Cal ambles across and squats beside Lena. The mama dog doesn’t object, although she keeps one wary eye on him. The cardboard box is lined with thick layers of soft towels and newspaper. The pups are clambering over each other, making sounds like a flock of seabirds. Even in these few days, they’ve grown.

“There’s your fella,” Lena says. Cal has already spotted the ragged black flag. She reaches into the box, scoops out the pup and passes it to him.

“Hey, little guy,” Cal says, holding up the pup, which squirms and paddles its paws furiously. He can feel the change in it, both its weight and its muscle. “He’s gotten strong.”

“He has. He’s still the smallest, but it’s not getting in his way. That big black-and-tan bruiser there barges right over the rest, but your fella’s having none of it: gives as good as he gets.”

“Attaboy,” Cal says gently to the pup. It can hold up its head without wobbling now. One of its eyes is beginning to open, showing a droplet of hazy gray-blue.

“Will you have a cup of tea?” Lena asks. “You look like you could be there a while.”

“Sure,” Cal says. “Thanks.” She gets up and goes to the counter.

The pup has started to struggle. Cal settles himself on the floor and brings it in to his chest. It relaxes against his warmth and his heartbeat, turning soft and heavy, nuzzling a little. He runs one of its ears between his fingers. At the counter, Lena moves about, filling the electric kettle and taking mugs out of a cabinet. The room smells of toast, ironing and wet dog.

Cal figures Noreen is bound to have every kind of cardboard box in the land. He could get one the right size and line it with old shirts, so his smell would be a comfort to the pup. He could put it right beside his mattress, where he could keep one hand on the pup during the night, just till it settles in and gets used to doing without its mama. The thought hits him powerfully. Even in imagination, it changes his sense of his house.

“I was expecting I’d be mobbed with children looking to pet them,” Lena says, over the building hiss of the kettle. “I remember doing that when we were little, the whole lot of us running down to anyone that had puppies or kittens. But there’s only been a few.”

“The rest of them too deep in their screens?”

Lena shakes her head. “There’s no rest of them. Like we were talking about before. It’s not just this generation that headed for the towns. Ever since they started being allowed to do good jobs, the girls go. The lads stay if there’s land being left to them, but most people round here don’t leave land to girls. So they head off.”

“You can’t blame them for that,” Cal says, thinking of Caroline. The pup is starting to teethe. He shoves at Cal’s finger with both tiny forepaws, finally manages to get a corner of it into his mouth, and does his best to gum it to death.

“I don’t. I’d’ve done the same if I hadn’t fallen in love with Sean. But it means the lads have no one to marry. And now we’ve no children coming to see these, and a load of aul’ bachelors up on the farms.”

“That’s tough on the area,” Cal says.

The kettle bubbles and clicks off, and Lena pours the tea. “More ways than one,” she says. “Men with no children get to feeling unsafe, when they get older. The world’s changing and they’ve no young people to show them it’s grand, so they feel like they’re being attacked. Like they need to be ready for a fight the whole time.”

“Having kids can do the same thing,” Cal says. “Make you feel like you need to fight things.”

Lena glances over at him, as she drops tea bags into the trash can, but she doesn’t ask. “That’s different. If you’ve kids, you’re always looking out into the world to see if anything needs fighting, because that’s where they’re headed; you’re not barricading yourself indoors and listening for the Indians to attack. It’s not good for a place, having too many aul’ bachelors out on their land with no one to talk to, feeling like they need to defend their territory, even though they’re not sure from what. D’you take milk?”

“Nope. Just the way it comes.”

She takes milk from the fridge for herself. Cal likes the way she moves around the kitchen, efficient but not rushed, at ease with the place. He considers what it would be like to live your life in a place where your personal decisions, whether to get married or to have kids or to move away, alter the entire townland. Outside the windows, the rain is still coming down thick as ever.

“So what’ll happen when all the bachelors die off?” he asks. “Who’ll take over the farms?”

“Nephews or cousins, some of them. God knows about the rest.”

She brings the mugs of tea over to Cal on the floor and sits down, with her back against the wall and her knees up. One of the pups is scrabbling at the edge of the box. She scoops it into her lap. “I like them this age,” she says. “I can come and have a cuddle whenever I fancy one, and then put them back when I’ve had enough. Another week or two and they won’t stay put for it; they’ll be getting under my feet instead.”

“I like ’em this way,” Cal says, “but I like ’em a little bit bigger, too. When they get to playing with you.”

“They’re always needing something then. Even if it’s just an eye out so you don’t step on them.” She holds her tea out to the side, away from her pup, which is trying to clamber up her knees. “Once they’re out of the basket, I can’t wait for them to get big enough to have a bit of sense. That’s why I got a half-grown dog and not a pup. And now look at me.”

“You find homes for the rest?”

“Two. Noreen’ll take the others, if no one else does. She says she won’t, but she will.”

“Your sister’s a good woman,” Cal says.

“She is. She drives me mental sometimes, but the world wouldn’t get far without the likes of her.” She smiles. “I do make fun of her sometimes because her youngest, Cliona, she’s exactly the same as her mam, but the truth is I’m glad of it. Without someone to take over Ardnakelty when Noreen gets old, the place’d fall apart.”

“Cliona the one that’s around ten or eleven?” Cal asks. “Red hair?”

“That’s the one.”

“She was helping out one time I went into the store. She told me I was buying the wrong dish soap, it’d dry out my hands and wouldn’t get my dishes shiny, and she went up that ladder to fetch me the one she recommends. Then she asked me why I moved here and why I’m not married.”

Lena laughs. “There you go. We’re in safe hands.”