Mrs Meadows conceded that indeed it was.

‘And what a lovely head of red hair you got!’ Sorcha observed, adding, ‘Although I suppose as you’d call it auburn yourself, eh?’

Mrs Meadows shrugged.

‘“When red-headed peoples are above a certain social grade their hair is always auburn!”’ Sorcha cackled. ‘Mark Twain. He had him a mop of ginger hair, so he did. He wrote as how he thought Adam and Eve was red of hair, even our dear Lord hisself. All Aboriginal peoples, all Celtic peoples – all Orla’s people – venerate the red gene. There was a tiny taint of red in Orla’s hair was there not, Carla?’

I grudgingly allowed that, yes, yes there had been the smallest of reddish tints.

‘“While the rest of the species is descended from apes,” Mark Twain once wrote,’ Sorcha continued holding forth, ‘“redheads are descended from cats.”’ She smiled to camera then turned and made a funny, little cat noise – a kind of ‘prrrrup!’ – directly into Mrs Meadows’s ear.

Mrs Meadows promptly jumped up (much to Sorcha’s evident hilarity), one hand covering the offended lobe, the other brushing off her skirt. ‘I should probably … uh … yes … head off,’ she said (then did exactly that).

‘Muni got-in to, Mo rud’u!’

Sorcha called after her, in Shelta (‘Goodbye, my sweetheart!’ to the rest of us), before delivering a mischievous wink to camera. I promptly lowered the infernal thing and handed it back to her. ‘I thought we agreed there was to be no filming in the cottage, Sorcha,’ I said.

‘You know …’ Sorcha pondered something for a second, ‘sometimes when you feel so, so much …’ – she patted her chest – ‘such an abundance of love for someone, like what you and me did for our gorgeous little angel, words just can’t contain … so you end up …’ She shrugged. ‘I make a big old song and dance about the whole ting. I’m full of the blarney. That’s how I cope. It’s just my nature. And you? No words. Nothing at all. A big silence. A sadness. If a person even so much as dares to mention her darling sweet name, your eyes fills up with tears. But surely there’s no harm in it after all, eh? Because that’s exactly why we was chose, Carla. To be her Apostles. You to be too damn quiet and me to be too damn loud. She’s the saint of the too much and the too little. The saint of sudden infestations and last-minute breakdowns. The saint of picked clean bones and potato peelings. The saint of all the kitchen scraps. That’s why she chose us, Carla, because God always shines his brightest through weakness.’

She patted the bed next to her. I hesitated and then I sat down. It was suddenly such a relief to be with someone who … who knew. Who felt it too – the craziness, the ridiculousness, the fullness, the emptiness.

‘Ah, my heart is so heavy. Turk l’ag tom leskos …’ she muttered, grabbing my hand and holding it between hers. ‘Time forgets too many stories!’