‘Well now, isn’t that just grand,’ he said as he looked about the bar. ‘The Brogan mammy, and what did she say?’ His smile faded and became a frown as all of a sudden his blood ran cold and his stomach dropped into his boots. ‘Mary Kate, she hasn’t been in hospital, has she?’

‘What was that?’ The curtain swished again as Keeva dashed into the room, proving beyond all doubt that she listened to every word that was spoken in the bar. Between Keeva and Mrs Doyle, there were no secrets in Tarabeg. ‘Did you say there was news of Mary Kate? I’ll be calling to the shop to see Rosie when the school lets out, I can tell her meself.’

Rosie was Mary Kate’s stepmother, the school principal, Michael Malone’s wife and Keeva’s friend. Rosie had nursed a love for Michael before he had married Sarah – she had loved him first. When Sarah died, she had made herself indispensable, looking after the new baby, Finn, and young Mary Kate, helping with the shop, and running the home, until the inevitable happened, as she’d known it would, and Michael made her his wife.

Father Jerry looked far from pleased, and everyone in the bar who’d ever been given a telling-off by him could tell by the curl of his lip and the set of his jaw that he was out of sorts. ‘Aye, well, you can tell her from me,’ he said. ‘Dana wrote how sad it was that Mary Kate’s husband had died so young and so tragically and what a wonderful doctor he had been at the hospital too, and how much his two young sons were going to miss him. It happened just in the last week, so she says.’

Silence fell across the room like a suffocating blanket.

Seamus blinked and swallowed before he spoke. ‘It must be a different Mary Kate. Our Mary Kate, she isn’t married. Working for a family and living in, she is.’

‘There is only one Mary Kate from Tarabeg,’ said Father Jerry with a sniff. Thinking he had now earned his pint, he lifted it to his lips and drank deeply.

‘Mary Kate?’ said Keeva, almost under her breath, her brow creased. ‘It can’t be. She wouldn’t be married and not tell her own family. I had a letter from her only a few weeks ago – sure, she hasn’t even got a fella in tow.’ She laughed at the absurdity of the idea. She was as close to Mary Kate as anyone could be. Closer than Rosie, her own stepmother, even. Keeva had been around since the day Mary Kate was born; her mother’s best friend.

Pete joined in, having spied Declan outside the window of the bar. ‘Declan will be delighted to hear that, so he will. I swear to God, not a day goes past when he doesn’t ask after her.’

The door opened and Declan walked in, joining the now subdued crowd. Declan Feenan was the joint schoolmaster, working with Rosie. Unbeknown to anyone, he had helped Mary Kate to escape Tarabeg two years back, giving her a lift all the way to Dublin and sending her off on the Liverpool ferry with a brief kiss and the promise of his heart waiting.