‘Aye, especially after he’s spent a night out with us himself,’ Michael would reply.

Michael looked up at Rosie in surprise. ‘Why would I not be coming to the manor with you?’ he asked. ‘There won’t be any customers until the wake is over, so I may as well. We won’t get another chance to see inside the manor if it’s to be knocked down, as some are saying.’

He looked up the road past the church to the school. The village was eerily still and quiet. Only he knew who he was looking for, or so he thought, but there had been no word from Mary Kate herself, no sign. He turned on his heel and fell into step alongside his father.

‘I hope they have fecking Guinness and it isn’t all that sherry shite the English drink,’ Seamus said.

Michael, knowing that mirth on such an occasion was sinful, couldn’t help himself as he roared with laughter.

*

Daylight had almost disappeared by the time the bus turned into the main street. The familiar landmarks in the distance she had known since childhood were fading one by one, and the green grass on the hills had blurred into grey.

The bus pulled away, leaving its lone passenger standing on the roadside, clasping her case with both hands and holding it against her shins before her. Her hat was tugged low over her eyes and she’d turned the collar of her coat up against her neck to ward off the chill. She suddenly felt conspicuous as she stood there in her tweed coat, fur collar and red leather boots with leopardskin lining peeping over the top. This was fashion such as the women in Tarabeg would never have seen before and Mary Kate felt it was significant, symbolic even. Her clothes didn’t belong in Tarabeg and maybe she didn’t either. She had changed, and possibly it had taken setting foot on Tarabeg soil again, with her grief packed in her suitcase alongside all that she now owned, to realise that. Maybe there actually was no going back.

‘Remember,’ Mrs O’Keefe had said, ‘there won’t be any answers to your questions. The pain of losing Nicholas will be no less intense just because you’ve taken it to a different shore. You can’t just remove yourself from how you feel – you are carrying your loss with you and it will be a heavier load because of it. And although you don’t know it, being there, with people you can’t talk to about all that has gone on here in Liverpool, may make it that much harder to deal with. Being in Tarabeg cannot change the past. As my poor husband found out every time he visited Dublin, going back is always a disappointment. You understand that, don’t you?’

Mary Kate had thrown her arms around Mrs O’Keefe’s shoulders. ‘I do, but at least I will be in my own room, my own house, my own bed. Being with Daddy and Rosie and Finn, I need that to help me, and I want to be close to Bee – I can talk to her. Tarabeg was where Nicholas wanted me to be. “Go home,” he said, and that’s all that matters.’