‘So, Mum, Arthur and Rosaleen hung around with a Kilsaney,’ I thought aloud. ‘I didn’t even know she lived here.’

‘Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she came here on holidays.’ Weseley continued flicking. All of the photographs were of the same four people, all at different ages, all huddled close together. Some pictures were of them on their own, some in couples, but most of them together. Mum was the youngest, Rosaleen and Arthur closer in age and Laurence the oldest, always with a great smile, a mischievous look in his eye. Even as a young girl Rosaleen had an older look, a hardness in her eye, a smile that never grew as large as the others’.

‘Look, there they all are in front of the gatehouse,’ Weseley pointed at the four of them sitting on the garden wall. Nothing much had changed apart from some of the garden trees, which were now big and full, but then had just been planted or were merely shrubs. But the gate, the wall, the house, everything was exactly the same.

‘There’s Mum in the living room. That’s the same fireplace.’ I studied the photo intently. ‘The bookcase is exactly the same. Look at the bedroom,’ I gasped. ‘That’s the one I’m in now. But I don’t understand. She lived here, she grew up here.’

‘You really didn’t know any of this?’

‘No.’ I shook my head, feeling a headache coming on. My brain was overloaded with so much information and not enough answers. ‘I mean, I knew she lived in the country but…I remember when we visited Arthur and Rosaleen when I was young, my granddad was always here. My grandma died when my mum was young. I thought he was just visiting Arthur and Rosaleen too but…my God, what’s going on? Why did they all lie?’

‘They didn’t really lie though, did they?’ Weseley tried to soften the blow. ‘They just didn’t tell you they lived here. That’s not exactly the most exciting secret in the world.’

‘And they didn’t tell me that they’d known Rosaleen practically all their lives, that they lived in the gatehouse and they once knew the Kilsaneys. It’s not a big deal, but it is if you keep it a secret. But why did they hide it? What else are they keeping from me?’

Weseley looked away from me then, continued flicking through the photo album as if to find my answers. ‘Hey, if your granddad lived in the gatehouse, that made him the groundskeeper here. He had Arthur’s job.’

A startling image flashed through my mind, I was young, my granddad was down on his knees with his hands deep in muck. I remember the black beneath his fingernails, a worm in the soil wriggling around, Granddad grabbing it and dangling it near my face, me crying, and him laughing, and wrapping his arms around me. He always smelled of soil and grass. His fingernails were always black.

‘I wonder if there’s a photo of the woman.’ I flicked through the pages further.

‘What woman?’

‘The woman in the bungalow who makes the glass.’

We studied the following pages, my heart thudding so loudly in my chest, I thought I was going to keel over. I came across another photograph of Rosaleen and Laurence together. ‘Rose and Laurie, 1987’.

‘I think Rosaleen was in love with Laurence,’ I said, tracing their faces with my finger.

‘Uh-oh,’ Weseley said, turning over a page. ‘But Laurence didn’t love Rosaleen.’

I looked at the next photograph, eyes wide. On the next page was a picture of Mum, as a teenager, beautiful, long blonde hair, big smile, perfect teeth. Laurence had his arms thrown around her, was kissing her cheek by the tree with the engraving.

I looked at the back of the photograph. ‘Jen and Laurie, 1989’.

‘They could have been just friends…’ Weseley said slowly.

‘Weseley, look at them.’

That’s all I had to say. The rest was plain to see. it was right there in front of us. They were in love.

I thought about what Mum had said to me when I’d returned from the rose garden the first day I’d met Sister Ignatius. I’d thought she hadn’t been speaking properly, I thought she was telling me that I was prettier than a rose. But what if she’d meant exactly what she’d said: ‘You’re prettier than Rose’?

And away from them, at the other edge of the photograph, Rosaleen sat on a tartan rug with a picnic basket beside her, staring coldly at the camera.

I didn’t know how long we had until Rosaleen and Arthur returned with Mum, if they were returning with her at all, but I had given up caring about being caught. I was done with their secrets, tired of tiptoeing around and trying to peak underneath things when nobody was looking. Weseley, in full support of my next move led me to the bungalow across the road. We were both looking for answers and I had never in my life met anybody like Weseley who was going out on a limb to help me so much. I thought of Sister Ignatius and my heart tugged. I had abandoned her. I needed to see her too. I remembered how during one of our first meetings she had grabbed my arm and told me she’d never lie to me. That she would always tell me the truth. She knew something. She had practically told me then that she knew something, now that I look back, had quite obviously asked me to question her, and I hadn’t realised it until now.

Weseley led me down the side passage. My knees trembled as I walked and I expected them at any time to give way and send me to the ground like a house of cards. The morning was darkening and the wind was picking up. It was only noon and already the sky had clouded over, great big grey clouds gathering as though the sky’s eyes were covered by bushy eyebrows, its forehead furrowed in concern as it watched me.

‘What’s that noise?’ Weseley asked as we neared the end of the passageway.

We stopped and listened. It was a tinkling sound.

‘The glass,’ I whispered. ‘It’s blowing in the wind.’

It was a slightly disturbing sound. Unlike the tinkling of a chime, it sounded as though the glass was smashing, as the little pieces, the round and the jagged, hit against each other in the wind. Multiplied by hundreds, it was an eerie sound.

‘I’m going to go down and check it out,’ Weseley said once we’d stepped into the back garden. ‘You’ll be fine, Tamara. Just tell the woman you came over to thank her and take it from there. She might tell you more after that.’

I nervously watched him walk across the lawn, past the workshed and he disappeared into the field of glass.

I turned to the house and looked in at the windows. The kitchen was empty. I lightly rapped on the back door and waited. There was no answer. With a shaky hand, which I admonished myself about being so dramatic, I reached out and pulled down the handle. The door was unlocked. I pulled it open a crack and peered inside. It was a narrow hallway, which turned sharply to the right. There were three doorways off the hallway, all closed, one on the right, two to the left. The first on the left led to the kitchen-I already knew there was nobody in there. I stepped inside, trying to keep the door open so that I wouldn’t feel so trapped and so it wouldn’t feel like I was totally breaking and entering, but the wind was so strong it blew shut. I jumped and once again told myself how stupid I was being. An old woman and the woman who’d given me a gift were hardly going to hurt me. I rapped lightly on the door to my right. There was no answer and so I gently turned the handle and slowly opened the door. It was a bedroom, definitely the bedroom of an old lady. It smelled damp and of talcum powder and TCP. There was an old dark wood bed with floral duvet cover, slippers by the bed and a duck-egg-blue carpet that had seen more than a few Shake ‘n’ Vacs. There was a free-standing wardrobe probably containing all of her worldly outfits. A small dresser with a tarnished mirror sat against the door wall, a hairbrush, medication, the rosary and the Bible all neatly laid out on its surface. Facing the bed was the window overlooking the back garden. There was nothing else, nobody inside.