She counted across the needle to find her place among the stitches. The heavy breathing started. “I’m not yet fifty.” Then she pressed her knuckles to her chest. “I wouldn’t let him be,” she laughed. She shook her head to indicate it was all beyond her. Her lusts. His lusts. The world’s lusts. Then long after the women had gone she would turn on them, the Catholics. How could a man interest himself in them? she’d ask. And so gross! So overweight! Her condescension towards them had a hint of hysteria which she tried to subdue. “Did you ever notice,” she’d repeat to the girls, “how tasteless they are? Look at their carpets! How could you – paisley on paisley?” She smirked ungraciously. “Those RCs are sad. They have no idea of patterns. Not an earthly. What I’d like to know is how they sleep in those rooms! And the way they spend money – it’s a sin.” She shivered, then hesitantly folded her hands and looked towards the sand dunes.

“Still, they’re our neighbours.” She laughed. “Oh, but your father was a marvel really,” and she clapped Sara’s knee.

Nothing could be done about the asthma. When Maisie asked the doctor for a cause, he said: “Grief.” It fell to Catherine to stay at home and look after her that long summer. Then Catherine woke one morning and all her hair had fallen out.

“If we had been in the North,” said Maisie, “this would not have happened. Somebody must have carried the worms into the house.”

It took a while before they could get Catherine to a doctor. One of the consequences of Jonathan Adams’ death was that now the Adams family was reliant on public transport because none of the women could drive. And on the peninsula there was no bus. This made Sara, the only woman in the house who was both able-bodied and capable of showing her face, begin taking driving lessons with a fisherman she’d met on the pier. It was the same Leitrim man she’d encountered years ago on the beach.

“Who?” asked Catherine.

“The geranium,” said Sara.

He’d given her four turbot the first day, mackerel another, and one day cod. Then, when he heard her circumstances, he offered to teach her to drive. Twice a week he’d walk up to the house, sit into the car and lean on the horn, and then move over to the passenger seat. Sara would run down the path. She’d look back up at the second storey of the house where the two women sat watching her with a mixture of fright and pride.

Then, closing her eyes, she’d turn the key.

“He’ll kill her,” said Maisie.