It was a compliment of some kind, but even then I wasn’t sure what he meant by it. Trust those other girls with what? I thought.

“You’re the kind of girl every man wants for his own, you are,” he said.

I had never had a boy say anything like this to me before. And I had never dreamed Colm McGough would ever say such a thing to me.

He was good-looking, somehow didn’t smell of rotting fish, was congenial, laughed a lot, drank too much sometimes with his brother and friends, and sometimes told bawdy stories that made me blush.

Most of the time he came by the house to see me, but occasionally he’d take me down to the docks and I’d watch as he and his friends passed around a flask of whisky. The other girls in the village, none of whom I was close to—my closest friends had moved away for work—were jealous, I suppose, that Colm had chosen me and distanced themselves from me. After a while Colm seemed to be the only friend I had. A few months before my eighteenth birthday he asked me to marry him.

We were on his boat at the docks, and we were alone. We’d been kissing and Colm had his hands everywhere on me. I hadn’t let him have his way fully with me. I had made a promise to my da years before that I wouldn’t give my body to a man who hadn’t first given me his pledge in marriage. Once you’ve given a man your body, Da had told me, he doesn’t need anything else from you. I didn’t want to break my promise to my da. So I kept telling Colm no and he kept whispering things and caressing me, trying to get me to change my mind. I think he thought that he could; I think he had with other girls.

I pushed myself away from him and said, “I’ll not be giving you what isn’t yours! I’m not your wife, Colm.”

He smiled wide. He liked it that I hadn’t been with anyone else, and that I wouldn’t consider being with anyone I wasn’t married to. “Then, be my wife, Saoirse,” he said. “Marry me.”

I didn’t know if it was love I felt for Colm or just immense attraction, but I knew if I did marry Colm, I would always be able to look out for Mam and there would always be food for us both. The fishermen in the village weren’t rich, but they never starved. When I told her that Colm asked me to marry him, she as much said the same thing to me: that it would be a relief to her to know that I would always have food to eat and a warm bed and a strong man to protect me. She gave her permission and we were married a few weeks later.

I knew enough from what Colm and I had done when no one was watching to know there were pleasures to be had that I had yet to experience. The first time I lay with him was indeed magical even though painful, and I was happy, truly happy, for the first time since my father had died. This was a pleasure that seemed to have the power to mask every other kind of disappointment, even grief. Even if just for a little while.