Cover

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to Mná na hÉireann. The Women of Ireland, and in particular to the many dedicated activists who challenged a patriarchal society, where Church and State conspired to treat Irish women as second-class citizens.

We owe a debt to an illustrious list of women who challenged the status quo – and changed Irish society in the process. Too numerous to mention, they include Anna Haslam, Constance Markievicz, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, Hilda Tweedy, Nell McCafferty, Mairin Johnston, Margaret Gaj, June Levine, Mairin de Burca, Mary Maher, Moira Woods, Mary Anderson, Nuala Fennell and May McGee.

To Catherine Corless, for her unremitting efforts to bring justice for the Tuam Babies.

And to many courageous women today, inspired by the women above, who are still fighting the Church and State for justice, ethical behaviour, and equality for all Irish women. We owe you all a huge debt of gratitude.

Epigraph

If you want to keep a secret,

you must also hide it from yourself.

GEORGE ORWELL

PROLOGUE

CHRISTMAS EVE

1953

She pulls her shabby black woollen coat tighter around her and wraps her scarf snugly against her cheeks. It is bitterly cold, her breath forming an opaque mist in the frosty moonlight. The stony path that leads from her grandmother’s cottage down to the farmhouse is slippery with ice, and she skitters and slides, grabbing a furze bush with her woollen-mitted hands to save herself from a fall. She pauses to catch her breath.

Venus, a radiant golden jewel, shines as brightly as the yellow slice of new moon against a black velvet sky speckled with glittering stars. Candlelit windows down in the valley and on the hillsides spill pools of light in the darkness. She’d lit the fat, red candle in her grandmother’s parlour window before she left, for the traditional welcome to the Christ child on Christmas Eve.

Normally she would feel delight and anticipation on this blessed night, though she is no longer a child and doesn’t believe in Father Christmas, unlike her two excited youngest siblings at home, who have already hung their stockings at the end of their beds.