On one day each week, Maura travelled all the way into Ballynevin to collect the post and to pick up butter, meat, sewing or mending. Other food was delivered to her from the shop in Ballynevin on the back of a van every other day. When they had moved to Ireland, she had never thought she would miss queuing outside the fish shop on a Wednesday morning, or the butcher’s jokes and ribaldry as much as she did. Her weekly trip out now was reliant on one of the farm carts passing by, or the weekly delivery with the Guinness dray to hitch a lift back.

Her last stop of the afternoon had been to Mrs Barrett at the tailor’s where Maura discussed the cuts Cleary had inflicted on Harry’s hands in detail.

‘Well, we can have that sorted in no time,’ Mrs Barrett said. ‘I have just the thing in my press for your Harry’s hands. We are used to Cleary around here. He should be retiring soon, the age of the man.’

‘Not soon enough for me,’ said Maura as she placed her overladen basket down on the floor and flopped onto the wooden chair on the customer side of the counter. No one just walked in, conducted their business and left. That would have been considered very rude.

‘Shall I wet the tea?’ Mrs Barrett asked. ‘And while I’m at it, I’ll find that medicament.’

While Maura waited, she gazed out of the window, past the wooden mannequin in the window wearing a man’s suit that would only be bought for a wedding, followed by a lifetime of Sundays. She felt tears prick at her eyes and brushed them away with the back of her hand, irritated at her weakness. Pull yourself together, woman, she thought to herself. What the hell is wrong with you? Her thoughts returned to Harry and the cuts across his palms which were turning nasty. Every morning when she took the dressings off, she’d hoped to see an improvement, but this morning the hands had been hot, the wounds yellow and angry-looking.

Mrs Barrett returned, first with the tea and then with a dark green glass bottle with a handwritten label.

‘Bridget made this and she’s been the village seer at Tarabeg for as long as I can remember,’ Mrs Barrett said. ‘We don’t need doctors here, not when we have Bridget.’ She removed the cork stopper and smelt the liquid. Her head recoiled and her eyes watered. ‘It has the kick of a mule, so it does,’ she said as she passed the bottle to Maura who read the label. Apply with lint, and blow.

‘What’s in it?’ asked Maura, squinting.