Dora was happy, he understood. She had married a man called Charles. He hoped she hadn’t made a hasty decision. It seemed a bit sudden to Joe. She’d sent him a photo of their wedding. It was in colour. She’d cut her hair, dyed it too, a soft, faded peach, and he saw again the woman she once was, freewheeling down the road to Geoffrey’s farm, happy, carefree and in love.

He thought more and more about the war. Whichever way you looked, Trude was at its heart, pulling skeins of lies and death that threaded them together. What had driven her? Joe would never know.

Pierre visited every day.

‘Two old codgers,’ he said. ‘That’s what we are.’

They chatted about the old days, sat together for meals, played dominoes.

‘You may as well move in,’ Joe said. ‘You’re here often enough.’

Pierre was talking to a woman. Joe couldn’t recall seeing her here before, but Pierre acted like he knew her. ‘Did you have a good holiday?’

‘It was grand,’ the woman said. ‘It rained every day.’

‘I’d have kept you dry,’ he said.

‘Will you get away.’ She was laughing. ‘You old devil.’

She pushed her tea trolley forward. ‘Would you like another cup?’

Oh, Joe knew those voices, made for laments. He looked up. ‘You wouldn’t happen to be from Cloghane, would you?’

The woman almost jumped from her skin. ‘No I’m not,’ she said.

‘But you’re from the Dingle.’

‘I am that,’ she said. ‘Brandon.’

He could see the bay in his mind, the fishing jetty, the mountain, the sweep of the Owenmore as it flushed into the sea. It was a hop and a skip to Cloghane.

‘And would you happen to know the O’Clearys, in Cloghane?’

She thought for a minute, finger on chin. ‘Didn’t they used to have a butcher’s shop?’ she said.

‘Aye,’ Joe said. Just past the church on the left, before you reached O’Sullivan’s. He could hear the music from the bar in summer, the jigs and reels as the sun went down, the songs of grief and loss as the moonlight glimmered over the bay, as the whiskey turned the blood melancholy. He saw the brown stone cottages, the rough pitted road. Would it have tarmac on it now, street lighting?

‘I never knew them,’ the woman was saying. ‘The shop’s long gone. I only ever heard about them.’

‘And would you happen to know what happened to the family?’

‘One of them died, I think,’ she said. ‘Some went away. I think one of the girls may have stayed. Married. You know how it is.’

Little Bridey. His favourite sister. She could be a grandmother by now.

‘And did you hear talk of a priest?’ Joe said.

‘A priest?’