If anyone ought to be staying at home, it was her. Lila was still tiny. Anyway, work was supposed to be the part-time theme in this downshift, not family. But even though the others made the right noises, none of them knew what it felt like to come in after a hard day's slog and not know where to place yourself. By the time she got a look in, so much had happened at Bodinnick during the day that nobody knew where to start to fill her in.

Maybe today would be easier. She was on her way home again, even though it was only three thirty. The surgery had been very understanding, and it wasn't a total lie. She was feeling ill, it was just nothing to do with dodgy prawns.

As she drove up the drive eating a pasty out of a bag, she could see that Emmy's Golf was missing and she felt suddenly cross on behalf of Jonathan, who would be lumbered with all four children again. Her instincts told her she would find them over at the chapel and, without bothering to swap her good shoes for old, she took off across the wet grass. Shrieks of laughter reached her ears before she went through the arched gate, and the closer she got to the sound of fun the farther away she felt.

When she got to the gate and realized that Jonathan had only their own three, all to himself, she felt a sharp pang of jealousy. She looked at Asha's unknowing face, Jay's slightly cumbersome lope and Lila's owl gaze and they seemed more consummately beautiful than ever-and yet, at the same time, the sight made her want to turn on her smart leather heels and run.

They hadn't noticed her. They weren't looking for her. As far as they were concerned, she was at work, and until she materialized in the evening she didn't exist for them. Never had she seen that truth more clearly.

Jonathan appeared from inside the chapel, pumping a garden sprayer and shouting something silly. He ran after a radiant Asha, and his hefty booted foot clipped the upright handle of Lila's car seat, missing the baby's head by an inch.

Sita's impulse to run out of the shadows was stopped in its tracks by Jay, getting his little sister out of the seat, picking her up, showing her the water hanging from the nozzle on the end of the sprayer, getting her little index finger and dabbing it on the drip. When Lila reached out for Jonathan, resentment blistered all over Sita's inner skin.

"What on earth is the matter?" she said, bursting onto the scene. She'd meant to say hello first, but somehow that hadn't happened.

"Nothing," Jonathan said. "Just having some fun."

"Daddy! Daddy, get me," Asha squealed, forgetting that her mother wasn't supposed to be here.

Jonathan lurched at her with a pretend growl. Lila squealed with delight.

"What are you doing back?" he asked with his back half turned to her. He was only half interested, too.

"Um, I've taken the rest of the day off." Then she meant to say that she missed them all, and could they give her five minutes to go and change and she could join in too, but those words didn't come, either. Instead, her rancor homed in on his red-rimmed eyes.

"What happened to you?"

"Just a little localized difficulty with the goggles, wasn't there, Asha?"

"Don't be cross with him, be cross with Lila. Get me, Daddy, get me!"

But the anger that came spitting out of Sita's mouth left no one in any doubt about who was cross with whom and suddenly, when she had said everything she thought she never would, she found herself playing her trump card.

"Right, that's it. I want that house meeting. This has all gone far enough."

"Blame it on me," Niall said as he opened the swing door to the communal changing rooms at the swimming pool and let Maya walk under his arm. He was pleased she still fitted. "You know what she's like sometimes."

Maya nodded, but she was getting a little sick of her mother's eggshell days. She knew they could sometimes spill into eggshell weekends, but this one seemed to be mustering enough strength to go on for weeks. Today, Emmy had even made Maya miss school. "Why?" Maya had asked. "Because you're looking pale. I think you're overtired," Emmy said. Keeping her out of school was a classic. It was so annoying.

In the back of her mind when they were packing their things to move, Maya had hoped that these days of Emmy's would belong to the past. She had thought for one silly moment that they were leaving all that miserable stuff behind, only taking the good bits with them. It wasn't very nice, finding out you were wrong.

"But if anyone else was in a bad mood for this long for no reason, Mum would be furious," she told Niall reasonably. "She's got double standards, hasn't she?"

"Thing is, Maya, what's sauce for the goose is not necessarily sauce for the gander with grown-ups."

He wanted to sweep her up and run away with her, and bring her back when it was all over, except that he felt it was all his fault. Removing himself from it now would make things worse.

"I'll see you in the pool," she said. "I'm going to teach you a surface dive."

"What's that?"

"It's what otters do. You just swim along, and then make a shape like this with your hands, and then you go underwater. It's really cool. People think you've disappeared. Mum really panicked the first time I did it because I stayed under there for such a long time. I can touch the bottom of the deep end when I do it."

"Otters don't have hands."

"No, but you have."

He put them either side of her peachy cheeks. "See you in there."

She scooted off across the wet tiled floor. What she wanted now was for someone to wave a wand and make it all all right again, whatever "it" was. When she said "someone" she meant Niall, because in her experience Niall was the only one who ever had the wand. That was why she'd asked him to take her swimming on her own. "I'd just like to have some time with the two of us," she'd told him. "God, you women, you're all the same," he'd joked, but he'd gone through hoops to make it happen, borrowing Emmy's car, making all sorts of promises to Kat about how he would make it up to her.

But now, Maya thought as she chose her cubicle, perhaps he doesn't have the wand anymore. Or perhaps he only waved it over Kat.

Niall was thinking something not entirely removed from that himself. He should have been more careful where he did and didn't wave his wand, or certainly where he did and didn't scatter his promises. He should have learned by now that when Emmy said everything was fine, what she meant was everything was fine at that precise moment. It didn't mean everything would be fine five minutes on. And he shouldn't have promised her she had him, because she hadn't.

The changing rooms were packed with noisy, wet school-children shouting and throwing socks at each other over the locked doors, but he walked obliviously through them. He'd been reckless. As Cathal would say, he'd let his dick rule his head and his sexual greed was now hurting the one person he hoped he would never, ever hurt. What he found even more painful was that Maya was only a short distance away from realizing it.

He could see that she didn't yet have enough understanding to put two and two together as he had. She hadn't yet done the Emmy plus Niall divided by Kat doesn't equal happiness sum, but he knew she would, soon. When she did, she'd realize it was his fault, and she would love him that little bit less. He didn't know if he could bear that.

What he also didn't know was that he hadn't added up correctly, either. He had the wrong equation. He wasn't even in it.

Emmy's mood since Kat's arrival had been atrocious. She could barely bring herself to talk to anyone except Maya, who she could hardly let out of her sight. It had been hard work even negotiating the trip to the pool. Why were they going on their own? she wanted to know. Were they meeting anyone? What time were they going to be back?

He kicked himself again for messing things up. It wasn't simply that he and Emmy shouldn't have made love, it was that they should have put themselves more securely back in their box afterward. But he had believed her when she'd said she was okay with it, that she would be fine if and when Kat came back, that it was just who they were, and she would deal with it in the same way she always dealt with it, by putting it in the box and keeping it safe until they next felt like taking it out.

But the box didn't exist anymore. They'd opened and shut it so frequently over the years that they hadn't noticed its hinges were shot, its lid was hanging off, and there was a bloody great hole in the bottom.

What he was thinking long and hard about now was that maybe Kat was the one who ought to be boxed up. But if he put Kat in a box there would be no need to open it again. The lid wouldn't keep flying open as it did with Emmy. He would shut it and more than likely lose the key. She wasn't the sort of love that wouldn't go away, she was more the sort that would sink without a trace.

He tried to loosen his swimming shorts but they were almost as old as Maya and the cord was already as loose as it got. His hairy tummy hung a little flabbily over the waistband as he padded into the pool area, and on his way he picked a bobble of Air Force blue fluff from his navel. He hated swimming. He was only doing it because Maya wanted to. He would go to the ends of the earth-or even into the deep end of the public baths-for her.

Maya's cubicle was caked with talcum powder and someone had written Lauren loves James in it on the bench. As she got undressed with a child's disregard for where she dropped her clothes, she wondered who Lauren was, and whether James loved Lauren too. She wanted to know what they looked like, how old they were, whether she would like Lauren best, or James.

She wanted to know if Lauren's enemy had written it, or Lauren's friend, or even Lauren herself. Or had it been James? Then she found herself thinking that James probably didn't love Lauren, and that the likelihood was he loved someone else who didn't love him. It seemed to be the way love worked, and not just at school. She hated that bit about Year Six. The I love him, no I don't, I've dumped her, she loves him now stuff. And yet she could see now how that got worse and worse the older you got. At least it was simple when you were in Year Six. At least no one cared.

She didn't want to put her clothes on the bench and rub the message out, just in case James or Lauren came back for a look, so she left them on the damp powdery floor. Her jeans, her fleece and her T-shirt were all filthy, anyway. Her mum wasn't doing any washing at the moment. In fact, she wasn't doing anything at the moment. She was locking herself away in her stupid sewing room, pretending to work, when everyone knew that all she was really doing in there was crying and smoking and getting herself into a state. Well, she was going to have to snap out of it soon.

She took her towel out of her bag and shook it to find her costume. Her goggles went flying and she had to retrieve them by kneeling on the floor and putting her hand into the next cubicle. She saw two feet jump, and then she heard a squeal.

"Is that you, Jade?"

"No," Maya said. "I just need my goggles."

"Who is it, then?"

"You don't know me."

"Yes I do. I know everyone."

"Well, you don't know me because I don't go to your school."

"Which school do you go to, then? St. Mary's?"

"I don't go to school," Maya lied. "I'm an orphan."

The girl didn't reply, but the goggles came skimming back.

As she walked past all the children again, lining up against the wall in their matching red school sweatshirts and hair soaking into their backs, she could tell what they were thinking. What was she doing there? Why wasn't she at school? Where did she get those body transfers from? She smiled at them all, hoping the rumor would spread that she really was an orphan.

The pool was empty. Too late now for a new batch of school lessons, too early for private ones. She'd beaten Niall and she'd thought about getting in but decided to sit on one of the hinged blue seats and wait.

The water was almost glass-still and she wanted to break its surface with a dive. Except you weren't allowed to dive. When she was a grown-up, she was going to take a leaf out of her mother's book and do exactly as she wanted. Emmy never did anything she didn't want to do. She didn't even get up if she didn't want to.

"Hi, darlin'," Niall said. He thought she looked a little lost sitting there. "Have you been waiting long?"

"Ages," she said, jumping to her feet and making a run for the pool. Niall ran too.

Dads, thought the lifeguard, blasting on his whistle from his high chair. Why don't they care what they look like?

When the phone rang that night and Emmy jumped to her feet, Maya did, too, pushing her chair back and sending it scraping across the slate floor.

"Leave it!" her mother shouted. She could have done with a lifeguard's whistle, too.

The sound of the phone surprised Emmy, even though she had been waiting for it to go all day. It was eleven days since Cathal had posted the letter.

"Hello?" Maya shouted happily into the Bakelite receiver. On non-eggshell days, she and her mum would race to be the first to answer and she was claiming a victory on this one. "Hold on." She ran to the bottom of the stairs and Emmy waited.

"Niall? Niall, phone. Phone, Niall."

Emmy's next sip of blackcurrant tea tasted of morning sickness, metal and aspartame. She got up from the table like a robot and programmed herself to retrieve her daughter. Maya was walking back to the phone, her thick socks sliding on the shiny floor. Her hand went to pick up the handset again.

"Maya," Emmy shouted, freezing the frame in her head, "go back and finish your supper."

But her daughter had already started talking happily into the mouthpiece. "He's just coming. I think he's in the shower. We went swimming and his hair has gone all funny."

Emmy waited again. The voice on the other end was going to carry the conversation on. Of course he was. She could have written the script. And why shouldn't he? Cathal was an opportunist-he responded to combinations of circumstance. She of all people should know that. She swayed a little and felt warm blood whooshing round her brain.

"Yes," Maya said. Then a pause. "Nearly eleven."

Emmy's legs buckled. "Give it to me," she demanded, so loudly that Cathal would certainly hear.

"What?" Maya asked. "Why?"

"Because I said so." Emmy had her hand out. "Go and sit down."

Maya made a face and then remembered. Eggshell day. She pushed her feet across the floor in a skating movement once more and made another face at Asha. Asha made one back.

"Can I help?" Emmy said into the receiver, her voice shaking. Every last ounce of energy she possessed had fallen away.

"Is that Emmy?" It was the soft Dublin lilt of Mrs. O'Connor. "I was just having a word with your daughter. Where does the time go? How are you, my love? Is my son behaving himself?"

"Oh, Mary, I thought..."

"Are you all right, dear?"

"Yes, yes, I think-oh, he's just here. Thank you Mary, it's good to..."

"Have I called at a bad time?"

"No, no. Here he is."

She handed the phone to Niall, wet from another shower. Oh, someone help me, she pleaded silently. Sons, daughters, fathers, grandmothers, uncles, mothers-in-law. It was all too complicated.

His chat sounded normal, as if there was no family drama on the horizon, and that settled her. But the next thing she knew he was back in the kitchen, apparently talking to her in Swahili. "He says he wants to hear it from you, Emmy. God knows why. I've told him you're not the keeper of the key."

"Who does?" Everyone was looking at her. "What?" She hadn't heard a word anyone had said for at least the last five minutes. Mouths had been opening and closing around her and people had been coming in and out of the kitchen talking excitedly, but she hadn't engaged with any of it.

"Cathal."

"Sorry?"

"Cathal. Who did you think I meant?"

The blood drained from her face. She wondered if she was dreaming.

"He says he won't come unless you say he can."

"What?"

"Emmy?"

There was a barely visible shake of her head.

"But it's your mum on the phone, not your brother," she said. She could feel a stupid grin form on her lips. Was this all some kind of joke?

"Emmy? Are you okay?" Sita asked.

"Yes. I just don't understand what Niall means about Cathal. What does he want?"

"He wants to come and stay. He's doing a job on a house in Ireland of the same proportions and he wants to come and see Bodinnick."

"Like hell!"

"What?"