She changed the subject, keen to move on to safer ground. ‘I just thought if I need to be here every day, it would help if I could use the car sometimes, and in this weather there’s no fun to be had on the bike. I don’t see why it is he tried to open the car door and jump out once I got going. I could have stopped it, once I’d remembered which was the pedal for the brake. I could see meself the car was going faster, I’m not blind, I just needed a second to lift the foot off, but you know what it’s like – when someone’s shouting, I go all to pieces. He shouldn’t have shouted.’

Bridget buried her face in her hands. ‘Bee, I need you here, not six foot under. Please, just use the bike. You can’t be complaining about Captain Bob – didn’t he just give you the chance to drive? Wasn’t he the one who agreed to teach you and isn’t he a great man for that? Me, I’d rather die than get behind the wheel of one of those things. I’m a bag of nerves, I am, whenever Bob or Michael gives me a lift home. Takes two large pots of Porick’s poteen before the shaking stops.’

Both women stopped talking at the sound of footsteps approaching the cottage. There was a tentative knock on the door. Bee had begun to feel dreadful. A knot in her chest had appeared from nowhere. She and Captain Bob never argued and now that her anger was subsiding, it was replaced by remorse and a strong desire to find her husband and make up.

Bridget got to her feet. ‘That will be the two ladies from Liverpool.’ She popped the cork back into the whiskey bottle and hid it in the press. ‘They’re coming to have their fortunes told. Here begins your first lesson, Bee.’

‘What, you mean Cat, my old next-door neighbour?’ Bee jumped up and flung open the door. She’d hardly had time to talk to Cat the evening before, finding herself in competition with every man in the village who wanted to know the price of everything in Liverpool and get a running commentary on the going rate for every job, from labouring to working on the pick ’n’ mix in Woolworth. Bee had smiled as she’d heard Cat being asked by one of them, ‘Do you know the O’Haras from Killala? He went out there in forty-six, just after the war, and the others followed a year later. You must have met them?’

She grinned as Cat stood before her in Bridget’s doorway. ‘Would you get a look at you! You’re a sight for sore eyes.’ She opened her arms and Cat fell into them.

Mrs O’Keefe was right behind her. ‘I never knew you in Liverpool, Bee, but what a funny thing that I met Mary Kate on her way to visit you – and it turned out you’d already left, just the day before. What a thing. And she ended up staying with me and we became the best of friends and now would you look at this, we’re all here.’