Her house is a long white bungalow, freshly painted, with boxes of geraniums on the windowsills. She doesn’t invite Cal in; instead she leads him round the side of the house, towards a low, rugged stone building. “I tried to get the dog to whelp inside,” she says, “but she was having none of it. It was the cattle byre she wanted. In the end I thought, what harm. The walls on it are thick enough to keep out the cold, and if she does get chilly, she knows where to come.”

“That what you and your husband farmed? Cattle?”

“We did, yeah. Dairy. They weren’t kept here, but. This is the old byre, from a century or two back. We used it mostly for storing feed.”

The byre is dim, lit only through small high windows, and Lena was right about the walls: it’s warmer in there than Cal expected. The dog is in the end stall. They squat on their haunches, while Nellie keeps a respectful distance, and peer in.

The mama dog is tan and white, curled up in a big wooden box around a squeaking mass of pups wriggling over each other to get in close. “That’s a fine-looking litter,” Cal says.

“This here’s the runt I was telling you about,” Lena says, reaching in and scooping up a fat pup mottled in black, tan and white. “Look at the size of him now.”

Cal reaches to take the pup, but the mama dog half-rises, a low growl starting in her chest. The other pups, disturbed, squeak furiously. “Give her a minute,” Lena says. “She’s not as well trained as Nellie. I’ve only had her a few weeks, haven’t had a chance to put manners on her. Once she sees her sister doesn’t mind you, she’ll be grand.”

Cal turns his shoulder to the litter and makes a big fuss of Nellie, who soaks it up joyfully, licking and wriggling. Sure enough, the mama dog sinks back down among her pups and, when Cal turns back, allows him to take the runt from Lena with only a lift of her lip.

The pup’s eyes are closed tight and his head wobbles on his neck. He gnaws at Cal’s fingertip with tiny toothless gums, looking for milk. He has a tan face and black ears, with a white blaze running up his nose; the black patch on his tan back is the shape of a ragged flag flying. Cal strokes his soft floppy ears.

“Been a while since I got a chance to do this,” he says.

“They’re nice to have about, all right,” Lena says. “I’d no wish for puppies—or for two dogs, come to that. I fancied having the one, so I got Nellie out of a shelter, after the pair of them were left on the side of a road. The people that took Daisy didn’t bother spaying her; when she came up pregnant, they dropped her back to the shelter. The shelter rang me. At first I said no, but in the end I thought, why not?” She reaches into the basket to tickle a pup’s forehead with one finger; the pup nuzzles blindly into her hand. “You take what comes your way, I suppose.”

“Mostly doesn’t seem like there’s much choice,” Cal agrees.

“And of course the pups are some mad mix. God knows who’ll want them.”

Cal likes the angle of her next to him: not tilted towards him like a woman who wants him or wants him to want her, off balance as if he might have to catch her any minute, but planted solid on her feet and shoulder-to-shoulder with him, like a partner. The byre smells of cattle feed, sweet and nutty, and the floor is scattered with strawy golden dust. The riverbank cold is starting to thaw out of his bones.

“Some retriever in there, I’d guess,” he says. “And that one at the end’s got a little terrier around the ears.”

“Pure mutt, I’d say. No way to know if they’d be any good for hunting. And beagles are no use as guard dogs. You’d get more savagery out of a hamster.”

“They any good as watchdogs?”

“They’ll let you know if someone’s on your land, all right. They notice everything, and they want to tell you about it. But the worst they’ll do to him is lick him to pieces.”

“I wouldn’t ask a dog to do my dirty work for me,” Cal says. “But I’d want one that’d let me know if something needs doing.”

“You’ve a good way with them,” Lena says. “If you want one, you can have one.”

Cal wasn’t aware, till that moment, that he was being evaluated. “I’ll take a week or two to think it over,” he says. “If that’s all right.”

Lena, her face turned to him, has that amused look again. “Did I give you a fright, with all that talk about the blow-ins packing it in after one winter?”

“It’s not that,” Cal says, a little taken aback.

“I told you, most of them last six months. You’re here, what now, four? Don’t worry, you won’t be setting any records if you cut and run.”

“I want to be sure I’ll do a dog justice,” Cal says. “It’s a responsibility.”

Lena nods. “True enough,” she says. There’s a slight lift to her eyebrow; he can’t tell whether she believes him. “Let me know whenever you make your mind up, so. Is there one that takes your fancy? You’re the first person I’ve offered; you can have your pick.”

“Well,” Cal says, running a finger down the runt’s back, “I like the looks of this one right here. He’s already proved he’s no quitter.”

“I’ll tell people he’s spoken for,” Lena says. “If anyone asks. If you want to come up and see how he’s growing, give me a ring first to make sure I’m about—I’ll give you my number. I work odd hours, some days.”

“Where do you work at?”

“In a stable the other side of Boyle. I do the books, but sometimes I give a hand with the horses as well.”

“Did you use to have those? As well as the cattle?”

“Not of our own. We boarded a few.”

“Sounds like you had a pretty serious operation here,” Cal says. The runt has rolled over in his palm; he tickles its tummy. “This must be a big change.”

He’s not expecting her swift curl of a grin. “You’ve got it in your head I’m a poor lonesome widow woman devastated by losing the farm where she and her man worked their fingers to the bone. Haven’t you?”

“Something like that,” Cal admits, grinning back. He always did have a weakness for women who were a step ahead of him, although look where that got him.

“Not a bit of it,” Lena says cheerfully. “I was only delighted to be rid of the bastard. We worked our fingers to the bone, all right, and Sean never stopped worrying that we’d go bankrupt, and then he started drinking to ease the worry. The three things between them gave him the heart attack.”

“Noreen told me he died. I’m sorry for your loss.”