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out her name until a few of the peoplegathered about formed a circle round him and started clapping and whooping, encouraging him until the foolish boy fell down onto his knees in front of her and carried on. ‘Aileeeen! Aileen. I’m in love with an angel called Aileeeeen!’
    She said, ‘Get up, you eejit – you’re making a show of me,’ but he would not stop and continued pleading and singing to her until, for all his silliness, Aileen found that she was laughing so hard she was breathless, and everything inside her filled suddenly with light.

Chapter Seven
    The boat journey was as long and as terrible as promised.
    Jimmy didn’t care. He had found the love of his life.
    When he had seen Aileen standing by the side of the ship, her hair caught back from her face in a gust of wind, he thought he must be seeing things. It could not be the same girl from the island, but, impulsive as he was, he barely stopped to consider that fact before he had put himself by her side. When he discovered that she was not a vision but a real girl, he lost himself altogether. Jimmy knew he was making an eejit out of himself. Even as he was sneaking up and shouting, ‘You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen!’ like a foghorn and nearly sending her sideways into the water, he knew it was a stupid thing to do. Sticking to her side like a limpet, introducing himself to her father in the abrupt way he did, singing to her in front of the whole crowd on the boarding ramp – in his rational mind Jimmy knew that none of these things was the way to a girl’s heart, but in truth the young fisherman was already beyond all of that. From the moment he had set eyes on her again, Jimmy knew for certain that this red-haired angel belonged to him. She had been sent to him by the gods – the powerful force of the sea, the same thing that took the lives of so many good men, yet had allowed him to swim, had turned this creature from a mirageof fire on a distant beach into a real woman for him alone. No matter how she rebuffed him, no matter how idiotic she thought he was, no matter how her brothers threatened and fussed and his own father might laugh at him and call him ‘mad in the head’, Jimmy knew that they were meant to be together. Aileen Doherty belonged to him and he belonged to her – and that was all there was to it. All he had to do now was not move one inch from her side until she loved him back. Which she would. Soon.
    ‘Will you get away from me?’ she said. ‘You are getting on my nerves. Da, will you tell him . . . ?’
    It turned out that the Illaunmor crew were almost last to get on the boat and the third-class cabins were packed. Even if Jimmy had wanted to leave, there were precious few places he could have moved away to.
    Paddy Doherty laughed before looking out on the large cabin in front of them. ‘Holy God, the place is jammed. I swear it gets worse every year,’ he said, shaking his head and tutting as he looked out on the heaving mass of standing bodies.
    The crowd comprised all adults, men and women of similar build in dull-coloured heavy outdoor clothes – wearing them to save on luggage. There were none too old and none too young – tall and lean, small and stocky. All had strong working bodies, all seeking out a space to settle themselves into for the next twelve hours.
    ‘Like matches in a box.’ Sean, Jimmy’s father, seemed quite shocked at the number of people.
    Jimmy had slipped out of the currach last summer and swum underwater through a huge shoal of mackerel. This reminded him of that.
    ‘Wouldn’t you think the shipping company would cop themselves on and give us a bit of comfort?’ Sean said.
    ‘No need,’ Paddy assured him. ‘No matter how bad the sailing, it gets more packed every year – and only set to get worse. With the war on, sure there’s not an Englishman left in the country to pick up a spade, so they’ll be paying “the poor Irish” to do their dirty work till