‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. But to answer your question, yes, you’re very astute. There was, initially, a bit of push-back from her. Firstly, because she didn’t want the money spent on her. She’d rather we all spent our money on ourselves and our families, those of us that have them. But we managed to talk her round eventually and between five of us, and a brother-in-law in the business, we could get a good price.’

‘That’s good.’

‘That’s what we thought until we took her to show her this and then there was a lot of, “Oh, that’s far too big for me. I’ll never be able to drive that.”’

‘I take it she overcame that barrier as it’s the only car parked outside the house.’

‘Yeah. Took her about an hour and she was bombing around in it like a menace. Parallel parks better than I do.’ He rolled his eyes in mock annoyance and I smiled, glad to see it momentarily reflected on his own face.

I’d been worried how this slightly enforced trip out was going to go, but thankfully the frosty moment of earlier seemed to have dissipated into the surrounding cold of the countryside, and, inside the cabin of the car, relations were definitely warmer. For the moment, at least.

We drove for a little while longer, with what sounded like a local radio station playing quietly in the background. Every so often, in between the traditional music would be a presenter, chattering away in what I could only assume was Gaelic.

‘Do you understand what he’s saying?’ I asked after a short time.

‘I do.’

‘Do you all speak Gaelic?’

‘All being whom?’

‘In your family?’ I shrugged. ‘The village?’

‘Yes to all in our family. Most of the people in the village do too, especially the older ones. Some of the younger ones don’t so much but I guess that’s to be expected these days, but we try and keep the language alive where we can.’

‘Do you generally speak Gaelic at home?’

‘A mix of both. Keeps your hand in. Plus if we have visitors that don’t speak Gaelic, we can just shift into that when we want to talk about them.’

‘How amusing.’

He didn’t turn his head, but I saw the corners of his lips twitch as he restrained a smile.

* * *

‘What is this place?’ I puffed out, gripping onto Lorcan’s hand as he hauled me up the steep grassy bank. He’d definitely been right about the shoes.

‘Dunamayne Castle. Or what’s left of it. A certain amount of it is down there now.’ He pointed towards the edge of the cliff.

‘So, it’s unstable and yet we’re still going up!’ The sentence took three attempts to finish but he got the idea.

‘It’s grand. Safe as houses.’