Almost as soon as I offer to put my new neighbour Etain up for the night or until the electric power to her cottage is restored and the place aired and cleaned up, I realise that the spare room I have offered for her use is filled with what Caoimhe would consider ‘junk’. But to me all that stuff is my stock in trade, made up of broken servers which I could strip for spares, Ethernet leads, connectors, screens, printers, manuals and files. We did have some limited storage in the house but mostly that store is a tiny room upstairs next to my daughter’s bedroom, and only accessed through her room, next to her own little bathroom in the sloping eaves of the cottage.

Our pair of cottages was originally one single storey cottage built, as far as our former neighbour Katie knew, about 200 years ago as a single room 20 foot square, with walls made of mud, cow dung and straw topped by a straw roof, sitting in arable land of about four acres. By 1870, which was how far back the local history society had transcribed old rent books donated to the library, it was then stated the pair of cottages was now 80 feet wide, 20 foot deep and equally split into two dwellings down the middle, although the land had been split with three acres on Etain’s side and one acre on ours. The actual deeds of the property dated only from 1922, the originals presumably lost and needed to be submitted for registration to the new Irish Free State.

According to the deeds, by the 1920s the original walls had been lined with concrete render and the straw roof replaced by concrete tiles. Each cottage had incorporated a shared porch in the front and a butted up kitchen scullery and bathroom/privy across half the width of the back.

As newly-weds my wife and I wanted to move out of Cork to somewhere within an hour of Cork and Ella fell in love with this cottage even though it was an hour and twenty minutes away from my work by train. It was very reasonably priced so we mortgaged ourselves up to the hilt and were able to finance sufficient to built into the loft space. This extra room upstairs becomes our master bedroom with en-suite bath and second bedroom with en-suite power shower and storage space in the eaves at the end. Downstairs we knocked down the scullery and across the 40-foot width built in a new kitchen, a garden room and downstairs bathroom. The original sitting room had doors leading to the front door and porch, the kitchen and the original bedroom, which was turned into a spare room with a double bed and fitted wardrobes.

Etain’s cottage next door had replaced their scullery with a new 20 foot square kitchen but is still a single storey one-bedroom bungalow.

Our spare room is regularly used by my parents, every summer they would come over for two weeks from Florida, booking outside the normal school holidays to catch cheaper fares. My eldest sibling Monica and her two children came every other year, all she could afford since her divorce in 2015. My brother Don, his wife Lou and two young boys come here for between 5 and 10 days every summer.

But these visits were planned in advance and I was always able to clear out the accumulation into the storage behind Caoimhe’s room in plenty of time for those visits. I had blow-up mattresses for the children but quite often, if the weather was good, they were happy to camp out in a tent on the lawn in the back yard.

“Right," I say, as we enter our part of the building, “Caoimhe, if you order the Chinese food for us first, then show Etain around the place and put the kettle on for tea, while I clear out my rubbish from the spare room and put fresh linens on the bed.”

There, I’ve admitted that most of the stuff I keep in there is rubbish. The truth will seek us out, they do say.

I run up the stairs to fetch the folded cartons I keep for the purpose of storage, a roll of tape and a Sharpie, actually a locally-made magic marker. When I get downstairs, while I was looking out the packaging and Caoimhe ordered the take-out and made the tea, Etain had already tidied up the room on her own.

I am speechless, the bed itself, usually the first drop-off point for additions to the room, is clear and looks freshly made. Along the wall furthest away from the front window, the servers are stacked together, as are the half-dozen flat screens, the manuals and files together, discs in two stacks, and the leads neatly rolled and on the floor at the end of the stacks.

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I manage a stuttered, "How…?"

To which Etain replies with a smirk, "A woman’s work is never done … and I mean never done by halves, Richard. I’ve been doing housework all my life. Leave the boxes there, I’ll pack them up for you after tea."

"No," I insist, "you’re a guest here. So, Caoimhe and I will pack them up and take them upstairs."

She smiles, "Why don’t we all help clear that stuff away? We’ll get it finished quicker and I won’t feel uncomfortable being waited on when you are already being kind enough to allow me to stay."

"Excellent idea, Etain," chips in Caoimhe, "Food’s ordered and on its way, Dad."

"Great," I say, "I’m starving and, as we look out crockery and cutlery in the kitchen, you can tell me why there are only four teaspoons in Katie’s kitchen when the rest of the silverware is in sets of six?"

Etain laughs, "Ha! You looked!"

"Of course I did, that’s why I’m asking for the reason. You do realise that those spoons are Georgian Sterling silver?"

"Yes, I do. Samuel Neville of Dublin made them in 1813 for a wedding present for er, one of Kaetlynn’s ancestors."

"So why are there two missing spoons?" I ask.

"When Kaetlynn’s ancestor was married and lived in Clonmel two hundred years ago, it was a lively market town where she was friendly with a group of other housewives in the town and they used to have afternoon tea and a wee bit of gossip every day during the week on a round robin basis. They visited each house in turn as they all had nannies to look after and occupy their young children. Then our ancestor’s sister came to stay with her for a few weeks before departing back to where she used to live. The tea-imbibers happily welcomed the young spinster woman temporarily into their midst. Unfortunately the poor girl suffered from an affliction that caused her to collect small mementoes of her stay in the manifestation of stealing teaspoons, which were obviously handed out with each cup and saucer of tea. After a week or so of this, the servants in each household noticed they were missing silver teaspoons and the culprit was soon deduced but not accused directly. These were genteel women after all. Kaetlynn’s ancestor confirmed to her friends that her kitchen cutlery drawer had a number of extra spoons which tallied with those missing. As the sister’s stay was of short duration, the kind ladies decided not to accuse her of anything but to keep her engaged in conversation on her last day during afternoon tea, while the ladies sneaked off one by one to the kitchen to pick out their own spoons and take them back. It worked well, but when our ancestor checked her drawer, she found only four teaspoons."

"It sounds like your ancestor’s sister was a kleptomaniac." Caoimhe suggests.

"Yes, I assume she was. And there was, of course, the silver spoon that the sister kept on the last day," Etain smiled, "but one of the other wives must’ve taken the other missing spoon. So, for about 200 years that set of cutlery has only had four teaspoons."

"What a fascinating story!" I say.

"There’s more," Etain grins, "even more unbelievable."

"Go on," Caoimhe urges.

"My aunt Bebhinn inherited the condition of stealing spoons and she had also inherited one of the two missing spoons from the spinster ancestor and, when she moved into this cottage next to aunt Kaetlynn, my aunt found that her teaspoons kept disappearing. Bebhinn used the spoons to stir the honey from her many hives into her tea. Nobody locked their doors in those days, so when Bebhinn tended her bees, Kaetlynn would sneak in and steal her spoons back from her sister but always leaving one for Bebhinn to use when she drank tea on her own at home."

"That is so sweet," Caoimhe coos, "the love of sisters."

"It is," agrees Etain with a sweet smile playing on her lips. "Then, when Bebhinn decided to move out and leaving everything behind for Kaetlynn to deal with, rather than return the spoon to her own set, Kaetlynn left the fifth spoon in your drawer for you and your wife."

"Oh my god!" I exclaim.

I get up and rush into the kitchen.

There in the kitchen cutlery drawer was the silver spoon in a spare compartment where we keep odds like spare batteries, the silver spoon that Ella found and treasured as serendipity.

She used that teaspoon all the time but I never have. It is tarnished now, not used since the day Ella died in the maternity ward, but I had never thrown it away because it was something I treasured as belonging to her. I return to the sitting room bearing the spoon.

"Do you want it back?" I ask Etain.

"No, you keep it," Etain smiles sweetly, "Kaetlynn had second sight, it sort of runs in the family, and she must’ve seen the tragedy in your young lives. I think that’s why she wanted you to have this property and she cut the price so that you could afford it. The spoon was left to give your wife some comfort. She used it all the time, didn’t she?"

"Yeah," I croak, "she did."

We are quiet for what seems like hours but is maybe 30 seconds before a tiny, soft voice asks, "Daddy, can I have the spoon to use for my tea?"

"Of course, sweetheart, it is something of your mother’s to treasure. I should have thought of that myself."