Maura felt a familiar irritation wash over her. Tommy was over at the Deanes’ farm, helping with the milking, and she had never given anyone half measures since the day they had taken over the inn. ‘He’s away milking,’ she replied as she wiped the foam spilling down over the lip of the pot with the corner of her apron and laid it on the towelling bar mat. She had made a point of overfilling the pot, in order to avoid further criticism but he uttered not a word of thanks, just raised the pot to his lips and slurped away the foam, then took out his pipe and lit it.

Maura picked up the mop that stood permanently in the bucket in the passage behind the bar and wheeled it towards the wet puddles, pointedly slamming the door shut that he had left open. Flames from the peat fire in the huge open grate leapt up the chimney and then settled back down as the door closed.

‘Born in a barn were you?’ she hissed.

‘Aye,’ he replied between puffs on his pipe, ‘as it happens, I was.’

Maura felt no inclination to laugh at his attempt at humour and besides, he was likely speaking the truth. Their only neighbours lived in a long stone barn, with a cow and a pen of pigs at one end, the family at the other.

‘It’s 1966,’ Maura said to Tommy, after the first time they had been invited in, ‘and it’s the same as when we were kids, nothing has changed.’

Tommy had to agree with her. ‘Aye, it’s still a long way from Galway out here on the coast. Every one of their boys gone to America, too. Still, they have the money arriving every week, they aren’t poor.’

Maura was not impressed. ‘I’d rather have my kids by my side than the money,’ she had answered, ‘and you should know better, after losing our Kitty.’

She looked out now through the window next to the door, down over the road and towards the ocean. Raindrops the size of fat pebbles hurled against the thick, opaque glass, worn white with ingrained sea salt that had proved almost impossible to remove. She could count on one hand the number of days she had seen the sun shine since they had arrived and her heart felt so heavy it rooted her to the spot. This was it, the reality. The future she and Tommy had dreamt of and planned for. They had willingly returned from Liverpool to Ireland, heading in the opposite direction to almost everyone else, to run their own business.