Pete, a normally cheerful man, let out a heavy sigh. Nola craned her neck and looked up, giving him her full attention.

‘She’s living the feckin’ high life,’ he said. ‘They say the craic is the best in the world in Liverpool, better than Dublin even – not that I’ve been there either – so who can blame her for not wanting to come back here.’

Nola tutted. ‘Ah, the high life be damned. Don’t we just live the high life here? No one with any sense goes looking for a high life. Sounds like the road to trouble, if you ask me. I was fierce disappointed in Mary Kate, I was, not coming home for Daedio’s funeral. You know that. The whole village knows it. Most of them think she hadn’t even been told he’d died and that we kept it from her, so shocked they were at her not coming to the wake.’

She patted her apron pockets, checking whether she’d got enough apples for the pie.

‘Joe is welcome to stay for as long as he wants,’ she said, a warm smile creeping across her face. ‘He was there for Daedio. He stayed. And besides, he’s family anyway. Daedio was delighted he was here, delighted to spend time with him afore he died. Said it was like having his brother back. And remember, Daedio was the youngest of the lot of them; hadn’t seen his big brother since he was a little fella.’

Nola took Seamus’s jug off the top of a wooden crate and began to fill it from the porter barrel. As much as she moaned and complained, she never missed an opportunity to do something that would make her husband happy, and she knew he would smile at her with pure pleasure when he saw it warming near the fire, waiting. As the liquid noisily filled the pot, the dogs both rose from their positions beside Pete’s bed and rattled down the open wooden staircase to come and lie at her feet. Nola, the bringer of scraps.

‘Ah, go’way with ye,’ she said, flapping her free arm at them and turning back to Pete. ‘Did Joe not come back from the village with ye then?’

‘No, he did not.’ Pete averted his eyes, rolled over onto his side and appeared to be examining a piece of straw he had pulled from his bed. ‘He has gone all the way to Galway in that fancy car of his. Gone to steal the hearts of a few more women, I would imagine. He has them all under his spell and eating out of his hand in Tarabeg – bored with the women here, he is; not fancy enough for him, I reckon. Off to make them Galway girls cry.’

Nola laughed. ‘What are you talking about? Like who? Who is there here in Tarabeg that he could impress or whose heart he could break? All the young women have gone off to America or Liverpool, just like our Mary Kate. There’s no one for him to dazzle, unless you think he’s one for the older women – he does have them eating out of his hand right enough. They fuss around him like old grannies.’