“Stay here,” said Maisie, “and continue on tomorrow.”

“No,” said Catherine. “If I stop now I’ll never go on.”

As she crossed the border at Blacklion she felt like a deserter, as her father, years before her, must have felt. All that journey west to Belmullet she thought of Jonathan Adams making this same trip away from a reality that must have been tormenting him. She drove through the night without stopping, down small roads that were littered with the corpses of badgers and rabbits, and just after Bellacorrick, a young fox. She stopped the car, got out and lifted the warm body over a white hedge of late may. The body was still warm. Mist was rising.

Catherine arrived that night at ten to the pier on Mullet only to find that the Blue Cormorant was working from further up the coast. Killalla they said. She called at Thady’s and found the house empty and unlocked. When she opened the huge door of her home place the interior was stone-cold and damp even though it was a warm June evening. It felt strange and unlived in. She wandered the rooms trying to find a place from where she could begin tidying. She found old turf in a shed and a bucket half-filled with coal by Maisie the previous autumn. She lit a fire in the upper bedroom and sat with a blanket round her.

A gale was blowing sand around the peninsula when finally, at three, she climbed beneath sheets and eiderdowns warmed before the low flames. The bed was freezing. At dawn she drove across the isthmus and headed towards Killalla only to find that the Blue Cormorant had not docked there that night. She sat in the Lada outside the Bio-Energy clinic and wondered what to do.

A fisherman, who was bad on his feet, passed by.

“When do you think the Blue Cormorant might come in?” she asked.

“They could be dropping off their catch anywhere,” he said. “There was talk of a great run up toward Sligo. You might try Rosses Point above in the County Sligo,” he said, trying to be helpful.

She got into her car again, feeling both bemused and appalled by her circumstances, and drove towards Yeats’ county. She arrived at Rosses Point pier at noon. She was told to look out for a boat skippered by George Gillan, but except for a few small rowing boats there were no trawlers. When she asked around she was told that Gillan’s mother lived in the village. She went to Gillan’s shop and bought two bars of Bournville chocolate.

“George’s been away two days,” Mrs Gillan explained, “but he’ll be in this evening at five.”

“Was there another boat about?” asked Catherine, “called the Blue Cormorant?”

The lady couldn’t say.