Summary

Chapter 10 begins with the incident following when Katherine learns that Norah has lost her virginity. Katherine throws Norah's clothes out of the window, and Norah storms out of the house and goes to sit in the park. Norah returns to the house later that evening. Eventually they recover their relationship from this dispute.

Norah then describes meeting Shay ten days after they first had sex. Shay eventually tells Norah that they cannot be together because he does not love her. Norah then describes her life during the "winter of Bloody Sunday." She frequents a series of bars, and describes the anti-British protests, bombings, and casualties. Amid the social unrest, Katherine returns from America to Ireland, into which she flew "like a bird into a windowpane" (144).

Norah relates her relationship with a medical student with whom she had "pistoning sex and not a single...