‘It was strong, yesterday, the Tramontane,’ Louise observed, placing two baguettes, a fougasse and a brioche in white paper bags, and taking a box filled with pastries from a shelf. ‘Keelin asked me to put these aside. Is she doing a holistic day today?’

‘She is. I’ll do the morning meditation, but I’ll be in the square for the boules this afternoon,’ Brigid assured her.

‘Ah, bonjour, Brigid! Would you like to join us on a painting trip to Casteil next Thursday? Monsieur Delacroix has offered to take us in his minibus.’ Madame Janvier huffed and puffed into the shop, wheezing loudly, swathed in a fog of Gitanes smoke. She was a chain smoker, which Brigid hated, but she was a talented artist and an excellent teacher.

‘I’d love to. Merci,’ agreed Brigid enthusiastically, forgetting that she was planning to return to Ireland.

‘Excellent, we will bring a picnic. Louise can bake a few extra baguettes on Thursday morning. And some of your delicious éclairs. Enough for six of us,’ Madame Janvier ordered bossily, and Brigid hid a smile at Louise’s exasperated expression. Madame Janvier was the mayor’s wife and she had introduced herself to Brigid as the First Lady of Bois d’Abbés. As Brigid’s late Aunt Nellie would have said of the mayor’s wife, she was ‘a right consequence’. Nevertheless, the Frenchwoman had made Brigid feel most welcome in the village when Keelin had made the introductions.

It seemed like only yesterday, Brigid reflected, cycling along the narrow, winding main street, past the butcher’s and barber’s and up the hill where the small chapel dominated the square where the little coffee shop and local bar were the focal points of the village.

Had Keelin not been hosting one of her holistic days, Brigid would have stopped for a coffee, a vice she had given in to with guilty pleasure for the past few months. She’d miss these little treats when she got home. She’d be back to being Reverend Mother and not Brigid, the Irish woman who was Keelin’s aunt and who could speak fluent French. She hadn’t told anyone that she used to be a nun. She’d merely said that she was retired from a nursing career.

Would she have been treated differently if she’d said she was a nun, she wondered. It had been so emancipating just being her: Brigid Dunne from Ardcloch. Going home to Ireland, she’d have to put back on the old skin she’d sloughed off, and she didn’t want to. Whether she stayed in the Four Winds, or the convent in Limerick, there’d be constant reminders of her old life. The life she now had so many regrets about.

‘Nothing I can do about it now,’ she sighed, freewheeling down the hill with the breeze kissing her cheeks and ruffling her hair.