Hannah went quiet for a moment. Could she live in a place like this? She’d never lived anywhere but Manchester. Never even thought about it. Even when her boyfriend, Mike, had moved to London and asked her to go too, she’d never really considered it. Their relationship might have survived, but she’d been too scared to make the jump. To step out of the comfort zone that had cocooned her all her life. Had she shut down possibilities in life? Look at what had happened when she’d actually taken that step. She’d slept with Conor, kayaked with a dolphin and she was learning to cook. Just thinking about these things lit her up inside. This was living. For so long she’d been existing, which had been OK but it had been a black and white sort of life. Whereas now she was living in technicolour with sunshine pouring into corners that she’d left unexplored for most of her life.

‘What do you fancy?’ asked Conor.

‘What do you recommend?’ she asked boldly, deciding to live dangerously.

‘I think a shot of whiskey is called for, although they do have a microbrewery here and they make an excellent coffee stout.’

‘Hey, Conor.’ Finn leaned over and shook his hand. ‘Good to see you.’

‘And you. I hear the brewery’s taking off.’

‘Yes but we’re keeping it local. If people want to taste it they have to get themselves along to Dingle. What’ll you be having?’

Conor turned to her, quirking his eyebrow in question.

She scanned the shelves, with the plethora of bottles in every shape and size, and the beer handles on the bar. ‘I’ll have that one,’ she said pointing to the nearest handle.

‘Ah good choice. A half or a pint?’

‘A pint,’ she said firmly as Conor looked at her in surprise.

‘Good choice. What made you decide on that?’

‘They don’t have it anywhere else – it’s local. Your mother’s rubbing off on me.’ She pointed to the sign on the handle. Dick Mack’s coffee stout.

He rolled his eyes but then he said, ‘I’ll have the same.’

The barman poured the two drinks and they took them through to another small room with battered wooden benches and scarred tables that suggested a lifetime of being used by generations of drinkers. She wondered at all the people that had sat in this very spot over the years.