But please come down, Dessie went on. Please come. When Constance is up and about again. There were plenty of beds in the house God knows, they were coming down with bedrooms. Stay a while, when you bring her back home.
But that was yet to come. For the moment, Emmet looked at his mother sitting in his pathetic, chipboard kitchen and he was strangely pleased to see her there.
‘I don’t know where I am to sleep tonight,’ she told Denholm. ‘Though I don’t sleep much, you know. Not any more.’
‘No.’
She sat there, very small.
‘I am sorry I touched your hand.’
‘Oh. Please,’ said Denholm.
‘No really,’ she said.
And, in all fairness, Emmet thought, she looked pretty bad.
‘I have paid too little attention,’ she said. ‘I think that’s the problem. I should have paid more attention to things.’
Ballynahown — Bray — Sandycove
Acknowledgements
THANKS FOR INFORMATION used and cheerfully misused in this book are due to: Seamas Collins, Mary Healy, Barbara O’Shea and Catherine Ginty of Trócaire; Rohan Spong and Trent Duffy; Fintan O’Toole, Tom Conway and Gary Hynes of Druid Theatre Company; Sinead Dunwoody, Paul Gallagher, Louise Canavan and Tom McGuinn of the Pharmaceutical Society Ireland, and Alan Carr, Leader of the Galway Mountain Rescue Team. Thanks also to Declan Meade, Fawad Qurashi, John Stack — and to Siddharth Shanghvi, for afterwards.
A NOTE ABOUT PLACE-NAMES
The green road of the title is a real road that runs through the Burren in County Clare. I have used some of the actual place-names along that beautiful coastline and these are spelt according to various maps, old and new. I have also made some names up or stolen them from other townlands — especially for places associated with the Madigans, the Considines and the McGraths. The town where they live is not named. This is to underline the fact that this is a work of fiction, populated by fictional characters. Any resemblance to the good people of West Clare, or to anyone else for that matter, is entirely coincidental.