‘It’s a beautiful day so play outside and get some fresh air and don’t be getting under my feet,’ her mother said. ‘Rosaleen will play with you too.’

‘I don’t want to play with her,’ Laurie sulked, still not looking at her, but at least she knew that she wasn’t invisible to him, that he could see her after all.

‘Be nice to her, boys. Say hello, Rosaleen.’

The boys were tight-lipped, but the little girl’s mother barked at them then.

‘Hello, Rosaleen,’ they both mumbled, Laurie looking at the ground, Artie smiling at her shyly.

The little girl had no name before that. When she heard her name pass his lips, it was as though she had been christened.

‘Now off with you,’ her mother said and the boys ran off. Rosaleen followed.

Once they were deep in the woods, they stopped running as Laurie went to study an ant hole.

‘I’m Artie,’ the younger one said.

‘Don’t talk to her,’ Laurie huffed, picking up a stick from the ground and waving it around as though he were in combat.

Laurie ignored them and concentrated on poking the stick in the hole of tree trunk. Suddenly they heard voices and Laurie, ears pricked, followed the sound. He held his hand up and they stalled and they all spied through the trees and saw the groundsman, Paddy, on his knees, sorting through some brambles while beside him, in the wheelbarrow, lay a little girl aged about two, with white-blonde hair.

‘Who’s that?’ Laurie said, and his voice sent warning signals straight to Rosaleen’s heart but, excited for their first conversation, she replied, with a pounding in her chest, conscious of her voice, wanting it all to be so perfect for him.

‘That’s Jennifer Byrne,’ she said, ever so prim and proper as Mrs Kilsaney spoke. ‘Paddy is her dad.’

‘Let’s ask her to play,’ Laurie said.

‘She’s only a baby,’ Rosaleen protested.

‘She’s funny,’ Laurie asked, watching her lazing about in the wheelbarrow.

From that day on it was the four of them. Laurie, Artie, Rosaleen and Jennifer played together every day. Jennifer because she’d been invited, Rosaleen because they’d been forced. Rosaleen always remembered that. Even when Laurie kissed her in the bushes or when they were boyfriend and girlfriend for a few weeks, she always knew that little Jennifer was his favourite. She always had been. She captivated him. Whatever it was about the things she said and the way that she moved, Laurie was entranced by her, always wanted to be around her.

Jennifer grew even more beautiful year by year though she was completely unaware of her beauty. Her big boobs, her tiny waist, her hips that all of a sudden appeared during one summer. Without a mother in her life since she was three years old, she was quite the tomboy, hanging out of trees, racing both Artie and Laurie, stripping off and diving into the lakes without a care in the world. She always tried to get Rosaleen to join in but never understood why she wouldn’t. Rosaleen on the other hand was biding her time. She knew that the tomboy act would wear off with the boys. They’d lose interest. They’d want to find a real woman some day and she was going to be that woman. She could be like Mrs Kilsaney, she could keep the castle, cook the food, train the dogs, make sure the nun brought her nothing less than perfect flowers. She dreamed of Laurie someday being hers, that they could live together in the castle, looking after the dogs and the flowers while Laurie received inspiration in the oak room from his forefathers on the walls.

When the boys went off to boarding school, Laurie wrote only to Jennifer. Artie wrote to both of them. Rosaleen never let Jennifer know this. She would pretend that she had received a letter too but that it was too personal to read aloud. Jennifer never seemed to mind, having so much confidence in her friendships it made Rosaleen even more jealous. Then when the boys went off to college, Rosaleen’s mother’s MS was deteriorating, her ageing father was ill, they needed money, and Rosaleen’s brother and sister were too far away to help, so Rosaleen’s parents relied on the child they never wanted to look after them. Rosaleen was forced to leave school and take over her mother’s job at the castle, while Jennifer continued to prosper, taking trips to Dublin to visit the boys.

Those were the worst days for Rosaleen. The weeks were long and boring without them. She lived for Laurie to return; she lived in her head, dreaming of all that was past and creating all that could be in the future, while they were off in the city doing exciting things-Laurie at art college, sending home his glass work, Artie studying horticulture-Jennifer being offered modelling jobs every time she stepped outside of the door. When they returned home during the breaks, Rosaleen’s life couldn’t be happier except that she yearned for Laurie to look at her as he did Jennifer.

She didn’t know how long their romance had been going on. She could only assume it started in Dublin while she was at home plucking pheasants and gutting fish. She wondered if they were ever going to tell her, if it hadn’t been for that embarrassing day when she brought him to the apple tree to finally tell him how she felt, showed the carving in the tree, ‘Rose Loves Laurie’. She was so sure he would be blown away, that he would see her for who she really was, how she had been keeping the castle going without him, how capable she was. She’d imagined the day for months, for years.

But it hadn’t worked that way. It hadn’t gone exactly as she’d imagined for all those years and for all those months alone in the kitchen in the castle. Life became dark and cold then. Her father passed away, the boys returned from college to attend the funeral, her older sister tried to take her mother away with her to Cork but without her mother, Rosaleen had nothing. She promised to look after her. Jennifer offered her a firm friendship and Rosaleen accepted it while all the time hating her. Hating everything she said, everything she did, hating that Laurie had fallen for her.

The autumn of 1990 Jennifer fell pregnant. Rosaleen’s life fell apart. Jennifer was welcomed in the Kilsaney household with open arms. A delighted Mrs Kilsaney showed her her wardrobes, the wedding dress, the everything that should have been Rosaleen’s. Jennifer and her father were invited to dinner weekly. Rosaleen cooked for them. The humiliation was beyond repair.

The child was born, two weeks early and with not enough time to get to the hospital. Rosaleen had run through the dark night to fetch the old nun. They had a little girl. They called her Tamara, after Jennifer’s mother, who’d passed away when she was a child. The couple weren’t yet married but living in the castle. Rosaleen and Arthur were godparents. The christening was in the castle chapel.

But life in the castle was not easy. The Kilsaneys were finding it difficult to keep the castle going, money wasn’t coming in, they were becoming desperate. All those rooms to keep, to heat, to maintain-it was all too much. They would meet at dinner to talk about it. Rosaleen, as though hiding in the walls would hear it all.

Perhaps they would open the castle to the public. Every Saturday allow the public to trample through their home, taking photographs of their eighteenth-century writing desks and the oak room filled with portraits, at their chapel, at their age-old letters from generations ago between lords and ladies, politicians and rebels, during times of great unrest.

‘No,’ Mrs Kilsaney would cry, ‘I can’t let them visit us as though we’re a zoo. And still how will we afford the place? A few pounds admission fee per adult won’t fix the roof, it won’t pay Paddy’s wages, it won’t pay the heating bills.’

They found a solution, though. Developers Timothy and George Goodwin arrived in Kilsaney in their Bentley on the most beautiful day of the year and they couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw the grounds, the view, the lakes, the deer, the pheasants. It was like a theme park. They saw money everywhere they looked. Timothy Goodwin, a dapper but rude old gentleman in a three-piece suit, and with a cheque-book in his inside pocket, fell in love with the property. George Goodwin fell in love with Jennifer Byrne. This was the happiest day of Rosaleen’s life. While serving them during their banquet meal in the great dining room, she couldn’t help but observe how George Goodwin had eyes only for Jennifer, how he had little to say to Laurie and a lot of time to play with the child. Everybody at the table saw this, certainly Laurie. Jennifer was kind to him but she adored Laurie.