complications. She wondered if you'd have to really hate men to behave like that.

But what would it be like with Conall? Because he'd had so much straightforward sex over the last eons would he have moved on to freaky stuff? Maybe he couldn't come unless he was being caned? Or asphyxiated? It would be fun, she supposed. In a way. Well, interesting, anyway. The only problem was that she wasn't sure how you'd go about asphyxiating someone, but she figured he'd show her.

Without consultation, Conall drove them to Wellington Road and although there was no way on earth Lydia would have let Conall into her cupboard at 66 Star Street, she was a bit miffed. He could have asked her.

"Jesus, the state of this place." Lydia gazed around Conall's hall, at the torn-at walls displaying their layers, like wounds.

"Yeah . . . it is a bit . . ." Conall seemed to be noticing it for the first time. "I've been so busy."

"Unbelievable." Lydia turned and caught her dress on a nail sticking out from a crate. "Get off me! And it's not a question of cash? Like, you have enough to do the place up?"

"A policeman wouldn't ask me that question. This way." He guided her up the wide splintery staircase and into his bedroom. Conall clapped his hands twice and suddenly a paradise was illuminated.

Stunned, Lydia stood on the threshold. She hardly knew what to look at first. The thick, thick carpet, spreading before her in a vast plain, in a color that she couldn't possibly name-not gray, not heather, not pale blue, but something else, something far more beautiful and unique. They must have invented a new color, just for Conall Hathaway's bedroom carpet. And the curtains, like curtains they had in expensive hotels, in some heavy silky fabric, tumbling twelve feet from the lofty ceiling, and gathering in a shimmering pool on the floor.

"What just happened there?" she asked. "Did we cross into another dimension?"