‘Is it that photo you’ve got your eye on?’ Rosaleen would continue as my eyes roamed the room. ‘He took that when we visited the Giant’s Causeway. It rained the entire day and we got a puncture on the way up.’

And on she went.

‘I see you’re looking at the curtains. They need a bit of a clean. I’ll take them down tomorrow and do them. I bought the fabric from a woman doing door-to-door. I never usually but she was a foreign woman, hadn’t much English, or money, and had all this fabric. I like the flower in it. I think it matches the cushion there, what do you think? I’ve lots left in the garage down the back.’

Then I looked to the garage down the back and she’d say, ‘Arthur built that himself. Wasn’t here when I moved in.’

It struck me as odd phrasing. When I moved in. ‘Who lived here before?’

Rosaleen looked at me then, with those wide curious eyes she’d previously reserved for when I was eating. She didn’t say anything. She does that a lot, at the most random times. Dropping in and out of our conversations with looks and pauses as though she loses signal on her brain connection.

She freaked me out so much that I looked away, apparently down at the rug that was given to her by somebody for something, I don’t know…But that morning when I was alone and didn’t have her nervous jabbering interfering in my thoughts, I was able to look around properly.

The living room was cosy, I suppose, if not a little old. Well, a lot old, not like my house, which is-was-modern and clean, crisp lines and everything symmetrical. This room had things all over the place. Art that didn’t match the couches, funny-looking ornaments, tables and chairs with spindly legs and animal claws, two couches with totally different fabrics-one blue and ivory floral, the other as if a cat had thrown up on it-and a coffee table that doubled as a chessboard. The floor felt like it was uneven, sloping from the fireplace to the bookshelves, making me feel a little seasick. The busiest area seemed to be around the fireplace; an open fire that made me shudder with its contraptions that looked like something out of a medieval torture chamber; wrought-iron pokers with animal heads, coal shovels of different sizes, an ancient bellows, a black cast-iron fireguard with an animal of some sort emblazoned on the front. I turned my back on the fire and concentrated on the floor-to-ceiling bookcase, with a ladder, running the length of the wall. It was filled with books, photos, tins, keepsake boxes, useless trinkets, that kind of thing. Most of the books were on gardening and cooking, very specific, not at all to my taste. They were old and well-read, some ripped apart, some missing their covers, yellowing pages, and some that looked water damaged, but not a speck of dust was to be seen. There was a huge red-bound book, which looked so ancient the pages were black with the red dye running into them. It was Lloyd’s Register of Shipping 1919-1920 Volume 2. Inside were hundreds of pages of the alphabetically arranged names of vessels, showing the dead weight and capacities of holds and permanent bunkers. I slid it back into place and wiped my hands on my clothes, not wanting the bacteria of 1919 to infest me. Another book was about faiths of the world, which had on the cover a gold emblem of a cross dug into the ground with a snake twisted around it. Then beside it was a book on greek cooking, though I doubted very much that there’d be a place for a souvlaki next to Rosaleen’s Aga. The next book was The Complete Book of the Horse, though it mustn’t have been, for there were twelve more on the subject.

I’d read only the first chapter of the book Fiona gave me at my dad’s funeral and already that was the most I’d read in a year, so the books stuffed onto the shelves didn’t particularly interest me. What did interest me was a photo album filed alongside them all. It was in the large book section, beside the dictionaries, encyclopaedia, world atlas and that kind of thing. An old-fashioned album, it had the look of a printed book, or at least its spine had. It had a red velvet cover and was embossed by a frame of gold, and I took it out and ran my finger across the front, leaving a darkened trail on the velvet. I curled up in the leather-studded armchair, looking forward to getting lost in somebody else’s memories. As soon as I opened the first page, the doorbell rang, long and shrill. It broke the silence and made me jump.

I waited, almost expected Rosaleen to come sprinting across the road with her teadress hitched up to her thighs, revealing hamstrings so tight Jimi Hendrix could play on them. But she didn’t. Instead there was silence. There wasn’t a peep upstairs from Mum. The doorbell rang again and so I placed the photo album down on the table, and made my way to the front door, the house feeling a little more like home as I did so.

Through the obscure stained glass, I could tell it was a man. When I opened the door, I saw it was a gorgeous man. Early twenties, I guessed, dark brown hair gelled straight up in the front, just like his polo-shirt collar. He could well be a rugby boy. He looked me up and down, and smiled.

‘Hi,’ he said, and his smile revealed perfectly straight white teeth. He had stubble all around his jaw, his eyes were bright blue. In his hand was a clipboard with a chart attached.

‘Hi,’ I said, arching my back as I leaned in against the door.

‘Sir Ignatius?’ he asked.

I smiled. ‘Not I.’

‘Is there a Sir Ignatius Power in this house?’

‘Not at the moment. He’s out fox hunting with Lord Casper.’

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘When will he be back?’

‘After he’s caught the fox, I assume.’

‘Hmm…’ he nodded slowly and looked about him. ‘Are the foxes fast around here?’

‘You’re obviously not from around here. Everybody knows about the foxes here.’

‘Hmm. Indeed I’m not.’

I bit my lip and tried not to smile.

‘So he might be a long time?’ he smiled, sensing I was waning.

‘He might be a very long time.’

‘I see.’

He leaned against the porch pillar and stared at me.

‘What?’ I said defensively, feeling like I was melting under his gaze.

‘Seriously.’

‘Seriously, what?’

‘Does he live anywhere around here, at all?’

‘Definitely not behind these gates.’

‘What are you then?’

‘I’m a Goodwin.’

‘I’m sure you are, but what’s your surname?’

I tried not to laugh but couldn’t help it.

‘Cheesy, I know, sorry,’ he apologised good-heartedly, then looked confused as he consulted his chart and scratched his head, making it even more tousled.

I looked over his shoulder and saw a white bus, with ‘The Travelling Library’ emblazoned across the side.

He finally looked up from his clipboard. ‘Okay then, I’m definitely lost. There’s no Goodwin on this list.’

‘Oh, it wouldn’t be under my name.’ Byrne was my mother’s maiden name, my uncle Arthur’s surname and the name this house would be under. Arthur and Rosaleen Byrne. Jennifer Byrne-it didn’t sound right. It felt like my mum should always have been a Goodwin.

‘So this must be the Kilsaney residence?’ he said hopefully, looking up from his chart.

‘Ah, the Kilsaneys,’ I said, and he looked relieved. ‘They’re the next house on the left, just through the trees,’ I smiled.

‘Great, thank you. I’ve never been around here before. I’m an hour late. What are they like, the Kilsaneys?’ He scrunched up his nose. ‘Will they give me shit?’

I shrugged. ‘They don’t say much. But don’t worry, they love books.’

‘Good. Do you want me to stop here on the way back out so you can have a look at the books?’

‘Sure.’

I closed the door and burst out laughing. I waited with excitement for him to return, butterflies fluttering around my heart and stomach as though I was a child playing hide-and-seek. I hadn’t felt like this for at least a month. Something had been reopened inside me. Less than a minute later, I heard the bus returning. It stopped outside the house and I opened the door. He was getting out of the bus, a big smile on his face. When he looked up he caught my eye and shook his head.