The press in the kitchen has a door that doesn’t close properly. It hasn’t closed properly for at least six years. I push it to, and it swings back an inch, and I leave it at that.

Inside: four mugs that don’t match, two plates I bought in Dingle years ago and never really liked, a jug with a chip in the lip that I use for nothing but that I can’t seem to part with. A sugar bowl without a lid. Three teaspoons that all came from different sets. Two glasses kept for when Bríd comes, though she never asks for a glass, she always has tea. At the back, pushed to one side, the cracked teacup with the blue rim.

Donal always reached for that one. I don’t know if he had a reason. You don’t always have a reason. It was just the cup he’d lift down, and I’d watch him carry it to the range for his tea, and that was the shape of the morning when he was here. He’s been in Cork over two years now, and I haven’t moved the cup. I’ve thought about it. I pick it up sometimes and look at the crack – it runs from the rim down into the body of it, thin as a hair, old – and I put it back on the shelf.

I suppose I keep it because getting rid of it would be a decision, and keeping it costs me nothing.

But that’s not quite honest. The honest answer is that it’s his cup and this is still his kitchen, in some sense. Not in any legal or practical sense. He moved, I stayed, the B&B is closed, the cottage is mine. But he made tea in this kitchen for years before I did. He’d stand at the range in the mornings when we had guests to see to, quiet, not talking, and he’d drink his tea out of that blue-rimmed cup and look out the back window at the apple tree. I’d be rushing around making up trays and he’d stand there, perfectly still, for about four minutes. It used to drive me a small bit mad. I miss it terribly.

The press also has: a tin of biscuits gone soft, a bottle of something a guest left years ago – port or madeira, I’ve never been sure – and the letters from Kenmare that were sitting on the windowsill until I moved them in here last week where I thought I’d be more likely to deal with them. I haven’t dealt with them.

There’s a version of myself that clears out the press properly. New cups, matching, from the shop in Castlegregory. Everything that doesn’t serve a purpose goes in the bin or the charity bag. The jug with the chipped lip. The glasses Bríd never uses. The cracked cup.

I think about that version of myself and I find her a bit cold.

The morning light comes through the kitchen window at this time of year and hits the back wall of the press when the door is sitting open its inch. The blue rim on Donal’s cup catches it. I don’t make a thing of it. I just see it, and I put the kettle on.