The air was soft and fragrant after the touch of summer rain as Alice travelled the short journey from Galway, alighting from a cab outside what was once Mary"s home above a secluded cove at Salthill. Despite the fact that she had tried hard not to think of how Mary"s cottage would look, it had been impossible, but what greeted her was far from her expectations. She had imagined it would be similar if not the same as the one in the photograph she"d found in Mary"s desk; a white painted, cement rendered quaint cottage with a peat-covered roof and perhaps a wisp of smoke rising from its single chimney carrying the sweet smell of baking bread on the wind, but although it was painted white that"s where any similarity ended. It was huge. Three floors of wide, tall balconied windows and, on the
