As I said it, I was painfully aware that my own experience of first love had been with the man who killed my sister. I had been stupid.

“What happened between the two of you?” I asked softly. “Why didn’t it work out?”

She moved her head as if trying to shake some memory loose. “We met in Dublin when I was doing my nursing training. Bob was in college. We were very young, but we were happy. Had lots of plans to travel, like you do when you’re young.” She smiled. “We were together for five years. Then my mother got sick and I had to come back, my dad couldn’t cope. I had to give up the nursing.”

“And Bob?”

She gave a wry smile. “I had to give up Bob too.” She folded the tea towel again. “Ach, I probably wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted something else, something better … I was too rural. Too Donegal.”

“But he must have known you were from Donegal when you met?”

“He did, but I think he didn’t anticipate having to live here, and I couldn’t leave my parents. I was an only child.” She straightened herself and her tone became more determined. “Also, I wanted to travel but I wanted to live here. I love Inishowen.”

“But you were still in contact?” I asked. “After all these years?” I remembered McFadden saying that Mary knew someone involved in the cycle, which was why she’d got the gig. Had that someone been Bob Jameson?

“We met again a few years later, after he married Amanda. Since then, we’ve never really broken off contact. Not properly. I was just glad to have him in my life in some way.” She looked up. “It sounds weak, doesn’t it?”

“No. But if he hurt you … if he broke your heart?”

She sighed. “He was young when he made that decision and I think he always regretted it. But by then it was too late. The course was set for both our lives.”

“Regretted getting married, do you mean?”

A tear ran down the side of her mouth and landed on the chrome surface. She rubbed at it with the tea towel. “Maybe. He married a year after we split up.”

“And what about …?”

“Me?” She smiled sadly. “My parents lived on for ten years, then died within three months of each other. I bought this place and I’ve been running it ever since.”

She looked around her huge empty kitchen and suddenly I saw her in a new light. I’d always seen Mary as someone who was completely content in her own skin but now, I caught a glimpse of her loneliness, a loneliness that she tried to fill with guests. I wondered if her determination to have her guesthouse always full had more to do with not being alone than the money her guests brought in.