The tourists were supposed to be beating a path to their door and although the occasional American, in search of his or her heritage, had found their way here, they hadn’t stopped for long, but returned to seek the hot fresh coffee, afternoon fancies and indoor lavatories in the Hardiman Hotel in Galway. Having sailed first class from America, the search for their heritage took ten minutes to complete. A visit to the church to light a penny candle, a blessing on a grave and a snap with a Canon camera to prove ‘we were here’, sufficed.

Maura very quickly discovered that they were wholly dependent on the small fishing community to keep things turning over. But as much as she hated it, they had no option but to go along with it. Tommy was running from his demons and she would run along with him, at her husband’s side.

‘We’ll make it the best place for miles, Maura, you watch,’ he had said as they opened the front door for the first time. ‘They will be landing at Shannon and telling the taxi drivers to bring them straight to our door.’

But the bedrooms they had lovingly decorated and furnished stood empty and their dreams had turned to dust as their bank balance depleted, so Tommy had no choice but to help out on Liam Deane’s farm to bring in some money. Liam was Jerry’s brother and Kathleen’s son, as good as their own family, and it was in the river that ran through their land where their beloved Kitty had drowned. They were bound together by an invisible bond and a knowledge of deeds that would never be spoken of but would hold fast for a lifetime. Liam and Maeve Deane were their only true friends in Ireland – all of Maura’s own family were long since in America and lost to her and Tommy, an only child, had seen the passing of his parents. They had returned to the country of their childhoods to discover that, without those they had loved around them, it was a hard and miserable place.

The bar began to fill with the smell of pipe smoke, which suppressed that of stale ale and the smell from the jacks at the back of the inn – which Maura discovered was used by every inhabitant of the village as a sluice to empty their toilet buckets when the wind was too high to walk down to the shore. Nose held, she cleaned it daily with Dettol and a mop.

‘Things can’t be going as well as you hoped they would, if Tommy has to find work, helping with the milking.’ Her customer blew the smoke from his pipe in her direction and Maura didn’t dare look up, for her glance would surely kill him.

‘Not at all,’ she replied as she pushed down on the wooden mop handle with all her strength. ‘How would that be?’