By the time I got to the end of the lane the drizzle was so light it settled on my face. I wiped it away and realized I’d forgotten my lipstick. My courage was very low. The man had said, anytime, but I only had his word for it. He probably only thought his wife was at home all morning, when in reality she had a million and one things that took her into the village.

The house was silent, the windows dark. The latch of the small wrought-iron gate was red with rust. A piece of blue twine was hooked over the gatepost. I looked at the knots and remembered the man’s blunted fingers on the rim of his hat: I didn’t want to touch the string. It seemed too intimate.

I pressed down on the handle and the latch released with a startling snap. Lifting the loop of twine, I went through the gate and up the path. Outside the front door was a pot with a stalk of rosemary trying to grow, just enough for one good dinner of lamb. As if the English would ever cook lamb with rosemary, wedded as they are to their satanic mint sauce. The door itself was old wood, damp-stained at the bottom, with rippling panels of glass and a spy hole in the middle, and a snarling knocker, the head of a wolf or a dog, I couldn’t tell which.

By this time I was almost certain there was no one in, and I was glad. How could I talk, about Catherine of all things, to anyone who had a door knocker like this? I was just wrapping my mac around me, about to turn for home, when a huge pink hand squashed over the inside of the glass panel, rubbing with a gray cloth that squeaked against the pane.

I gasped, “Oh!”

Whereupon the door was opened by a woman in rubber gloves, whose eyes, after a moment, became keen with understanding. When she spoke it was briskly, with the same accent as her husband, and I was sure now that it was Irish.

“Ah now, you’re the girl.”

—