Dermot came round to her door and opened it. ‘Come on, time to stretch our legs.’ He had a rucksack with him, which clanked rather.

She hesitated, but before she could force a leg out of the safety of the car he said, ‘Are you nervous of the dogs?’

‘A bit. I was once bitten by a collie, who had no excuse at all to bite me.’

‘You mean you weren’t threatening its young, or eating its food?’

‘No.’

Dermot shrugged, obviously unable to explain this freak of nature. ‘This lot may be noisy devils but there’s no harm in them.’

Gingerly, she got out. The dogs surged up to her, still barking their heads off.

‘You see? They’re fine.’

Laura didn’t think they were fine at all. They had wall eyes and looked thin and hungry. They jumped up to smell her better. Although she tried hard not to, she whimpered.

‘To hell with this,’ he muttered and without warning, swung her off her feet and over his shoulder and carried her in a fireman’s lift across the muddy distance towards a gate. The dogs, even more excited now their titbit was tantalisingly out of reach, jumped and barked higher and louder. Laura shut her eyes, bracing herself for a bite on the bottom at any minute. She knew she wasn’t enormous but also that she must have felt quite heavy. Dermot was definitely panting.

At last he set her down and she opened her eyes.

‘You stay there while I get this open.’ He indicated a rusty gate made out of scaffold poles. ‘It’ll take a while; it hasn’t been opened in years. I always climb over.’

‘I’ll climb over!’ she offered, feeling pathetic enough already. ‘Just don’t let – oh!’

One collie jumped up and left saliva on her arm.

Dermot turned on it. ‘What do you think you’re doing, you miserable hound of hell! Frightening the poor girl out of wits like that! You’ll have her thinking we have no manners in Ireland – if she doesn’t think that already!’

‘I don’t think that,’ she said. ‘At least, only about the dogs,’ she added in a small voice, feeling very pathetic.

Dermot ignored this squeak. ‘Are you sure you can climb over OK? I’ll open it if you’d rather.’ He paused. ‘Although the ruts mean I’d have to lift it quite high—’

Before he could finish, she put her foot on the second scaffold pole. Sadly, her legs were just a little bit too short to make the process of climbing the gate easy. What would have been for a taller person a simple matter of swinging one leg over and then the other, for her meant an uncomfortable few moments stranded on the top, unable to progress. Dermot held her arm.