She had forgotten, or tried to forget, he had known her father. Perhaps he knew already where Gina was from. Knew Cushla was making a point by telling him. We went to see him a few times a year, she said. A maid in uniform served us lime cordial from a Waterford crystal jug while my mummy sat glaring at me and Eamonn in case we let her down.

I married above myself, Gina said sometimes, making a joke of it. But Cushla could not forget how she was on those visits, every word stammered like an apology for being a millie who had nabbed Oliver Lavery’s eldest son. It didn’t help that she hadn’t filled her house with children; nine pregnancies and all she had to show for it was Eamonn and Cushla.

Michael turned on to one of the avenues. It had a barracks on the corner, an elegant, understated fortification, the old mansion and fencing painted pigeon-grey, a lookout tower on stilts at the edge of the garden, innocuous as a treehouse. Towards the end of the street, he drove between a pair of imposing posts on to a tarmac driveway fuzzy with moss, parking neatly, as if he’d done it many times.

A chipped pot of primroses sat on each side of the front door, which was heavy and coated thickly in navy-blue gloss. Michael pressed the bell. Cushla had relaxed in the car but now her chest was tight.

Jim answered in his stockinged feet, bifocals on his head the way women wear sunglasses. Fáilte, he said.

Impressive, said Michael. He placed his hand on the small of her back, his touch faint but deliberate. She glanced at him. After you, Miss Lavery, he said, pressing her in ahead of him.

The hallway was high and wide and cluttered. Burgundy paint above a dado rail, tobaccoish Anaglypta below it. A curved wooden chair from the thirties, its seat cushion covered in a William Morris patterned fabric. A large watercolour, a hill beneath a cold blue sky, the dead sedge and heather coral-coloured. She paused in front of it.

Isn’t the light wonderful? said Michael.

It’s like somewhere in America you’d see in a film. Arizona or Nevada, she said.

It was January in Donegal. Penny loves the light in winter, said Jim.

The air in the kitchen was warm and garlicky. Penny was wearing a washed-out pink-and-green-checked apron that flared at the waist, over a black sweater dress. Cushla was admiring your painting, Michael said, kissing her on each cheek.

Thanks. It’s the only thing I’ve ever made that I like, said Penny. I’m mucking around with sculpture now.

Jim poured them wine from a bottle covered with woven straw and they did that wordless salute again, clinking against her glass as an afterthought.

Victorian jelly moulds in various patterns and patinas on a long shelf that ran above the kitchen window. A stripped-pine dresser behind the table crammed with silver teapots and ceramic tureens, jars and tins with French labels. Pâté de campagne, beurre de homard, confit de canard. Penny laid a heavy blue and white platter on the table with both hands. There were anaemic-looking biscuits on it smeared with something baby-pink and shiny, like Angel Delight. Jim passed Cushla the packet. It had an image of a man in a wig like a sheep’s fleece. This is Doctor Oliver of Bath, after whom the biscuits were named, he said. Does he remind you of anyone?