Back then, the astonishing house was still partially under construction. As Luke asked, the moment we arrived, ‘How was it possible to build anything here at all?’

Beyond the giant windows of Brigit’s kitchen, it looked as if a perfect landscape had been torn apart and reassembled in any old fashion. Nothing was level out there, nothing.

‘Oh my God, stop!’ Brigit said. ‘I cried every day for seven months. Every. Single. Day. Living with my in-laws, going round the bend. A miracle Colm and I survived.’

Five sheep, coolly chewing grass in a field that was almost vertical, watched us without curiosity. Small, gnarled trees, their ancient branches spotted with moss, sprouted from the land at head-meltingly unlikely angles.

‘Your bedroom is actually finished,’ Brigit said. ‘But, as you can see, the rest of the place…’ She gestured around at the raw concrete walls. ‘…which is where you come in.’ Solemnly, she gave me a paint roller.

‘Anything for me?’ Luke asked.

‘Oh yeah! How does laying floorboards sound? We’ve hired an electric saw.’

Luke’s eyes lit up. He loved electric tools.

It was a magical week, toiling alongside Brigit and Colm, their two little boys trying to get in on the act. The work was hard, but gloriously rewarding, every day punctuated by a ten-minute walk to the stony beach for a reviving dip in the Atlantic.

Evenings were passed hanging out in the ‘garden’, talking, laughing, watching swifts circle overhead, black against the otherworldly Connemara summer light, where it never got fully dark.

‘So what’ll you do when the house is finished?’ I asked one night after dinner. ‘What’s your next project?’

‘Another baby,’ Brigit said.

‘And I suppose we’d better get married,’ Colm said.

‘Is that…a proposal?’ Brigit asked.

‘Well…why not.’ Colm shrugged. ‘Be easier for the kids when they go to school.’

‘Now that’s a story for the grandkids.’ Luke was highly entertained.

‘What about you two?’ Brigit nodded at Luke and me. ‘Any plans to…?’

‘We’re fine.’ I was brief.

A couple of times, Luke had asked me to marry him and I’d talked him out of it. My excuse was feminism, but really it was good, old-fashioned superstition. My life was as good as it could possibly get—what Luke and I had was too precious to risk by looking for more.

On our last day of that perfect week, Colm, Brigit and the kids had to go to the bright lights of Galway city on some official business. Luke and I decided to walk the boundaries of the property.

At the far edge of Brigit and Colm’s eight acres was an expanse of limestone, shaped like a shallow bowl, perhaps ten metres by twenty. With the strangled trees and the total absence of signs of human life, it was almost too much for me. ‘It’s like being on another planet.’