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outer aisles, backs against the cold, white, stone walls, thumbs tucked into their braces, wandering eyes staring back at her under floppy fringes. There was one man in particular her mother had her eye on. She tried to convince her Mags it was for her of course but Mags had her suspicions. Her mother became another woman when he was around, laughing at his jokes, being shockingly polite and being far too interested in what the young man had to say for Margaret’s liking. Ploughing a field really wasn’t that comical in Margaret’s opinion and her mother never seemed as enthusiastic to listen when her father talked about it. Seamus O’Reilly was his name, a local who worked on his father’s farm and who probably would be doing the same for the next fifty years of his life. He was twenty-five years of age, strong as an ox, great with his hands and a ‘decent sort of a lad’, according to her father.
    He reminded Mags of her five brothers with his cheeky smile and overconfident stroll. She could see him demanding food on the table, hot water for his bath and freshly washed clothes every morning just like the boys. He leaned against the confessional box and watched all the single girls from the village being led in a neat line up the aisle by their mothers. The stone floor beneath his feet was scattered with muddy clumps as the muck on the soles of his leather boots dried, cracked and fell to the floor. So Mags felt far from upset when she watched him walk down the aisle with Katie McNamara that year. As all the women had watched the bride and gasped in awe at her dress as she passed, Mags had more interest in watching the soles of Seamus’s feet as he walked away out of the church a married man. Her suspicions had been correct. The mud cracked and fell with every step. To Mags, an obvious sign of what future lay ahead for poor Katie McNamara.
    Mags wanted to find a man with shiny shoes, a man who didn’t sweat for a living. If such a creature existed in Kilcrush.
    Her mother had been visibly devastated and had dabbed at her eyes throughout the wedding ceremony, claiming to be ‘so happy for Seamus and Katie’ between sniffles. Mags didn’t think it was her posture or her smile or her hair or her walk or her conversation or any of the other things her mother claimed it was that drove him away. Mags didn’t think Seamus even cared about any of those things. He had explained to Grainne that it was Katie’s ‘healthy glow’ that did it for him. Mags had wanted to grab her mother by the hands and dance and twirl her around the room when she heard that. For, much as she hated that brush scraping the powder onto her skin, it removed the healthy glow that could have imprisoned her in Seamus’s farmhouse.
    But, despite her joy at not been chosen by the best boy in the village, it left Mags still a single woman at twenty and, much as her parents prayed for it, Mags’s Calling never came. Not of the sort they wanted, anyway.
    Agatha’s sniffing the air brought Mags’s mind back to the present, ‘I STILL CAN’T GET IT, MAGS, SO DON’T WORRY.’
    Mags rolled her eyes. ‘There is no smell, Aggie.’
    ‘HA?’ Agatha yelled squinting her eyes in concentration as though doing so would help her hear. ‘There is no smell. Nobody farted, Aggie. Now stop screaming.’ She raised her voice a little more.
    ‘IT’S ME BAD EAR, MAGS, WHA?’ Agatha shouted.
    That did it. Mags’s blood boiled. She was sick and tired of having to repeat herself, and, not only that, her voice was sore at having to shout at Aggie all day every day. If they weren’t careful Aggie would be deaf and Mags would be dumb from having to raise her voice. ‘THERE IS NO SMELL, AGGIE, OK? I. DID. NOT. FART.’
    Agatha jumped, the announcer on stage was silenced and a few chuckles were heard around the hall. Mags’s cheeks went pink again and she thought immediately of how angry her mother would be, just as she had been programmed to.
    ‘Eh … four