MANCHESTER

The sun was fighting with the gathering clouds outside the old terraced house. The sun was losing. Peter rose to turn on a few lamps.

Ambrose was on his knees once more - this time, looking through old record cabinets that had sat mostly untouched since George Clifford's death, and entirely so since Mary Margaret's. He settled on The Hollies, an album Peter never knew they had. Never too late for anyone to surprise us, he thought.

Ambrose lowered the needle into the groove. "So you never kept up with anyone after you left Ballykea?"

Peter shook his head. "I couldn't bear to."

"Assumpta probably thinks you're still there."

"Doubt she thinks much of me at all."

Ambrose snorted.

Peter changed the subject, sort of: "So what changed your mind? Why go back now?"

Ambrose blinked into the new brightness of the room. "Guilt just got to be too much."

"Oh."

"I tried all along to do what I thought was right. But I'm living a lie. I miss my son. I miss my mother."

"And Niamh?"

Ambrose set down his teacup. "How I feel about Niamh stopped mattering a long time ago."

"I have a hard time believing that."

Ambrose gave a cold shrug. "Lots changed after you and Assumpta left."

"I'm sorry." It hardly made sense. Peter cast his eyes out the window. The clouds were thickening, the sun sinking lower.

Ambrose considered a biscuit. "You've not yet asked about Assumpta."

Peter looked at him. "What's to know?" he bluffed.

"Why she did it. Where she is. When we'll go and meet her."

"Ambrose," Peter warned, looking out again.

"You have to do it. You're under orders."

Now Peter spun to face him full-on. "How'd you know that?"

Ambrose looked sheepish. "Your parish priest had a window open."

Peter pointed two incredulous green eyes at the low plaster ceiling.

"Just admit that you want to know."

"I don't."

"You do."

"I don't."

"You do! You wish you didn't but you do!"

"Ambrose, you've had a long day. A two and a half hour drive, a problematic confession..." He turned for the staircase.

"Father, you've had a long three years."

Peter turned back, gripping the handrail.

"She's in Belfast. She's a regular supporting actress at some awful little playhouse."

Peter lowered himself onto the third stair from the bottom.

"I met an actor on the set who had worked there." Ambrose got up, came over to the stairs. "Showed me this. I made him copy it for me." Ambrose reached into his jacket pocket.

The photograph had been enlarged and printed on ordinary paper. The ink had warped it a little, in places, and it had been folded and unfolded, once lengthwise, once along the width. The lighting was awful, the group pose was awkward, and the actors' smiles were all insincerely toothy.

All but one.

Peter had been prepared for a lookalike, or worse, for the feeling he couldn't be sure. It had happened a half dozen times in the last few years - a dark auburn head in a full congregation, a blue-green Renault Extra on a busy street, a phantom scent of lily of the valley. When those things happened, he was right back on the bridge in his mind, ready to fling his collar into the River Aingeal once and for all.

Then he'd be back to reality, half determined to fling himself into the Mersey.

This, for its dreadful quality, was unmistakable. The woman he'd thought was bones or ashes, here facing diagonally but dark eyes pointing straight on, and that close-lipped smile that had every secret in the world behind it.

Now he noticed she was dressed as a harem girl. He blushed and looked away.

Ambrose folded the picture and set it on the table. He pulled his mobile from his pocket. "Doc Ryan could tell you everything."

Peter laced his fingers through the ribs of the banister. "All right then," he said softly. "I'm listening."

BELFAST

Travelling made Assumpta nervous. It was jarring to hear the car hire attendants call her "Miss Fitzgerald," always the feeling of wandering through a minefield.

For her own sake, Doc Ryan had pronounced her, but never officially declared her dead, never filled out a real certificate. Her old ident was still valid, for now, and theatre patrons almost never recognised her out in public; the few who did still never knew her "name," only what play she had been in, or what costume she'd worn. Still, it was nerve-wracking, this clash of her two selves.

Once inside the little grey coupe, she felt safer, more anonymous, invisible. She estimated she'd be back in Ballykea before last orders; the trick would be passing through town unnoticed (the main reason she'd opted against taking the Enterprise and Bus Eireann). She hoped the prop glasses she'd rented from the theatre, and the effects of her flat-iron, would help to throw people off the scent. It was too late now to dye her hair.

Forget coming clean, she thought. I'm getting my dog and turning back. That'll be the end of it. No one'll be the wiser.

She couldn't quite believe herself. She turned on the radio to drown out the voice in her brain, but the DJ seemed to have a wry sense of humour. The song was an old one; sounded like The Cars. Something about a "double life."

She shut the radio off again.

What if Ambrose had already made good on his threat? What then? Peter could absolve his parishioners anything, could hear any confession under the sun, but could he ever forgive this? Maybe he'd be grateful. Yes, happy she had spared his career, thankful he hadn't thrown it all away for a woman with a lousy track record and a bad temper. He'd pat her shoulder distantly, thank her for leading him not into temptation, keeping him on course and in the frock. What he'd felt for her, he'd be over.

This thought failed to comfort her.

She thought now of the flask in her purse, which she'd left unreachable in the tiny backseat as a precaution. That comfort would have to wait.

"Oh, I can't believe I'm doing this," she said aloud, breathing deep.

She flicked the radio back on. The refrain from "Get Back" taunted her this time, but she let it play.