Poor Peggy was also known as ‘raggedy Peggy’, due to the shabbiness of her clothes. To Michael, Rosie’s suggestion that Peggy could catch the eye of Joe Malone was as fanciful as Bridget’s stories about the faeries. Bridget claimed that he’d built his house and shop on the faerie path from the river to the village and that the only way to placate them would be to plant a hawthorn bush, their favourite, for them to play under. Despite his scepticism, Michael had acquiesced, and Bridget had duly planted the bush at the side of the shop.

‘It looks that way, Michael, does it not?’ Peggy replied. ‘Fancy me, all this time – imagine! I was wondering why I wasn’t gone to America already and living the high life.’

They laughed. She laughed. They all laughed, even Finn, his comic book dropping from his knee onto the hearth. And she was grateful, as the laughter hid her turmoil. Fifty-two before she had a chance to escape, and who would want her then? Where had her head been? As the youngest child of ten on a hill farm, living a miserable life, she’d been smitten and in a dream from the moment she’d seen her first glossy magazine. She thought she could do it, escape, just like all the others, but she was the poorest girl in Tarabeg and as a consequence she was left behind. It was only since she’d moved in to live with Michael and Rosie, after Mary Kate had left for Liverpool and at Rosie’s gentle insistence, that she’d begun to see herself as others did. The night Rosie helped her count the pennies in her jar, she watched the life she’d dreamt of disappearing out the door, laughing at her as it went. Weeks later, she was doing just as she always had, day after day, lugging the bags of flour and potatoes out onto the shop display at the front and chatting to Keeva.

As the last of the boys filed in through the school gate, Keeva broke into Peggy’s thoughts. ‘Are you off to the dance, Peggy?’ she asked. ‘Only you haven’t bought a ticket and they are selling over the butcher’s counter faster than the rashers. It’s the talk of Erris. Tig reckons ’twill be the best yet. Bridget was telling Nola that the great thing about this one is that everyone is going. There’ll be food – Josie and Nola are making the pies. It’s a full moon that night, so plenty of light home, and Legs Duffy will be playing. Imagine! It’ll be fantastic.’

Peggy looked at Keeva and bit her lip. She wanted to say yes – she always went to the dance. ‘What’s the point, Keeva? The fella I want to dance with won’t be going. This lot will, though, and who wants to dance with them?’ She shook her head at the group of farmhands walking past the Malones’ seven acres and towards the boreen up to Captain Carter’s land.