Coming out of his reverie, O’Muichin thought aloud: “I have a feeling that I went this way once before.”

O’Muichin, precursor of other lovers to come in the life of the girls, looked up at the starched white sky across which he could feel the sea moving. A cloud crossed like an exhausted wave. He studied an abandoned lobster pot on the windowsill of a deserted shed without a roof, and beyond that, a yard of collapsed and grinning galvanize. Gulls wheeled by, then scald crows started up, and for one brief inconclusive second he realized that birds never look at each other while they fly, nor when they sit on telegraph wires, not even when they perch in a cage. This he thought was something to ponder on.

He told this to Sara.

She said: “I never like to see someone who cannot look you in the eye.”

The window of the study came down. “Teehaw,” said the Sergeant using Sara’s pet name, “leave Mr O’Muichin alone, and be off with you.”

“She’s all right, Mr Adams,” said the Irish speaker, and then in a nervous fashion – some creature had tightened his bodice again – he took a walk up the peninsula.

In Belmullet the Dublin Jackeen was an object of great curiosity, as was the man before him, but O’Muichin even more so, since he did not fraternize. Nor did he relish at all the interest taken in him. He was a man constantly looking for an escape. To disappear. Become transparent. The people had a name for that, which translated means “head of straw”. On his toes he leaned over to look at the water. He felt the rim of the old bridge with his hands and stood there for a while.

“When they build the new one they should make it so it opens to let boats through,” said an old fellow beside him. “Then you’d be able to travel right round the peninsula by water.”

O’Muichin snapped the notebook out of his pocket and jotted something down. He took another step towards the house, then stopped again to write. The spell was broken. He felt benign. The notebook came out, the thought was dismissed, he walked on. Catherine appeared. His walk eventually took them to a beach and Catherine accompanied him. First at a distance, then alongside.