‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s changed his name, is not even a McGuffey any more,’ said Seamus. ‘Keep your eye on Mary Kate, Michael, would you? ’Tis a funny thing altogether that this turns up when she comes home.’

Michael’s face flushed with anger. ‘’Tis hard to believe a woman like Sarah was ever spawned from that evil man. God rest her soul.’

Each man blessed himself at the mention of Sarah’s name.

‘If he thinks we’re all eejits and he can scare us half to death, he’s about to find out he can’t,’ said Paddy. ‘And anyway, the man is older than me. If he’s around here, the guard will find him and that’s a fact.’

Joe looked at Declan and shrugged his shoulders. Declan appeared equally bemused, both of them having arrived in Tarabeg long after its worst days. Alienated from the conversation, the two men moved closer to each other. The room fell silent. Father Jerry felt for the rosaries in his pocket that Mrs Doyle had brought him back from one of her recent trips to Rome and they all heard the click as they slipped through his fingers.

Joe looked about him at the strange expressions on the faces of the men he had come to know and, in the case of Seamus, love. He wanted to ask again who and what they were talking about, who had wiped the joy from their faces and instilled the fear of God in all of them. Who the shawl had belonged to. But he thought better of it.

‘Things are changing around here, all right,’ said Tig. ‘We won’t be leaving the lads asleep upstairs on their own again and that’s a fact.’ He put his arm around Keeva.

‘Keeva,’ said Paddy, ‘you go back over the road to the women. We men need to talk and we want to do it alone.’

‘I’ll stay here now,’ said Tig, squeezing her hand. ‘I won’t be leaving the boys. Put the other two in bed with Finn.’

Keeva didn’t answer him but gave her husband a look and a weak smile that spoke for itself. As always, they were united in both intention and deed. She was relieved he was staying. She was suddenly keen to praise her boys for having woken up and had the sense to get the hell out of the house and raise the alarm. She was proud of them; they both were. As she opened the door, her hand on the knob, she turned back to the room.

‘You can talk all you like, you lot, and you will, into your pots too, but my boys saw who it was and had the sense to run across the road to find us. In the morning, make sure you tell that to the guard so that he can get a sense at least of what the fella looked like. The guard may even recognise him from their description. There might have been something about him that was unusual, distinctive, like.’