No, we said, when we first heard the rumours about Alex Delaney and Sinéad Crowley.
No, it can’t be.
We refused to believe it was true because memories have always been long on the island; the past was a country we kept close to our hearts. We could remember Alex and Nessa, the way he would look at her. We remembered the boy’s grief when she died, his bloodless face as he stood at her grave. We knew he had suffered as much as we had done and we forgave him because of it. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, we said to each other. The boy is an innocent in all of this.
But the boy is now a man, and he has set his eyes upon the youngest sister. They have made plans, we hear, plans to leave Inisrún together. They will never come back.
And there will be no Crowley Girls left on this island then. Not a one.