It's a crime to be lonely. Nobody might ever have discovered, it could have gone on for years, this harmless little scheme of Nora going out to the airport two or three times a week.
She went there because she was lonely, because it's easy to talk to people at airports, there's an atmosphere of excitement and energy and people going to places, and coming home.
Much better anyway than sitting looking at the four walls of your house.
And it's not all just looking at the people going off to their different flights, you can browse in the bookshop there, have a snack, get your hair done even.
Sometimes she would get talking to families with children.
Nora liked that, she'd ask them where they were going and what they thought it was going to be like.
One little boy said he'd send her a post card, but Nora didn't mind when he didn't. There was too much to do in Disneyland.
There's a kind of system about striking up conversations, she says. Like there's no point at all trying to talk to anyone who has a mobile phone, they're only dying to use it to make a call or else waiting for it to ring.
People on their own with briefcases are not likely to want to chat. And anyone rooting in a bag looking for tickets or passport is a bad starter, they're too fussed to concentrate on a nice conversation with a stranger.
Nora has had some of her best chats with people going on package tours, especially bus tours. Women wearing badges with the name of the coach tour company were particularly approachable.
Some of them had never travelled abroad before and were a little anxious. Nora would reassure them and say that these companies were great, they looked after everyone and nobody would get lost.
She has patted down a lot of those who were nervous about a trip to Lourdes or a Five Capitals in Seven Days tour.
Nora, who has been abroad only rarely herself, is well able to head their anxieties off at the pass. Oh yes, the buses do stop several times and indeed everyone in these hotels speaks English and there's great shopping where they'll give you the price in pounds as well as in foreign currency.
She waves them off, feeling that in a way they almost are friends.
No, they don't ask her too much about where she's going herself, it's odd that but people aren't all that interested. She doesn't tell them packs of lies and make up mythical journeys. She doesn't need to.
If they do press her, she says she's just on a little hop across the water this time, and they let it go.
Nora is a mine of information for travellers. She's nearly as good as the personnel in uniform.
She can tell you which gate your flight leaves from, where the letter box is, the nearest Ladies cloakroom.
She often carries paper clips which are a good way of constructing a makeshift lock on a suitcase. Someone showed her once, and it was too good a hint not to pass on. It would delay a thief anyway and that's what matters, Nora would explain sagely - and people were always very grateful.
She often talked to Americans who had been here on a holiday and they told her about their trip. One of them had even given Nora an address in case she was ever in Seattle.
Then she might take the escalator down from Departures and go to sit in Arrivals for a while.
It's very easy to talk to people there, particularly when flights have been delayed. That's a great opportunity.
She got talking to a woman once who was waiting to meet a cousin from America. A very nice person, they had a lot in common, Nora said. The woman liked the same television programmes, and was about the same age. She didn't live far away either.
She would have been a fine friend. But Nora didn't like to push things.
It was so easy for people to reject you, keep you out of their lives. It was hurtful when it happened.
Nora didn't see any point in going out of her way to attract it. This woman had a life of her own, a cousin from America, plans for the summer.
The woman had asked who Nora was meeting and Nora had been vague.
Oh, the flight wasn't due until much later, she said, and somehow that covered it. No need to say who was coming or who wasn't.
The woman had said that she too was a compulsively early person. They really could have become friends.
But then she might have found out that Nora was a person who went out to Dublin airport, not to meet anyone but just for something to do and once this was revealed she would be seen in a different light.
Odd is what people called it. Odd and sad. The people who knew.
AND they were many now because two people had said casually to Nora's niece that they had seen her aunt at the airport. Her niece was always saying Auntie Nora should develop some hobbies, get out more, meet people.
The niece, a busybody of the highest order, had interrogated Nora.
Nora was never good at lying, she couldn't think up a story that would sound convincing. So she told the truth.
And now they are all frowning and tutting.
Her sister, who lives in the country, came up to see her and tried to persuade her to go to the doctor so that he could give her a little something for her nerves. She said there was no shame in it these days.
But Nora says there's nothing wrong with her nerves.
And her nephew, who is in social work, says he can get her accepted for one morning a week in a day centre. Even though, strictly speaking, she's too young, not quite 70. A lot of the people will be quite frail and in wheel chairs but still it would be company and something to look forward to. Wouldn't it?
Her brother's wife, always one for the tart word, apparently said that Nora was lucky to have so much time on her hands. If she had raised a family and had to look after a man, a house, a brood of children, she wouldn't have these problems.
Nora would love to have had a man, a house and a brood of children, but things didn't work out that way.
The bossy niece said that surely she must have some friends, neighbours, people she knew?
And it's very hard to explain to the young and confident that other people have their own lives and they close their front doors on you when they go back to them.
And Nora has only her little flat, which sort of chokes her if she's in it too long on her own .
She wasn't complaining about being lonely, she says. Nora never mentioned it to anyone really.
It was a thing people didn't understand, it seemed that you must be some horrible person if you didn't get on like a house on fire with your neighbours and have 100 people you used to know at work rushing in and out of your house.
It's as if everyone is afraid of lonely people, if they reach out to the lonely who knows where it would end?
So she didn't tell anyone she just went to a busy, exciting place and talked to a variety of ships that were passing in the night. That's how she saw it.
Not doing anyone any harm, filling her days nicely.
But now it seems this is odd and sad, normal people don't do things like that.
From now on Nora must be watched. Carefully.