‘No, ya certainly cud’na,’ Margaret Rose said, sucking a chocolate and nodding.

‘She had an American wake and just … left …’ Jane said, pulling furiously at the star diamantés on the bra. ‘Ann was delighted, mind you, she was so giddy, spinning this way and that, telling me, planning it all.’ She threw a diamanté bead and hit the window, startling a gull. ‘She was jumping up and down as she was leaving me to go over to the wake house, where they’d a party for all the young locals off to America. I couldn’t go with her. I didn’t want to anyway. I would have made a show of myself. She wouldn’t stand still to even say goodbye to me. But she was such a foolish dreamer and I knew, truthfully, she wouldn’t last a minute. That’s what everyone said. And I hate to admit, I agreed with them and, sadly, they were right.’

Margaret Rose sighed.

‘Maybe I should have stayed with her, minded her, but she wanted to go alone. She never asked me. Never spoke about it. I would have gone. God, but it hurt me …’ Jane stopped abruptly, perhaps weighing up if it were appropriate to finally betray herself in front of us. Strangers. She looked at us both inquisitively, ascertaining threat levels.

‘I knows ya would, Jane,’ Margaret Rose offered, softly.

‘You see, I told her I knew all about boats. I’d have swum the Atlantic Ocean just to be with her. We could have hidden over there and pretended to be sisters,’ she said. ‘And besides, the daft bitch said she was going to put her feet out at the end of the boat and tickle her toes off the Atlantic, stupid girl, she didn’t seem to care about me, or that I wanted her to stay. I even had to tell her that large boats that take you to America didn’t work like this. Imagine. Imagine that she was going off to America and she didn’t know how a boat worked?’ She laughed, fearfully. ‘And that was it. We didn’t laugh again … well, not together at the very least.’

‘Did you ever see her again?’

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Jane said, exasperated with her audience. ‘She arrived back a year to the month, on a different day. She arrived back on a Sunday. A Sunday is never a good day to arrive anywhere. I was finishing up my schooling and moving to Dublin for teacher training. Are you OK, love?’ she said, eyeing me. ‘Would you like a sandwich, you’re so awfully pale now?’

I shook my head.

She offered to make one for Margaret Rose.

‘No, no, I’m OK, but when is a good day ta arrive, Jane?’ Margaret Rose urged.

‘Arrive where?’

‘Ann, arrive off the boat?’

‘Who?’

‘Ann!’ I said.

‘Ann, Ann’s here? Oh, my, what a lovely surprise. Well, let her in then. Christ, are we going to leave her abroad in the cold all day? I haven’t seen her in the longest time,’ Jane cried out, opening her eyes wide and fixed on the window, as though her friend would walk through.