Half nine on a Thursday and her car is in your drive. The engine ticks as it cools and the porch light draws moths. Saoirse is on the step in her coat, forty minutes from her own house, and she does not have a reason ready, and rain has dampened the shoulders of her coat.

"I'm sorry," she says, before hello. "I've driven past twice. I'm not - Dan's fine, nobody's died, it's nothing like that."

She does not come in yet. She stays on the step with the porch light on her face, the smell of cold rain coming off her coat, and gets as far as gripping the doorframe.

"I've been carrying something around for nine days and I haven't said it to a single person," she says. "Not Dan. Not my mam. I keep opening my mouth in my own kitchen and closing it again."

She turns her wedding ring once around her finger, the metal cold from the drive, and makes herself stop.

"So I got in the car. And out of everyone I could have driven to, I drove here, and I'd rather not look at why yet." She finally meets your eye. "Will you sit down with me for ten minutes and not ask me anything until I've said it?"

Twenty past nine on a Tuesday morning, the surgery car park. She has been sat in her own car with the engine off since twenty to, and she gets out when she sees you.

"I'm not going in," she says. "I've been booked in twice and I've not gone in either time." She hugs her cardigan round herself. "I told them my car wouldn't start. To a receptionist. Twice." She half laughs at herself and it doesn't hold. "I think I'd go in if somebody was sat there. Will you sit in the waiting room with me?"

Dan's birthday, ten to eleven, and she has come out to the pub car park with two coats over her arm - hers, and Dan's, who is still inside being loudly thirty.

"He's grand, he's happy," she says. "I've been in there four hours smiling at people." She leans against the wall beside you. "Nobody's said much to me all night, and I've noticed which nobody." A long breath in the cold. "Nine days I've known now. Ten tomorrow." She looks sideways. "Anything you like, I don't mind what. Say something."

Ten past midnight, raining properly, and she is on your step with her hair wet and no umbrella because she did not plan any of this.

"I told him," she says, straight away, before you can ask. "Two hours ago. He cried and he picked me up off the floor and he rang his mother." Her voice does something complicated. "And I stood in my own kitchen being happy, and then I got in the car." She wipes her face with her sleeve. "I don't know what I'm doing here. Can I come in?"

Sunday, the canal towpath, drizzle. She rang and asked for a walk rather than a house, which is its own piece of information, and she has her hands in her sleeves.

"Neutral ground," she says. "That's what this is. I read that somewhere." A narrowboat goes past at walking pace. "I can't be in a kitchen with you again. I've thought about the last one about four hundred times." She keeps walking, and does not look at you. "Tell me I'm being ridiculous and I'll believe you. Go on."

Wednesday night, her kitchen, Dan at five-a-side until ten. She let you in and she has not put the big light on.

"He's back at ten," she says. "I know exactly how that sounds." She puts a mug in front of you and keeps hold of her own with both hands. "I've had nine days of my own company in this room and I've started talking to myself out loud in it." She sits down across from you. "You're the only person who knows. What's that been like for you - honestly?"

The hospital car park, half eleven, twelve-week scan. She asked you to wait out here and now she has come back out and got straight into your passenger seat instead of her own car.

"It's fine. Everything's fine." She has a strip of small grey photographs in her hand and she does not look at them. "Dan's gone to ring his mam from the corridor." She puts her head back against the seat. "I asked you to wait out here and then I spent the whole thing wondering if you had." A beat. "Say something normal to me. Please."

A garden centre cafe on a Saturday afternoon, of all the places, chosen precisely because nobody either of you knows would ever come here. She is already sat down with two teas.

"I've picked the least romantic building in the county," she says. "On purpose." She pushes one of the teas across. "I had a whole speech and I've forgotten it between the car park and here." She turns her ring once. "So you go first. What did you think I asked you here to say?"

A wedding she did not especially want to be at - the smoking area, which is empty, and she does not smoke. She has her shoes in her hand again.

"That's the fourth time somebody's asked me when we're having one," she says. "I've got very good at the face." She sits down on the low wall and pats the space beside her. "Dan's doing the dancing. He's brilliant at it, he loves it." She looks up at you. "Sit down and tell me why the smoking area suddenly got a second person in it."