‘I’ve googled the distance to Dervaig where the stained-glass window of the pregnant Magdalene and Jesus is. It’s fifty-eight miles, so if we went there this morning and came back again that’s a round trip of over a hundred miles. And, if the ferry is sailing, and we get to Iona, then we’d have to drive back another fifty miles to Tobermory where we’re booked in for tonight. We’d be doubling back on ourselves and spending more time in the car than seeing what we came to see,’ Marie-Claire lifted her head up from her iPhone where she’d been checking out their options.

‘Stay calm,’ Keelin lifted the big teapot and began pouring the tea, ‘I have every faith in Mary Magdalene. She will get us to where we are meant to be today. How hard do we want to do this, seems to be the way she’s taking us. We have to surrender to the pilgrimage and whatever perceived blockages and trials beset us.’

‘That’s all very well,’ replied her mother, who – at times like this, when the brakes were put on something she wanted to do, found Keelin’s ‘mumbo jumbo’ as she sometimes privately termed it, hard to take – ‘but we only have a day here. And we fly home the day after tomorrow.’

‘I feel that we have to do nothing,’ Keelin reiterated. ‘So let’s have our breakfast and enjoy it and see where the day takes us. It must be the sea air, but I’m hungry again,’ she grinned, putting down the teapot and slathering a slice of crusty homemade bread with butter.

‘Were you ever any other way? You were a gannet when you were a child,’ Imelda said with surprising fondness.

‘And, tragically, I’ve taken after her,’ Marie-Claire joked, tucking into orange juice and a dish of muesli and yogurt before her scrambled eggs and salmon came.

*

‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ Imelda exclaimed irately, throwing her cards on the table when Brigid knocked, for the third time in as many games, to announce she’d won the round.

‘I can’t help it if I’m good,’ Brigid said smugly. She was enjoying herself immensely. Imagine playing cards in the middle of a morning with no convent bells ringing to call her to prayers, or whatever duties she’d to turn her attention to. It was almost decadent.

‘Ah you were always the same, winning at everything,’ Imelda said grumpily. She was not a good loser.

‘It’s only a game. Mère is having a run of luck, calm down, Mam,’ Keelin said, gathering the cards together to shuffle them.

‘Oh typical of you – take her side as always,’ Imelda snapped.

‘Mother, that’s not fair. Don’t start,’ Keelin retorted.