Vanity had been ground down to dust in the early years of her vocation. She only looked in a mirror to make sure her wimple was straight, and her only concession to her facial appearance was to rub in Nivea Creme moisturizer in the morning and to make sure her eyebrows didn’t grow wild, or that the odd facial hair around her mouth and chin was plucked.

The woman who was looking back at her now in the full-length mirror was feminine, stylish and unknown to her. How dainty and neat her wrists were, and how long her fingers. How gracefully her calves tapered into neatly turned ankles, and her petite bosom was still firm, the dress material outlining her womanly shape in a way her habit never had.

Life as a nun had taken so much from her. It had all been about the denial of self. Innate human inclinations, needs and desires were suppressed, unless you were a rebel like Marie-Hélène. Brigid had always admired the younger nun’s courage in being herself. It was different now, of course. Convents had been transformed since her day, and individuality and self-expression were now encouraged.

Here she was, at eighty years of age, reclaiming her femininity. A moment of liberation. The liberation of Brigid Dunne, she acknowledged as she stood silently rediscovering herself for a few moments before she wiped away her tears, straightened her shoulders and emerged to await the verdict of her ‘girls’.

Their gasps of admiration brought a faint pink blush to her cheeks. ‘Part of me wants to get straight back into my habit,’ she confessed in embarrassment.

‘No!’ said Keelin firmly. ‘You will not hide yourself. Never again.’

‘You shall go to the ball, Cinderella, and this is the dress you’ll wear. Buy it,’ Marie-Hélène commanded.

‘You can’t order your Reverend Mother around like that,’ Brigid retorted.

‘My retired RM,’ the younger nun had winked, and Brigid and the others laughed.

They had laughed a lot at the candlelit dinner that evening, as if by unspoken, mutual consent, the events of the previous evening had been put aside. Embracing a hedonistic lifestyle with gusto now that she was eighty, she’d allowed herself a small sherry beforehand. ‘It’s never too late to go to the dogs,’ she joked to the others.

Brigid slipped out of the first beautiful dress she’d ever possessed and hung it neatly in the wardrobe. There were very few people she could be as relaxed with as she was with Keelin, Marie-Claire, Marie-Hélène, Una and Maura, she reflected. Perhaps it was because they’d all stood shoulder to shoulder when the Order had sent her niece home in disgrace from Africa, and Imelda had turned her back on her.