'I don't know what you see in me,' Helena says, stretching lazy and catlike on her warm bed beside him. Ambrose settles his arms behind his head, nests his black hair on her pillow, gazes ceilingwards. They are both drowsed after making love on a Sunday. Around them the city slumbers. Dublin silent as the Sabbath, men afternoon napping, women finished with the Sunday lunch, washing dishes, reading the papers. Watching the clock. Dinner at seven.

'You're a grand girl,' Ambrose says. 'I wish you didn't have such a low opinion of yourself.'

'I can't help it,' Helena says. 'I've only to look in a mirror to see that I'm plain as bread.'

'Rubbish.'

Helena smiles, secretly pleased.

'Do you love me?' she asks.

'You know I do.'

'Swear it.'

'I swear.'

'Say it.'

'I love you, Helena.'

'I love you too, Ambrose. Madly.'

She lifts herself on one elbow, looks for Ambrose's reaction to her love words. Seeing none, she picks a tiny feather from his hair and slides it across his matted chest.

'Why do men have nipples?' she asks.

Ambrose shrugs, his eyes drooping with tiredness.

'I don't know or care.'

'Maybe men have the remnants of women in them?' she suggests. 'Something left over from long ago. Maybe cavemen weren't big, hairy creatures after all. Maybe they were gentle and kind, like women?'

Ambrose laughs quietly at her foolishness. He turns on his side, ending the discussion. For a moment, Helena thinks about what he's said. Then she leans over to kiss him. But Ambrose is asleep.

'I don't know him at all,' Helena thinks. 'Ten weeks, four days of him and he's still a stranger. Even love and being intimate didn't change that. Loving is not knowing.'

Helena adores Ambrose. She'd like to rip out his heart, consume it, make him part of her.

'Poor baby,' she whispers and drags a sheet over his midriff, sweat gleams in his hair clogged navel. Then Helena walks naked from her bed and stands by the window. She opens the heavy curtain a fraction and peeks outside. Below, sedate Marion Avenue is deserted. It is the August Bank Holiday weekend and people are at the races, at the seaside, sleeping last nights' over indulgences away. Helena's own parents are down in Courtown, paddling in the Irish Sea with Aunt Jane and Uncle Mattie. They're gone for three days. Helen has the house to herself.

Helena sits by her dressing table and stares at her dim reflection. Behind her, Ambrose's chest rising and falling, not a sound out of him. The sleep of the innocent.

'What does he see in me?' Helen asks the silent mirror. Her eyes are too small, her mouth too thin, her short auburn hair framing a small, troubled, freckled face. She's too tall. Helena cups her large, full breasts in her hands and wonders if they are the star attraction.

'What does it matter so long as he loves me?'

Helena looks past her mirrored self, sits staring at Ambrose's reflected face, his dark remarkable profile. Aquiline. 'Ambrose is sinfully handsome,' she thinks. 'And, thank God, not full of himself, like so many Irish men.' He's different, special; a prize Helena has awarded herself. Ambrose is the crowning achievement of her twenty-seven years; her time spent looking for Mr. Right. Thinking about it makes her belly glad, fills her with happiness.

His jacket and trousers have fallen to the floor. Helena looks towards the napping man, satisfies herself that he's deeply sleeping and she picks up his jacket and searches his pockets. Quietly, furtively, one eye on Ambrose.

Keys, loose change, junk. Nothing incriminating. No love letters or notes from other women. Nothing female. She searches the pockets of his trousers. Finds nothing unusual. Breathes relief. Safe. For the time being.

A clock in the warm Sunday afternoon living room below tolls four.

Helena slips downstairs to make tea.

Standing by the stove she watches the kettle, worried in case it whistles and disturbs her sleeping lover above. When the water gurgles, she lifts the kettle from the gas and makes tea. It thrills her to sit naked in the hot kitchen.

'My parents would have a fit if they walked in now. Though I imagine Uncle Mattie would be pleased. Aunt Jane too.

' Helena giggles.

Across from her, a small oval mirror sits on a shelf. Helena leans forward. Pulls a hair down over her nose, blows it away with a smile at her oval self.

Half an hour later, Ambrose comes down the stairs, running fingers through his too long, tangled hair, blinking sleep from his eyes. Finds her in the living room, reading a women's magazine. Helena is fashion mad.

'What time is it?' he asks.

'Five. Almost.'

'I'd kill for a strong cup of tea.'

'The kettle's nearly boiled. There's no need to kill.'

She stands, takes his arm, leads him to the kitchen.

'I'll have to go in a few minutes,' Ambrose says, sipping his tea, devouring a piece of cake.

'So soon?'

'I promised mother I'd get home by six. She'll be needing her tea. I have work to do as well.'

Ambrose works hard in an Estate Agent's office in town. Often brings work home at weekends.

'Why can't I meet your mother?' Helena asks. Angry eyes over the tea cup.

'How many times do I have to tell you? Mother's not ready for visitors. Soon as she's up to it I'll bring you over.'

Ambrose's old mother is in mourning. Her daughter, his younger sister, Margaret, killed in a car accident just four months ago. Mother and son lamenting still. The old lady absorbed in grief, not wanting strangers at her door.

Helena trying to sympathise. 'All right,' she says. 'I understand. I think.'

Ambrose pats her hand. Slips upstairs. Dresses. Leaves.

Days later, Helena phones Ambrose from work. He says 'I can't see you tonight. Mother's taken a turn. The doctor's coming around.'

'What time are you leaving work?' she asks. Casually.

'Four.'

It is half past three now. Helena works in a bookshop near Merrion Square. Ambrose's office is just a long walk away.

'Daydreaming again?' her boss, asks, censuring looks in her direction.

'I've got a headache,' she lies. 'Can I leave a bit early?'

'If you must. Make up for it tomorrow evening though.'

'Sure thing.'

Helena leaves work early. She hurries along the hot Dublin streets. A gentle, warm rain falls on her face. All day, all night she's been thinking about Ambrose. She can't get him out of her head. Ambrose is an obsession. At Westland Row, Helena stops hurrying. There's time to spare. Not yet four. At the place where Ambrose works she stands across the road by a shop window. Behind her at the kerbside, Ambrose's car. The shop window has two white plastic mannequins, posing robots in underwear. Stockings, suspenders, slips. Enticing female things in red lace. Between the lifeless models, Ambrose's car reflected. Helena waits, looking at satin, silks, waiting for Ambrose

. Four o'clock sharp he emerges from the building. Doesn't raise a head. Climbs into his car and drives away. Helena looks at her guilty reflection. Relief, that he's telling the truth. She's watched him before. Even walked past his house a few times. Terrified in case she sees him with a girl. Two timing, betraying her. But he's been good as his word. So far.

Helena walks to a bus stop. A sudden cloudburst washes the streets clean. Remembering a rainy night in early June when she first met Ambrose. At a dance in town. She was with her pals, Marion and Clare. Sitting shyly, watching her friends having a grand time.

'Will you dance?' Ambrose suddenly there at her side, his face red and green from the flashing lights.

'I'd rather sit this one out,' she says. Helena has got two left feet. She only came because Marion dared her. Promised she'd find a man for Helena.

'Maybe I could sit it out with you?' Ambrose smiling, intimacy in his eyes. A friend in need.

They talked for ages and when they left the dancehall the rain was pouring down. O'Connell Street littered with soaked newspapers and day spent trash.

'I have a car. Can I give you a lift?' he asks.

'No thanks. I'll get the bus.'

'You'll get soaked. I'm going your way. Please, Helena.'

'Oh all right then.'

Keep away from strangers. Don't accept sweets from men. They only want one thing. Her mother's litany about men's wicked ways. Sometimes, Helena took the sweets.

'I'm not a child any more, mother.'

'That's what you think.'

Mother and daughter glaring at each other. Like strangers. Constantly at war.

Helena's parents return from Courtown. No more love upstairs. It's back to the Phoenix Park or up the Dublin Mountains. Madness in the back of Ambrose's car. In the darkness she chews his ear lobe, guides his hands into her, eating his lips in the darkness. Ambrose mad.

Wednesday night looking down on Kilberry Lake. There's a chill in the air. August has not been kind to them.

'Let's go someplace special this weekend,' she says.

'What do you mean?'

'A hotel?' she suggests. 'We could stay overnight.'

Ambrose chewing his lips, pondering, tasting her words.

'I don't think so,' he says. 'I hate that kind of thing. False names and lying to knowing bloody receptionists. It would cheapen what we have.'

'How can you be certain, Ambrose? Have you done it before?'

'Never.'

'You sound experienced. Have their been others? Tell me, Ambrose. I promise I won't get annoyed.'

'You're a silly cow,' Ambrose affectionately insults. 'Anyway, I couldn't leave mother.'

Suppose Ambrose didn't go home? Helena thinks of the old woman lying in the dark all night, rosary beads in hand, praying for the dawn, terrified in case mortality comes out of the dark. Death loving her to death.

Helena smiles at the thought.

Ambrose frowns, reading her mind.

He pulls Helena towards him, kisses her eyebrows, her nose, her mouth. Assures her she's special, unique.

Even so, she can never be sure. Ambrose says he's had girlfriends but nothing like her. Helena's different. That's hard for her to believe. A handsome man just passing thirty. He must be lying. Aren't all men sex mad? But then, Ambrose is quite religious, has strong moral values. Even considered being a priest but his mother wouldn't let him. Helena can't be sure about Ambrose, about anybody really. As for herself? Apart from surreptitious feels in the cinema and boys taking unoffered kisses, Helena came to Ambrose tight and tense with chastity. Once, when she was twenty, a man almost forced himself on her in his car. After a funeral it was. Made a mess of her dress. She puked breakfast all over him. It took her a long time to recover from that experience.

Helena is still almost a virgin.

The promised heat comes in September, late summer surprising the pessimists.

Ambrose phones.

'Come to my house on Sunday?'

'Really? Are you serious?'

'Absolutely.

' 'What about your mother?'

'She's gone into hospital. The Mater. She'll be there for a couple of days. Maybe longer.'

'Nothing serious, I hope?'

'They're operating on her legs. Varicose veins.'

'Oh.'

'Please come, Helena. I'm desperate to see you.'

'Of course I'll come.'

Sunday afternoon.

Helena in Ambrose's front parlour. He goes to make tea. Helena disappointed by the smallness of the house inside. So clean she dares not breathe on the gleaming furniture. Knickknacks on the mantle. Linen on backs of chairs. Knitted covers on cushions. Stale perfume. A woman's house. Smells of polish and pot potpourri. Pictures of Jesus on the wall, statues of Mary. Women's things. Helena longs to be enfolded by his house, absorbed in its Ambrose atmosphere, become part of the furniture. Come home to him. Thinking of his mother, Helena wishes the old bitch was dead. Clearing the path to Ambrose's door. This promised visit a respite, welcome as a birthday wish granted. It's been weeks since they've been in bed. Doing it properly. Helena is raging with need.

'What do you think?' Ambrose asks, rejoining her, placing a tray on the shining mahogany coffee table. Lifts a green knitted teacosy from the teapot.

'It's nice,' she smiles, vaguely, getting used to the place.

'Yes?'

'It feels special. To think you grew up here.'

'It's cosy,' he says.

Helena raises her cup.

'Tea cosy,' she says and smiles pleased with her pun.

After tea, Ambrose takes her next door. Framed pictures of his family on sideboards, on the mantelpiece. Helena sees his mother at last, her rival. White haired, severe, standing with Ambrose. He rises tall above her but you can tell who's boss. His mother, not as old as she'd thought. Not yet sixty, he confirms.

Next, his dead father, locked in small monochrome frames, silver edged. The man smiling in a striped jersey with a baby. Ambrose bawling in his daddy's arms. Daddy Ambrose lived long enough to sire two dutiful children, then died, his duty done.

Finally his dead sister, Margaret. A tall girl, like herself, all smiles and dimples. Staring out of a colour portrait in school clothes - shirt, tie, emerald blazer, freckles around her nose, gaps in teeth, small green eyes, short hair curled.

'How old was Margaret when she died?' Helena asks

. 'Twenty nine. Just.'

Helena returns the photo to the mantle. Margaret's frozen smile follows her out of the room. Haunting her.

Upstairs, they fall violently into loving. Each with their own tricks, preferences, games. Ambrose is very patient.

When it's over they lie, sweated and relieved.

Talking quietly.

'I have to leave for the hospital around seven. Mother's expecting me,' he says.

'Can I come?'

'If you like. You'd have to wait. I'll be an hour. You'll be bored. Why not wait here?'

'You won't let me meet her?'

Helena dying to be part of the family now. To be special in the eyes of his mother. Already she's planning ways to please the old women. She'd even polish and cook. Prove herself. Somehow.

'It's not a good time to meet her. Not in hospital. Not now.'

'Never, I suppose?' Helena snaps, confidently hostile in Ambrose's house.

'Maybe when she gets out of hospital,' he offers.

'More maybes.'

'I promise you'll meet her then.'

Helen smiles, quarter satisfied.

Nearly time to leave, dressed and out on the landing Ambrose says 'Let me show you Margaret's room.'

Swings open a door. Helena blinded by the sun, gleaming on a bare polished floor. She steps within. The bed made, sheets clean, the pillows uncreased. A plain crucifix over the bed.

'It's sad looking,' she says.

'Nothing to be sad about,' Ambrose assures, settling an arm around her. 'Margaret's in heaven. We should be glad.'

More photos. Helena picks up small picture of Margaret and Ambrose as children dressed up. Margaret a moustached farmer, Ambrose a farmer's wife. Both disguised. Helena laughs. Looks around the room for clues to Margaret. A wardrobe open a fraction, a hint of green. Helena curious. She slips away from Ambrose, walks gently, barefooted, on the cold floor, swings open the creaking wardrobe door.

Jumps startled. A full length mirror inside the wardrobe door reflects her anxiety.

'That nearly put the heart crossways in me,' she says.

'Scared of yourself?' Ambrose laughs.

Helena reaching in, touching clothing, sees shoes, handbags. Boxes crammed with promises, wigs on cranium shaped mounds.

'This is expensive stuff,' she says, knowingly. Helena understands about these things. Clothing maketh the woman, she reckons. Helena couldn't even afford the shoes.

She reaches for a green dress. Chiffon. Green with envy.

'Is it all right if I touch?' she asks.

'Sure thing. We haven't given much away. Mother likes to come in here and sit. I think it helps knowing that Margaret's things are still around her.'

Helena presses the green dress against her body. Shivers. Thinks momentarily of snakes' skins and mildewed shrouds.

'Nice,' Ambrose says. 'Pity you didn't know her. You'd have gotton on great together.'

I know her now, Helena thinks.

'I could never afford this kind of thing,' Helena says, reaching for a different dress. Green again. Velvet.

'Green was Margaret's favourite colour,' Ambrose says.

'Green is suppose to be unlucky.' Helena's mother often says that. Silly woman.

Helena holds the velvet gown to her. Inhales the lingering perfume, deep and mysterious. Tenacious scent. Margaret's smell.

'Try it on,' Ambrose prompts.

'No.'

'Please.'

Helena turns and smiles. Ambrose seems agitated, excited again as though the afternoon was just beginning.

'All right,' she agrees.

Helena poses for him. Different colours, different styles. Feels the softness of Margaret's garb against her. The sensuality of expense. Finally, tired, she stands in her half slip and lays the last of the dresses on Margaret's green quilted bed.

'I'm exhausted,' Helena says, plopping down on the bed. 'Models must have tremendous stamina.'

Ambrose beside her, kissing her hot face, moving his hands over her, making her want a second helping. Helena laughs and consumes him. On Margaret's bed.

After seven, dressing again.

'You'll be late,' she warns.

'I don't care.'

Helena beams.

'Stay late tonight,' Ambrose whispers, looking in Margaret's mirror, fixing his hair. 'Stay all night. I've brought no work home this weekend. I could even go in late in the morning.'

'Are you sure?' she asks, excited, insatiable.

'Positive.'

'What about all this?' she asks. Margaret's things all over the bed, mingled with their juices, sweat stained.

'Keep them, dear.'

'I couldn't, darling. They're much too good.'

Ambrose walks across the room, flings open a drawer, scatters Margaret's underwear over Helena.

'Keep it all,' he says. 'It's good material. The best. Pure silk.'

'But these were your sister's.'

'It's like an exorcism,' he says sitting beside her, exhausted, burying his face in his hands. 'I'm so relieved to be making some use of all this.'

'What about your mother?'

'Mother won't mind. You can meet her soon. Not tonight. Not in the hospital. As soon as she gets home. I'm sure she'd prefer to meet you here. In her house. A proper greeting.'

'Sure?'

'I promise. Mother will be pleased. She likes me to be happy.'

Helena charmed with her new wardrobe stands, adjusts her hair in the mirror. Sees a photo of Margaret smiling at her from across the room. Reflected Margaret, smiling back to front.

Ambrose is mine now, she thinks. I'll sleep here tonight. In silk. That should make him happy.

She finally knows Ambrose.

Pure silk. Spun from worms.

She knows her lover intimately.