She pulled out the chair next to Mary Kate and drew her hands inside her own. ‘Don’t feel guilty. Cry if you want to in these early days. Don’t try and do anything other than you do. Let it all out, because this is the way it has happened for every woman who has lost the man she loved, since the beginning of time, and nothing you try and do and nothing anyone says will make one bit of difference. The only thing that will help is the passage of time.’

Mary Kate flinched as she looked into her great-aunt’s eyes. Bee’s husband had drowned at sea when little Ciaran was just a baby. ‘Oh God, I am so sorry,’ she said. ‘You lost your husband too.’

Even so, Mary Kate didn’t think she could quite understand how she was feeling, because the love that she and Nicholas had shared had been all the deeper on account of their circumstances. In her heart she was sure that no one else could truly understand what she was going through.

Bee echoed her thoughts. ‘Aye, but that will mean nothing to you. Everyone’s grief is different. Your father has felt it too, but not one of us can help you through it. We can just be here to keep you company, make sure you’re fed. We will walk along the road with you and stay at your side until you’re ready to go on ahead alone and meet someone else. I know’ – she raised her hand – ‘you don’t think that will ever happen, but that’s something else I know too. It will. And if you asked Bridget to tell your fortune, she would say that too and no doubt give you his name and describe to you what he looks like.’

Mary Kate had taken the handkerchief Bee had held out for her and was blowing her nose. Between sniffs, Bee heard her say, ‘Thank you. You’re just like a mammy.’

Bee’s heart contracted. Would she ever tell this girl all that had passed? Would she describe to her the life Sarah had led in that very cottage, tell her about her monster of a maternal grandfather, Kevin McGuffey? How he had almost married her mother off to the gypsies before Michael had come and spirited her away. How if it hadn’t been for Father Jerry taking the wedding with little notice, McGuffey would have got his way. She doubted she would tell her. No one wanted to invoke the spirits of the past. But lately Bee had wondered if she might have the sight herself; she heard whisperings on the wind she’d never heard before. She pulled her cardigan tight around her as she banished the thought and changed the subject. ‘Why did you throw away the curtain at the end of the room? Angela made that. I thought it would be useful if you put the bed behind it.’

‘I didn’t,’ said Mary Kate. ‘I haven’t seen a curtain.’