‘My Aunt Miriam doesn’t like phones much either but that’s because she’s a bit of a technophobe. My uncle loves a gadget, but he’s rubbish with his phone. He usually has to get me or my sister to show him how to do everything and then he promptly forgets.’ She laughed with a little pang as she thought of Miriam and Derek back home. Not her real parents, but the closest she and Mina had ever really had. Their birth parents had been the original daredevils, real thrill-seekers always on the lookout for the next adrenaline rush. But that was also the reason why they weren’t in their lives. Hannah winced momentarily thinking about the crash that killed them. Her real mother, so like Mina, wouldn’t have thought twice about giving up her job and going to a different country. Hannah had only managed to cross the Irish Sea and it felt like a giant leap. She often wondered whether, if her mother had lived, she would have been a disappointment to her.

‘I have to admit I might have taken a couple of pictures if the weather had been more amenable.’

‘That’s the weather for you.’ He lifted his glass in toast as he took a sip.

She stared a little curiously at the glass. ‘I’ve never tried whiskey.’

‘You’ve missed a treat and this is the good stuff. Want a taste?’

Normally it would have seemed far too familiar, but all her caution seemed to have been not just thrown to the wind but tossed into the Irish Sea.

‘Yes please.’

He held out the glass. ‘You have to smell it first.’

She took a cautious sniff and then a second.

‘What do you smell?’

Oh no, she was rubbish at this sort of thing. Her sister was the foodie and Hannah felt a slight pang. She missed Mina’s bubbly enthusiasm for anything relating to food and drink. But then that was why she was here – to learn. Taking a deep breath in, she closed her eyes and concentrated.

When she opened them, Conor was watching her. Darn it, he was into this stuff too. She hated getting things wrong. All she could smell was alcohol and matchsticks, and she was pretty sure neither was the correct answer but that’s what she was getting, so she went with it.

To her surprise, he nodded eagerly. ‘Matchsticks, yes. Exactly.’ He gave her a delighted beam, which made her feel she’d aced a test. ‘The whiskey is aged in oak barrels – that’s where you get the woody aroma – the barrels have previously been used for Bourbon and then the whiskey is transferred to barrels that held American rum, which gives it that wonderful spiced characteristic.

‘Now taste.’