As I stood there listening to the hum of the fridge, I was tempted to snoop but I knew I’d find nothing – Molloy was always so hidden. It bothered me, the fact that he gave nothing away. But when I’d said as much to Maeve once, she’d just laughed. Then her smile had faded, and she reminded me that I myself wasn’t the most open of books; I’d taken years to tell her about my sister’s violent death and I used my own second name and my mother’s maiden name. She added that she completely understood why I’d made those choices but that if that wasn’t being hidden, then she didn’t know what was. She’d given me a half smile and a wink and said, “I think you’re perfect for each other.”

I put the kettle on and found some teabags. I stuck one in the mug Molloy had rinsed and I looked around me while I waited for the water to boil. It made sense now why Molloy hadn’t encouraged me to come here. My own cottage was much more welcoming. This was a depressing sort of a house – a temporary place, not a home. The kettle boiled and I made some tea and took it upstairs with me.

There were three bedrooms off the small landing but two had nothing but a bed, a chair and a built-in wardrobe. The third was clearly where Molloy himself slept although he did little else by the looks of things. A neatly made double bed, a built-in wardrobe and a chest of drawers was all there were in the room. There wasn’t even a bedside locker; a pile of books sat on the floor by the bed.

I went to the chest and opened the top drawer. There were two stacks of freshly laundered T-shirts, one of white and one black. I took a white one out; it smelled of Molloy, or whatever washing powder he used, clean and fresh. I’d remembered to bring a toothbrush, but I had no clean clothes with me, so, I took off what I was wearing, and put it on. Before I climbed into bed, I looked through his books. The top one was Roy Foster’s Modern Ireland 1600–1972, not something I was tempted to dive into tonight, and the rest were also history or biography. Nothing appealed. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep yet, so I plugged my phone into the socket by the bed and with a mug of tea in my hand, I prepared to do some more sleuthing online. This would be my bedtime reading tonight.