‘Hello, dear. It’s sorted. You’re going to live in the Four Winds until you have your baby, and for as long as you need afterwards. I’ll check your arrival time with the airport tomorrow and I’ll collect you,’ Brigid said crisply. ‘Don’t be worrying about anything else. Just get yourself home.’

‘Oh, Auntie Brigid, I’m so grateful. I can never thank you enough.’ Keelin burst into tears of relief.

‘Don’t get upset. All will be well,’ Brigid said reassuringly. ‘Now try to stay out of Perpetua’s way, and if she says anything to you be as humble as you can. She can be mercurial.’

‘Yes, Mère. I’m very sorry I’ve brought shame on you,’ Keelin answered shakily.

‘You haven’t brought shame on me.’ Brigid’s heart ached for her niece. If only she knew, she thought in despair, wondering what Keelin would think if she knew Brigid’s truth, and that she was living the greatest lie of all pretending to be pure and undefiled. ‘It could happen to any of us. Come home, dear, and we will get through it together. Stop crying now, it’s not good for the baby,’ her aunt instructed. ‘Go and rest and I’ll see you tomorrow. Good night, dear.’

‘Goodnight, Mère,’ Keelin gulped, hanging up the phone. The doors of the convent were firmly closed against her. Her mother had disowned her, but Brigid would stand beside her come what may, and knowing that gave Keelin the courage to face the future and whatever lay ahead.

CHAPTER THIRTY

She didn’t know who she was angrier with, Imelda or the Mother General! Or that bloody priest. How could they all turn their backs on a young pregnant girl, in this day and age? It was the eighties, not the fifties; gone were the days when young girls who ‘got into trouble’ were spirited away to a life of misery. Imelda was Keelin’s birth mother, and the Mother General her spiritual one, yet neither of them had shown one ounce of motherly compassion to her.

No one knew better than she did the utter trepidation and loneliness Keelin was feeling right now. How well Brigid remembered, even after all these years, the terror and dawning realisation that she was pregnant, when her period was a month late, and she was feeling sick when she woke up every morning, after her final encounter with Johnny Larkin. What would become of her final she’d thought in despair. She’d have to leave Ardcloch and take the boat to England, so as not to shame her family. Or else go to one of those grim places that girls whispered about when someone ‘got into trouble’. The Magdalene laundries, the ‘holy’ workhouses or the mother-and-baby homes struck fear in every young girl’s heart.