‘Brigid! Delighted to meet you,’ Brigid said, thinking how glad she was to have someone who spoke English, and a fellow countrywoman at that, sitting beside her for the journey home. ‘So what happened that made you want to leave? Or can you talk about it?’ Brigid enquired delicately.

‘I can talk about it all right. It helps me, actually.’ Martha’s bright blue eyes darkened with anger. ‘We were in a small convent in Suez, about ten of us, and late one night there was a banging on the gates of the compound. I was the one with the best Arabic, so I went out and asked what they wanted. It was the military. They wanted to come in and interrogate us. I told them it was a house of women and they could not enter, hoping that would put them off, but no, they broke down the gates and herded us all at gunpoint into the refectory.’

‘How frightening,’ Brigid exclaimed. ‘But you survived, thank God.’

Sister Martha looked utterly sad. ‘I was told to hand over our passports. There were ten of us. Two Irish nuns, five French, and three Egyptian novices. I knew what was going on and I refused. One of the soldiers pointed a gun at the Reverend Mother and said if I did not do as I was told, they would shoot her.’

‘God above! Were you terrified?’ Brigid gazed at her in horror.

‘Oh, I was. I most certainly was terrified,’ Sister Martha said grimly. ‘They were so aggressive and full of hate. But then they’d been invaded by the Israelis, the British and French. Nasser was a very good president, I had a lot of respect for him,’ she sighed. ‘But I knew once those soldiers got our passports they would become death warrants.

‘They took our French Sisters away. I heard later that they were raped and murdered. The Egyptian novices were told to leave. Our Irish passports saved my fellow nun and me. We managed to flee the country with the help of some kind locals. When we eventually got home to the Mother House in Ireland, the Church reprimanded us for deserting our posts. Imagine! That was Rome’s response. Nothing about our trauma or our grief, knowing our fellow nuns had been raped and murdered.’ Sister Martha shook her head. ‘That finished me with the Vatican. If we had been priests, there would have been no rebuke. Priests would have been welcomed home with open arms. We were different. We were only women. I was sickened, and to this day, I have no time for the Vatican and its unchristian hypocrisy.’