Seamus and Pete had arrived back from Paddy’s and taken straight to their beds, and no one blamed them, not even Nola, not really. It was the pattern of life on the farm. In the summer they worked eighteen hours a day.

‘Shall I go for you?’ said Bridget, sensing a way to eke out her visit and put off having to return to her damp house and her miserable husband, Porick.

‘Not at all. I’ll go meself. They’ll soon be awake and up for the milking, but not soon enough for me. I’ll not be a minute. You put the kettle back on, Bridget. Don’t go awhile. I’ll have more than enough – if you wait, you can take a pie back home with you.’

Bridget rose from the settle to do Nola’s bidding, a smile of relief spreading across her face.

Nola pushed her hair away from her eyes with the back of her hands, wiped her fingers down the front of her apron and went out into the twilight, to the old house. She shoved open the door and made her way to where she thought she’d placed the apple crate full of straw.

‘Would you be admiring your handiwork down there, would you now?’ called down Pete Shevlin from his bedroom, which was nothing more than a pallet in what had been the old hay loft. Nola and Seamus had tried to persuade him many times that he needed and deserved more in the way of home comforts and that he should move into the main house, but that was before Joe had arrived. Pete, born and raised and now working on a farm, had disagreed.

‘’Tis damp – you should be sleeping in the house, not here with the animals,’ said Nola as she began to shift one of the crates to the side.

‘Sure, I spend more time in there with you and Seamus than I do in here.’ He gestured towards the house with his chin. ‘And Joe now too, as it would seem he has no intention of moving on, not ever. Fecking loves the place, he does. If Mary Kate ever comes back, she won’t be happy, I’m telling ye.’

He had a point. Nola cooked all his meals, and Pete ate and drank with them, and played cards into the night with Seamus and Joe. But when the time came, he was glad to don his cap and return with the dogs to the old house for a bit of peace and quiet.

‘If you’re searching for a pot of gold in amongst that lot, I can tell ye, there isn’t one, I’ve looked already.’ Pete folded his arms behind his head and lay back down on the straw pillow, which crackled under his weight.

Nola located the apples and removed them from the box one by one, dropping them into her apron’s front pocket. ‘Aye, well, we don’t need to be worrying about Joe. Or Mary Kate, for that matter. As sure as God is true, she is no different from all the others. She will be staying over in Liverpool and that’s a fact. And doesn’t Joe just have a nature for the place that she seems not to be missing nor even to care about at all. He doesn’t like having to go back to America for those meetings they make him go to. Told me with his own mouth, he would much rather be here and never leave. But as for Mary Kate, we haven’t seen sight of her, not a visit home once in two years and who would have thought it?’