I was more shocked than any of them when one night I finally joined in. I don’t know what came over me, a sort of dander maybe? It was really late, Serena and Bridie were both asleep. We’d had the usual rounds of yarns and discussions and enough drink had been taken for them all to get a bit sentimental. There were loads of things in London they missed: the buildings, the parks, the great Irish bars. None of them made a single mention of women although I knew England had them, too. The money was so good, the work maybe not so hard as they thought at the time. They kept going until they were convinced it was a great country altogether, better than here most days. At least there the police didn’t have guns. I might as well have fired a shot above their heads when I piped up.

–  Will you go back, do you think?

–  We’re just talking, Mary! Talking too much maybe!

–  I’d like to know. Are you thinking of going back across the water for any reason? Any reason at all?

–  No, I’m not going back. I’ve done my time there.

With that, I’d bid them all goodnight where they sat with their mouths open. When I closed the door on the caravan they all burst out laughing. I heard them ribbing John Johns about the auld ball and chain and he must have taken it in good humour because he didn’t answer.

He seemed to have a new-found lightness all round and he had nearly turned me inside out when I caught him bathing in the river a few days earlier.

Serena was snoozing with Bridie under the big yellow tarpaulin John had strung between the milk house and the barn. I took the opportunity to stroll down to the river to cool off. I rolled up my trousers and waded in, delighted with the relief, scooping the water in chilly handfuls up my arms and over the back of my sunburnt neck.

I looked up at the pure-blue sky and saw the white trails of two aeroplanes, heading out from Belfast over the west coast to America. Would I ever get there? Would I ever get anywhere? Would I ever see more than a mile of the Atlantic where it gouged the Donegal coast?

John had stood up right beside me, buck naked but for a smile, and scared the bejesus out of me! I had run for the bank and hauled myself out after screaming like a girl. I’d never seen a naked man before in the flesh. He had laughed: laughed and laughed, not even trying to cover … his … himself up. Oh, he was brazen! In the end he lifted up his arms like a man about to ascend into Heaven.

–  Can you see what you do to me, Mrs Johns, even at this temperature?