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the end of the lectures in the evening, the students huddled in the hallway of the college, putting on layer after layer of clothes as a defence against the cold night. It was, she thought, like a preparation for a strange play, with all of them trying on costumes, their gestures slow and deliberate, looks of blank determination on their faces. It appeared impossible to imagine a time when it was not cold and she could walk these streets thinking about something other than the warm hallway of Mrs. Kehoe’s house, the warm kitchen and her own warm bedroom.

One evening, as she was about to go upstairs to bed, Eilis saw Mrs. Kehoe standing in the doorway of her own sitting room, hovering there in the shadows as though afraid to be seen. She beckoned to Eilis without speaking, motioned her into the room and then quietly closed the door. Even as she crossed the room and sat in the armchair by the fire, indicating to Eilis that she should sit in the armchair opposite, she said nothing. The look on her face was grave as she put her right hand out and lowered it, suggesting to Eilis that if she were to speak her voice should not be loud.

“Now,” she said and looked into the fire, which was burning brightly in the grate, before placing a log and then another on the flames. “Not a word that you ever even came in here? Promise?”

Eilis nodded.

“The truth is that Miss Keegan is departing and the sooner the better as far as I’m concerned. I have her sworn not to say a word to anyone. She’s very West of Ireland and they’re better at saying nothing than we are. So it suits her because she doesn’t have to say any farewells. She’ll be gone on Monday and I want you to move into her room in the basement. It’s not damp now so don’t look at me like that.”

“I’m not looking at you,” Eilis said.

“Well, don’t.”

Mrs. Kehoe studied the fire for a moment and then the floor.

“It’s the best room in the house, the biggest, the warmest, the quietest and the best-appointed. And I don’t want any discussion about it. You are getting it and that’s that. So if you pack your things on Sunday, on Monday when you’re at work I’ll have them moved down, and that’ll be the end of it. You’ll need a key for down below because you have your own entrance, which you share with Miss Montini, but of course even if you lose the key, there’s still the stairs between the basement and this floor so don’t look so worried.”

“Will the others not mind that I’m getting the room?” Eilis asked.

“They will,” Mrs. Kehoe said and smiled at her. She then looked into the fire, nodding her head in satisfaction. She raised her head and gazed bravely at Eilis. It took Eilis a moment to realize that this was a signal from Mrs. Kehoe that she should leave. She stood up quietly as Mrs. Kehoe once more stretched out her right hand to make clear that Eilis should not make a sound.

It struck Eilis, as she made her way up the stairs to her bedroom, that the basement room could, in fact, be damp and small. She had never heard anyone say before that it was the best room in the house. She wondered if all this secrecy was not merely a way of landing her there without giving her a chance to see where she was going or make any protest. She would have to wait, she realized, until she came back from her classes on Monday night.

Over the next few days she began to dread the move and resent the idea of Mrs. Kehoe moving her cases when she was out of the house and putting them into a place from which Miss Keegan emerged daily in a state that did not seem to Eilis to suggest that she had the best room in the house. She realized also that she could not appeal to Father Flood were the room dingy or dark or damp. She had used up enough of his sympathy and she knew that Mrs. Kehoe was fully aware of this.

On the Sunday, as she packed her cases and left them by the bed, finding that she had acquired more belongings than she could fit into them and having to go downstairs and quietly ask Mrs. Kehoe for some carrier