Keelin watched her go and wanted to go after her and slap her. How dare she accuse her of being like Imelda! Sick to her stomach with anger and shock, Keelin slumped into a chair. What a night this had turned out to be. And now the whole family was in upheaval. All their secrets had been laid bare for the world to see. There was no hiding place for any of them anymore. She couldn’t wait to get back to the shelter of Canigou and her lovely home. She might never visit this benighted country again – and that would cause her no regret, she thought bitterly.

And then she remembered what Marie-Claire had said about owning her past and healing it, and Keelin’s heart sank. That was far easier said than done. Her daughter was right, much as she hated to admit it. It was utterly hypocritical of her to be giving courses about healing the past when she was unwilling to face her own.

‘Physician heal thyself,’ Keelin muttered irritably, knowing that until she dealt with her issues with her mother, there would be no peace for her.

*

‘Don’t look back,’ Maura had said. But what was left to look forward to? Brigid lay rigid under the duvet, her fingers curled into tight fists, her nails biting into her palms, inflicting pain she wanted. Deserved. She would have to prostrate herself before the altar of God and beg His humble pardon. Her past had come back to haunt her, when she least expected it, Brigid acknowledged dolefully. She’d lost everything! Her good name. Her dignity. And her authority, which she’d always rather enjoyed. There would be talk. In the convents. In the Mother House. Here, in the Four Winds, her haven, her little bit of heaven on earth.

Brigid had seen the shocked expressions on her fellow Sisters’ faces when Imelda had revealed the secret that Brigid had buried so deep. Something she thought, as the years passed by, would never come to light. She’d seen pity too, and not only from her congregation. Maura pitied her. Una pitied her. They all pitied her. Tears slid down Brigid’s cheeks. All of those women who had always looked up to her – she was their ‘Superior’ and, if she was truly honest, she’d sometimes felt superior – had witnessed her downfall.

Her heart contracted as a thousand blades of mortification stabbed mercilessly, unrelentingly, as she lay in her bed, in her room under the eaves, and listened to the roar of the sea crashing against the shore and the rain hammering against the window.

‘Pride comes before a fall,’ her grandmother had often said. Even the Proverbs counselled that ‘Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before stumbling’.