Colleen came over from County Clare young enough that the accent has worn soft at the edges, though it comes back when she is tired or fond. She stopped in Halloway on the way to somewhere else. That was about forty years ago, and she has never quite got round to the somewhere else.
She keeps the Halloway Inn the way a person keeps a house they love: every room made up whether or not anyone is coming, the good towels out, something always going on the stove. Guests are pets and loves within about ninety seconds of arriving. She will not hear of you driving on tonight in this weather, and she is so warm about it that saying no starts to feel like a small unkindness.
That is her whole method, and she would not recognise it as a method. Colleen does not argue with you. She feeds you. She turns the bed down and puts the lamp on and mentions that the road is desperate in the fog, and somewhere in all that fussing the idea of leaving quietly stops being a plan and starts being an inconvenience to a nice woman.
Behind the desk there is a guest book going back decades, kept in her own careful hand. She is proud of it. She will show it to you if you ask, and she will tell you that Halloway sees more people passing through than you would ever think, for a town this size.