‘Thank Katie and Doctor McCormack, and thank God they were here. Because now that it’s all over I have to tell you, like Prissy in Gone with the Wind once famously confessed to Scarlett O’Hara . . . “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ babies”,’ Marie-Hélène admitted drolly.

‘You should get a best actress award, then,’ Keelin laughed, and then her baby opened her eyes and stared up at her, and Keelin knew as she stared into those big blue orbs fringed by long black silky lashes that she was the luckiest, most blessed woman in the universe.

‘Awww, Keelin.’ A voice at the door made them all turn. It was Brigid, newly arrived from Limerick, and she hurried over to kiss her niece.

‘Do you want to hold her, Mère?’ Keelin gazed up at her aunt who had been such a stalwart support to her and Armand.

‘Oh yes, more than you’ll ever know,’ Brigid exclaimed, taking the tiny bundle into her arms and tenderly kissing her grand-niece’s downy head. ‘So here you are!’ she murmured. ‘I couldn’t be happier.’

*

‘Well now, isn’t she the most beautiful baby you ever saw,’ Larry said proudly, cradling his first grandchild. ‘Was it hard, Keelin? I got a shock when Brigid rang me to say you were in labour.’

‘I was fairly yelping all right,’ Keelin grimaced. ‘How do women do that twelve and more times? They’re hardy women, our mothers’ generation.’

‘They are,’ her father agreed.

‘And speaking of hardy women, did Mam make any comment when she heard I’d had the baby?’ Keelin asked.

‘She’s in Dublin. Up with Teresa. She doesn’t know yet. I told the lads to tell her if she phones. They send their love and are looking forward to seeing their niece,’ Larry explained gently.

‘She probably wouldn’t have come anyway.’ Keelin’s resigned tone told him his daughter knew her mother as well as he did.

‘She’ll come around eventually,’ he said with fake optimism. ‘Don’t give up.’

*

‘So it all went well, then and it was a girl,’ Imelda said unenthusiastically when Larry got home that evening.

‘Yes, a little beauty. She’s a couple of weeks premature but she’s a feisty little thing, like her mother,’ Larry said proudly. ‘Wait until you see her,’ he added tentatively. ‘You’ll come to the christening, won’t you?’

‘No, Larry, I won’t. And please don’t ask me again,’ Imelda said in a tone of voice that left him in no doubt that his wife meant every word she said.

*

‘Is she as beautiful as her mother?’ Armand asked Keelin, his voice such a welcome sound to hear down the phone from his grandparents’ home in France.

‘The most beautiful baby in the world, Armand,’ Keelin said happily.

‘I wish I’d been with you, chérie,’ he said regretfully. My flight is booked for next Saturday.