‘Take me to Tarabeg, to meet your family, please?’ he said as he lifted his smouldering cigarette from the ashtray on the bedside table. The smoke caught his eyes, made them sting. Blinded, he blinked furiously before stubbing it out. Slivers of silver ash exploded into the air before floating down onto the unmade bed.

Mary Kate lifted her head, frowned at the overflowing ashtray, its contents now scattered over the polished mahogany, and made a mental note to empty it as soon as he’d left. She threw back the sheet and flung her legs out of bed, collected her robe from the brass post and slipped the dove-grey satin edged in white Nottingham lace up her arms. His wife, Lavinia, had left it hanging on the back of the bedroom door when she’d departed in something of a hurry and had never asked for it back. Lavinia was a good six inches taller than her and as Mary Kate flopped down at the dressing table the robe trailed over the dark woodblock floor, covering the pink rose-patterned oval rug that kept the wheels of the three-legged stool stationary. She swivelled on the round needlepoint seat to face the mirror and do battle with her morning hair.

Her reluctance to answer had not deterred him. ‘They all sound like such characters. I can see each one of them reflected in you every time a letter arrives and you chatter on about one or the other. They say the apple never falls far from the tree. Go on, darling, please, take me there. I so want to see the shop, and the farm on Tarabeg Hill. I’ve never even met your little brother, Finn, and I know this sounds odd, because I’ve never been there, but I swear that sometimes it’s like I even dream about the village, you describe it so well.’

Mary Kate sighed, more to herself, not so that he could hear her. He’d asked her the same question only the week before and she’d guessed he was warming to a theme and would ask again soon. She stopped with the hairbrush halfway down a stroke of her long red hair and looked past the triple oval mirror, through the grey, rain-splattered window and down over the tops of the cherry trees that lined the avenue. They stood bare and dormant, their cold branches stretching up to the sky like the splayed fingers of the dead, grasping for the life-giving sunlight that was still months away. An image of her home and the view from her bedroom window in Tarabeg flashed into her mind. Her nostrils retrieved the memory of the green fields, her mind recalled the fast-flowing Taramore river, and her heart tightened in response.

She swivelled back round on the stool to face Nicholas, with the hairbrush, which had also once belonged to his wife, still in her hand. Her hair had not yet been tamed: red curls were hanging down over her shoulders, and the back was a bird’s-nest muss, a consequence of their vigorous lovemaking the previous evening.