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‘Right, you bastard!’ she yelled at the top of her lungs. ‘Get out now before I do you a permanent injury.’ With that she leapt forward and hit him again and again with the giraffe, still screaming loudly in the hopes that a neighbour would hear and come.

‘All right, I’m going,’ he said, backing out of the door. ‘You’re mad, mad!’

He reached the top of the stairs and she ran at him again, arms outstretched to push him down the stairs. He fell backwards, his head thumping on each stair.

A banging on the front door alerted her that someone else was there. In a confused state she thought it was his partner-in-crime and screamed even louder.

With that she heard the front door being booted in.

‘It’s me, Miss Manning,’ a voice called out and she recognized it as Mr Sayers from next door. He was a small, wiry man, who she’d heard had once been a fly-weight boxer. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘No… yes!’ she shouted back, realizing the blow to her shoulder had broken the skin and she was bleeding. She made her way down the stairs and gingerly past the intruder. ‘But I’m fine, really. Is he alive? I think there’s been a power cut.’

‘Mine is all right next door,’ Sayers said and he peered at the fuse-board by the door. ‘Ah,’ he exclaimed. ‘He turned it off.’ Flicking a switch, light flooded the hallway and he saw the man at the foot of the stairs.

He made a low whistle. ‘It’s a tinker, to be sure, I saw him ride his horse up the lane this afternoon.’

‘I saw that man too,’ Beth admitted. ‘Do you think he was checking out places to rob?’

Sayers went over to the injured man and felt his pulse. ‘I think that’s very likely. He’s alive but unconscious. Could he be the man you saw at Able’s farm?’

Beth went over to check. His face was dirty and with his eyes closed she couldn’t be absolutely sure.

But intuition suggested he’d been at the tinkers’ camp where she stopped on the way to Waterford.

Maybe he’d seen her ride back later and followed her to find out where she lived?

Even if it wasn’t the man who attacked Able, it could be a brother.

As the only witness to the crime, perhaps he felt she should be frightened into silence.

A shiver ran down her spine. ‘I don’t know. Possibly. But we must get an ambulance for him and call the Garda.’

‘I can’t go and leave you alone with him,’ Sayers said. ‘He might come round.’

‘Then I’ll go,’ she said. ‘There’s a phone box down at the harbour.’

‘But you are hurt too! And in your nightclothes.’

Beth hadn’t really thought about what she was wearing or her own injuries.

But she glanced at her shoulder and saw the bloodstain, and was embarrassed to be in her nightdress, aware her shoulder really hurt, and that she was cold.

She went over to a hook by the door, took down her raincoat and put it on.

She picked up the brass giraffe again and brandished it.

‘You go to the telephone. If he comes round I’ll whack him with this. ’

Sayers chuckled. ‘You’re a plucky one, Miss Manning, and no mistake. I’ll be just two ticks, and be back to stay with you till help comes.’

Beth felt dizzy as soon as her neighbour had gone. She pulled a chair out from the kitchen to sit on, and put a towel on her shoulder under her raincoat to staunch the blood, but the effort of doing that made her feel quite faint.

Looking down at the tinker, she hoped he wouldn’t wake up as she wasn’t sure she had the strength to hit him again.

Despite the dirt on his face he was a good-looking man, with shiny black curly hair, and a fine straight nose.

Now, with good lighting, she could see the red patterned bandana round his neck, like the one Able’s attacker wore.

The day she met him she thought it gave him a rakish charm, as did his long coat and worn, muddy riding boots.

But more telling was the smell coming from him. It was peat from a fire, and the young man at the farm smelled of it too. It was a smell which often wafted out of cottages as she passed, and she didn’t like it.

She reached out and touched his coat. It was soaked right through from the rain, and she wondered if he’d walked here, or whether a horse was tethered somewhere nearby. What was he intending to do to her? Rob her obviously, but maybe to terrify her into silence about Able, or even kill her?

His eyes flickered and she stiffened in fear, clutching the brass giraffe more firmly.

‘Yes, it’s me,’ she snapped out firmly, ‘and I’ll whack you again if you move. My neighbour has gone for the Garda.’

His eyes opened fully and they were as brilliantly blue as she remembered.

‘I didn’t come to hurt you,’ he said, his voice a little croaky. ‘I saw you looking at the camp and just wanted to ask you not to tell the Garda where I was.’

‘No one creeps into a house at night, turns off the electricity and comes upstairs in the dark unless he wants to hurt or rob. Do you think I’m a fool?

’ she spat out with anger. ‘As it happens, I didn’t even see you at the camp.

I was admiring the lovely caravans. But now you are hurt and you’re in even more trouble. ’

‘I’ve been an eejit, but you could say I wasn’t the man at the farm? I just came in to rob you?’

Beth shook her head in disbelief that he imagined that was a good plan. But then he was so handsome he probably had women doing whatever he asked.

‘The farmer died because of you,’ she said.

‘I didn’t hit him, he fell and banged his head on a stone.’

‘And did his dog die the same way?’ she said angrily.

‘I had to feckin’ hit the dog. He was going to bite me.’

He was gradually raising himself to a sitting position, keeping his bright eyes directly on her, and Beth grew dizzy again and felt unable to cope.

‘Let me go,’ he said, his voice soft and melodious. ‘Turning me in could be the worst thing for you.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Well, you must be running from something to come here.’

A shiver ran down her spine. Did he know something, or was it just a wild prod to gain her reaction?

‘I inherited this cottage, I certainly wasn’t running from something,’ she said, more defiantly than she felt.

‘Oh yes, I heard that, but a young woman coming here alone when there’s a war going on in England? That’s odd. And suspicious! The Garda will question you, even if only because they think you might be a spy.’

His words scared her, and he was looking at her as if he knew that.

‘I’ve got three paistí under five and another on the way,’ he went on. ‘How will my wife manage without me if they lock me up?’

For some odd reason it was the use of the Irish word for children that affected her. She knew the struggle her own mother had been through with only one child. She couldn’t reply for a minute or two.

‘Let me go,’ he pleaded, clearly realizing by her silence she was unsure. ‘I can slip out the back and over the fields, and you can say I went when you fainted. I hurt your shoulder, didn’t I?’

‘But you’ll have concussion,’ she said weakly. ‘You might collapse out in the fields.’

‘Your concern is touching,’ he said and got to his feet. ‘Us tinkers don’t often get that.’ He reached down and pulled a knife from his boot and pointed it at her. ‘Let me go without any fuss, or I’ll have to use this.’

Part of her wanted to stand up to him and whack him again so he couldn’t get away.

Yet she wavered, perhaps because gypsies, or tinkers as they were called here, were blamed for so much.

She dropped the brass giraffe to the floor, knowing she hadn’t the strength or the will to fight him.

‘Go then, but bring your little ones up to be honest.’

He slid the knife back into his boot, and moved forward to drop a kiss on her forehead, and then he was gone quickly and quietly out through the kitchen, leaving just the faint aroma of peat and a small pool of blood on the hall floor.

Her head was swimming, she couldn’t seem to focus her eyes, and the next thing she knew Sayers burst in, panting like he’d run for miles.

‘Sorry I was so long,’ he wheezed. Then, stopping short, he looked to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Where is he?’

‘I passed out I think,’ she said in little more than a whisper. ‘He must have gone.’

Sayers scratched his head. ‘I couldn’t raise the Garda or an ambulance, and went to the pub, told them what had happened.

They said they’d ring from there, but they advised me to let him go.

Tinkers are more trouble than they’re worth.

But you need your shoulder seeing to. Come into the kitchen where the light is better and I’ll take a look.

When I was boxing I often patched people up. ’

An hour later Beth was back in bed in a clean nightdress and with a fresh hot water bottle.

Mr Sayers had been as good as a doctor. He dropped the top of her nightdress down over her arm, cleaned the wound and dressed it.

He said it was only superficial, but she would have a big bruise in a few hours.

After securing the front door with the bolts inside, he went out by the back door and round the side to get to his own home.

He said he’d be back in the morning to mend the front door, and would phone the Garda and report what had happened.

As Beth lay in bed listening to the rain outside, she thought back to what she’d done.

Strangely she felt no real guilt– maybe it was his kiss on the forehead that banished it.

He was right, she would’ve faced many questions if Able’s case went to court and she was called as a witness, which would bring journalists.

They might dig around in her past, and she didn’t want to risk that.

True, the man should’ve been punished, but what about his young family?

She couldn’t imagine anyone here helping them.

But one thing was absolutely certain, she must get out of here for a while.