I respond with a grinning lecture about dull county council employees attending public-relations training courses.

He gives me a filthy look like I've just called him a stupid asshole to his face, which of course I have.

"Look, will you please remove your pathetic truck."

"All I'm saying, missus, is that..."

"I'm not here for a sermon," I interrupt. "That's why they invented the Mass. Just remove your piece of junk."

Getting into his truck he says something under his breath to the effect that maybe I should go to Mass for being such a minge-bag.

I let it pass. Jerks aren't my responsibility.

With that cruel image of the fish painting emblazoned on my mind, I jump back into my freed-up car, slam the door shut, ignite, vroom crazily and career dangerously on to the main road, very nearly giving the county council waster the two fingers. Taking a first left, I head in the direction of Cherbury Court.

I can only think about one thing: disembowelling Nicole.

18 18.

I have parked my MG in Cherbury Court, several houses up from number two. My purpose: to pay my respects to the living. have parked my MG in Cherbury Court, several houses up from number two. My purpose: to pay my respects to the living.

In common parlance that means she's dead.

I get out of the car and start walking. When I am just two houses away from my destination, an apparition suddenly exits the gateway. It's her. I lower my head at once. She is walking towards me, head bowed, holding her hand over her mouth and nose, walking with slight unevenness. At once I am terrified by what I see.

Her hair is lank and wet, and tangled messily over her shoulders. She's holding a bloodstained handkerchief up to her nose. Her left eye is swollen and closed, her make-up is a mess, her lip is cut and enlarged, and blood is streaming over her jaw and dripping on to the pavement, marking a dispersed trail from her house. Her sheepskin jacket is stained with blood blotches. Her other arm is folded around her stomach as if she is in pain. She is stooping.

She passes me, as if painfully aware of my presence but too ashamed to look into the eye of a stranger.

Where is she going?

I approach her front gate and stop. My eye is caught by something bright on the ground. It's an earring. A silver oval ring about two inches in diameter. I pick it up. It's somehow familiar.

Nicole has stopped at a yellow Fiat Cinquecento not far from my own car. She is fumbling in her bag for her keys. Now she's piling out the contents of her bag on top of the short sloping bonnet. Make-up, small bottles, notebooks, pieces of paper, coins.

I go towards her. I don't care. I quicken my pace.

"Excuse me..." I shout, holding up the earring for her to see. "Is this yours?"

She flashes a quick look towards me but then looks back down and continues to fumble for her key, only more desperately now. She finally takes out a bunch of keys, chooses the correct one and sticks it into the lock.

I go up to her, holding out her earring.

She opens the door.

With one hand on the rim of the door, her eyes meet mine. She is totally different from before, crushed-looking. Her good eye is wide open and pained, and streaked with mascara. Visible through strands of stuck-together hair is a bare pierced earlobe.

When she takes the earring from me I notice that her hands are trembling.

"They're lovely earrings," I tell her.

I must be having a positive effect on her because she's starting to sob nowdespite the fact that in her book I am a total alien.

My hand moves, as if by itself, on to her arm. "You can't drive in that state."

"I can't stay here. I'm going to a friend's."

"A friend?"

She nods.

"Who is this friend?"

"Oh, he's just a friend."

"Just a friend."

She nods.

"Give me your keys, please."

She stares at me.

I pick her things up from the bonnet and start stuffing them into her bag. Again I order her to hand me her keys.

She's perplexed, the poor thing. Weakened by my insistence, I coax the keys from her hand, hop into the driver's seat and start up the car. She's gaping down at me, her face frozen like there is not one slip of a doubt in her mind that I am a person who is at this very minute in the process of thieving her car. You do get a bit disorientated when you're bashed up.

"Get in. I'm taking you to hospital."

"But I don't need to go to hospital."

"Get in."

"But I hate hospitals."

I lean over and flick open the passenger door. She's still standing on the pavement, aghast, and her mouth is open like she's about to protest, but there's nothing coming out.

I insist and in no time at all she is sitting quietly in the seat beside me.

"I don't know what to say..." she mumbles.

"Don't mention it."

"Are you from around here?"

I hand her a packet of posies.

"Around."

"It's very good of you." She sobs, just in time for a posie. "But I don't want to go to hospital."

Ignoring her, I pull out of Cherbury Court in this tiny box contraption. Could she not have got herself a decent-sized car? Oh, I forgotshe can't afford it: she's a travel agent.

"What's your name?" she whimpers.

I hesitate.

My name. She has a point. I must have a name.

"Blasted gears!" I curse, fiddling manically with the gearbox. "They're a bit stiff."

"There's no hurry," she says, voice still shaking. "I'm fine."

"You're not that fine."

I am beginning to ask myself what in the name of God I am doing driving her car.

A name. Janice? I don't know.

"Where's the nearest hospital?" I ask her.

She gives me some vague tearful directions to St Vincent's Hospital.

I pull out on to the coast road.

Mary? Too ordinary.

Florence? As in Florence Nightingale? No. Too charity-orientated. This is not about charity. It's about reckless improvisation. It's about opportunism. It's about sheer cricket-bat-headed craziness.

"Are you sure I take a right at the school?"

"No, it's a left, you're right."

"You're confusing me now."

"It's a left." She nods earnestly. "At the school."

"Because a right turn and we'll get stuck in the middle of a beach."

"What's your name?" she tentatively repeats, like I didn't hear her the first time.

Does she have to be so hung up on names? You'd think she'd have more important things to be thinking about while her face is falling apart. It's like she can't tune in to me unless I yield her a wordparalytic behaviour, if you want my honest opinionbut I suppose I must respect that.

"You can call me Julianne."

She'll be after my address next.

She touches my arm. "I'm Nicole."

No shit.

"We'll be there soon," I assure her.

"Thanks, Julianne."

"So," I begin, "tell me more about your friend."

"I'd better give him a call," she moans.

She takes her mobile from her bag, presses a button and waits, head lowered.

"It's me."

I steal a closer look at her. She is white-faced, quiet, simpering, uncertain. Her eyes are getting wet now and she's beginning to sob once more.

"He found out," she whispers shakily. "He tried to...to...drown me. No, no...in the bath...with...with the fish."

Pause.

"He held my head down."

The poor fish.

"Of course course I didn't tell him," she whimpers. "No, I didn't...but he said that someone phoned him and said we were seen together by the canal. I don't remember us going to the canal. What are we going to do?" I didn't tell him," she whimpers. "No, I didn't...but he said that someone phoned him and said we were seen together by the canal. I don't remember us going to the canal. What are we going to do?"

She falls silent for a while, then resumes by telling him that a neighbour of hers is driving her specially to St Vincent's Hospital and that Harry is unaware of this fact. And could he possibly meet her there?

The friend seems to be hesitating. He appears to be tied up.

Now her voice starts squeaking and simpering, and she throws in a few loud sniffs for good measure. The woman is behaving like she's been knocked down by a truck.

"Please, Ronan."

At the mention of Ronan's name I can't help the car going into a swerve. Nicole screams. We hit the kerb and are dragged along as if by a giant magnet for several seconds before I manage to pull back out towards the middle of the road into the path of an oncoming lorry. Nicole wails again. I scream at her to shut up, that everything's under control, although we're still heading straight for the lorry. It hoots, flashes, twists and veers up on to the pavement, and boots a Dublin City Millennium litter bin clean out of the way.

Everyone everywhere is beeping me and I'm just cursing back at the whole wide world, mouth as filthy as your local building site. I jam on the brakes and we end up in the middle of the road.

The beeping hasn't stopped, though. The fat-jowled, ugly driver of that truck is spitting saliva into the side window three inches from my face. Two words from him are enough to make my blood curdle; he has just mentioned something about a driving test. At this, I turn and shove him the middle finger where light bulbs do not fit. And accelerate, leaving him standing in the middle of the road shaking his fist, poor idiot.

Now I turn to face Nicole: "WHAT A BLOODY AWFUL PIECE OF JUNK!"

"It's only just new," she stammers.

"Oh, Jesus."

I twist down the window until the car is filled with a hurricane.

"I'm sorry," she mutters.