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floating above her as the drift of the tide filled her senses and dragged her deeper … deeper … into a gentle green oblivion. On such occasions, she held Emily tightly in her mind and concentrated on the tasks that needed doing: a school skirt to be altered, jeans that Emily had dumped on the table with the request, no, the curt demand, that they be washed, the unpacking of the groceries she had bought earlier; trivial but essential tasks that forced her footsteps across the strand and back to the house.
    Evening time and the settling dusk brought the bats flitting silently from a cleft in Donaldsons’ barn. They swooped fleetly under the wind-break trees, skimmed around the walls of the old house. At first, she had been frightened by their arrival, imagining their frail fluttering bodies tangled in her hair, their invincible antennae searching for a chink, a tiny crevice in the fortress she had created. But they marked the close of another day and she had grown used to their sudden appearance. When they disappeared into the gloom she knew it was time to heap logs on the fire, light candles, open another bottle of wine. She listened to the clock ticking down the hours towards bedtime. There had to be an easier way to pass the time but she had yet to discover it.
    The promise of spending a weekend in Dublin with her grandparents silenced Emily’s complaints for a short while. She was their only grandchild and they treasured the close relationship they had with her. Lorraine debated going to Dublin with her but she was still unable to endure the transparent attempts by her parents to tip-toe around her grief. For this reason she had refused to invite them to Trabawn. The house was still uninhabitable, she insisted every time Donna rang, refusing to hear the hurt in her mother’s voice, salving her conscience by looking at the chaos she was accumulating around her.
    On Saturday morning she drove Emily to the railway station in Tralee and waved her off. The town was busy, the streets congested with traffic and shoppers. When she was a child, on holidays in Trabawn, a night at the Rose of Tralee Festival had been the highlight of the fortnight, providing the adults and children with an opportunity to dress up and become part of the boisterous crowd that attended the annual beauty contest. Swimsuits and shorts were abandoned for the “Rose” dresses that she and Virginia donned for the occasion. Holding hands, they paraded up and down the thronged streets, admiring themselves in shop windows, imagining themselves on stage, surrounded by envious Roses as they received their crowns and the audience rapturously sang “The Rose of Tralee” . For that night and the days that followed she would refer to Virginia as “London Rose”, while she gloried in the title “Dublin Rose”.
    Shrugging aside this dip into childhood, Lorraine drove into a shopping-centre car-park and hurried towards the supermarket. She filled her trolley with basic items, impervious to demonstrators tempting her with cheeses and sauces. On leaving the town, she drove past Blennerville where the sails of the historic windmill whirred busily over Tralee Bay. She should spend a day in Tralee with Emily. They could tour the windmill, ride on the old steam railway line, visit the aqua dome, buy new clothes, have a meal together. By the time she reached Trabawn, she had sunk once again into the familiar lethargy.
    Emily rang later in the evening to announce her safe arrival in Dublin. A music gig in Temple Bar with her friends was planned and they were eating afterwards in Thunder Road Café. Lorraine was relieved to hear the lightness in her daughter’s voice, even if it was only a short respite from the resolute air of martyrdom Emily carried on her shoulders. Later, the telephone rang again as Lorraine was uncorking a bottle of wine. Only one person would ring her at this hour of the night. She tensed her arms and waited for the answering machine to