Had he no respect?

No sense of decency?

But I was wrong. I looked at him and our eyes locked for a minute. I could see that he was really deathly embarrassed.

He definitely knew that he had made a faux pas.

The room was full of tension and embarrassment.

"Well, I'd better get back to Helen and the essay," he said hurriedly, practically flinging Kate back to me and rushing from the room without a second glance.

I sat on the bed feeling a bit funny.

Was I feeling foolish for overreacting?

Was I feeling sad at my cynicism for just jumping to the wrong conclu- sion?

Was I feeling...God forbid...disappointed?

No, I decided. Definitely not disappointed. But certainly a bit foolish. You've been away from men too long, I told myself sternly. You'd better get back into circulation. So that the next

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time you meet an attractive one you won't be jumping to any ridiculous conclusions.

But at the same time I must admit that I was slightly piqued by the way he'd reacted at the suggestion that we have a baby. There was no need for him to look quite so horrified.

God, but it was typical.

In time-honored tradition I had gone from being furious at the suggestion that he did like me to being furious at the suggestion that he didn't like me in about thirty seconds. Being rational was never my strong point.

I mean, I might well be an "older woman" but I wasn't exactly the Bride of Dracula. I'd have him know, plenty of men found me attractive. Well, I was sure there must be some somewhere who did. There were three billion people on this planet. Out of that lot I was sure I could have rustled up a few poor misfortunates who liked the look of me.

The nerve of the guy. Just because he happened to be extremely good- looking didn't give him any right to make me feel like a horror.

And I might not have been quite as beautiful as Helen.

In fact, I wasn't even remotely as beautiful as Helen.

But I was a kind person.

Not that anyone ever liked someone because they were a kind person.

I fed Kate and put her back to bed.

Then I went downstairs to Mum.

I passed Helen's bedroom on the way and the door was firmly shut. The pair of them were obviously well ensconced in there. Easy writing, indeed! Mum and Dad might have bought that line, but I've used it enough times myself to know what it really means.

But at the same time, if they were having sex, they were doing it very quietly. Not, of course, that I was listening at the door or anything. And not, of course, that it had anything, in the whole wide world, to do with me.

Helen could screw whomever she liked.

With great purpose I watched television with Mum.

Much later we heard Helen and Adam in the kitchen.

Then we heard her saying good-bye to him.

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He stuck his head around the door and thanked us for the lovely dinner and said that he hoped to see us again soon.

Mum and I smiled our good-byes at him.

"Lovely polite lad," said Mum in a satisfied fashion.

I didn't answer her. I was thinking that he didn't look too disheveled for someone who had just been having sex. And wondering why I cared.

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eleven

After Adam left, and Helen had sent him out into the wet and wild March night to make his way home to Rathmines, she closed the front door behind him and came into the television room and sat down with Mum and me.

"He seemed like a lovely lad," said Mum approvingly.

"Did he?" said Helen distantly.

"Lovely," said Mum emphatically.

"Oh, don't go on like you usually do," snapped Helen irritably.

There was a little bit of an awkward pause.

Then I spoke.

"How old is Adam?" I asked Helen casually.

"Why?" she asked without looking away from the television screen. "Do you like him?"

"No," I protested, blushing hotly.

"Oh, really?" she said. "Everyone else does. The whole college does. Mum does."

Mum looked a little bit taken aback and startled and like she was about to defend herself. Before she could, though, Helen started talking again to me.

"And you looked like you fancied him. Giggling and smiling at him. You're worse than Anna. I was mortified."

"I was being polite," I insisted.

"You weren't being polite," she told me tonelessly, still looking at the screen. "You fancied him."

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"Helen, for God's sake, did you expect me to ignore him and not talk to him?" I asked her angrily.

"No," she said coldly. "But you didn't have to be so obvious about fancying him."

"Helen, I'm a married woman," I said, raising my voice at her. "Of course I didn't fancy him. And he's much younger than me."

"Hah!" she shouted back at me. "So you do fancy him. You're just afraid that he's too young. Well, don't worry, because Professor Staunton is married and she's in love with him and got drunk and was crying in the bar and saying she'd leave her husband and everything. We were all in fits laughing. And she's ancient. Even older than you!"

At that Helen jumped up and ran out of the room, slamming the door thunderously behind her. No doubt dislodging the last few remaining slates from the roof.

"Oh God," sighed Mum wearily. "It's like a bloody relay race around here. No sooner does one daughter stop behaving like an Antichrist than another one starts. How did you all get to be so temperamental? You're like a pack of Italians."

"What's wrong with her?" I asked Mum. "Why is she getting all touchy about Adam?"

"Oh, I suppose she's in love with him," said Mum vaguely. "Or at least she thinks she might be."

"What?" I asked, aghast. "Helen in love? Are you out of your mind? The only person Helen is in love with is herself."

"That's a very unkind thing to say about your sister," said Mum, looking at me thoughtfully.

"Well, I don't mean it unkindly," I explained hurriedly. "I just mean that everyone's always in love with her. It's never the other way around."

"There's a first time for everything," said Mum wisely.

We sat quietly.

Mum broke the silence.

"Anyway, she was right."

"About what?" I asked her, wondering what she was talking about.