‘You’re telling me to control myself? How dare you, Brigid Dunne. How very dare you!’ Imelda marched up to her sister and turned to face the group. ‘Look at her – the Reverend Mother. You’d think butter wouldn’t melt in her holy mouth. Well she’s not as holy and reverend as you all think she is. Sure you’re not, Brigid? And you never had a vocation!’ She glowered at her sister. ‘Throwing yourself at Johnny Larkin. I saw the pair of you up against their barn. You weren’t thinking of the Virgin Mary then, were you, when you were hooring around with him and letting him go all the way with you? I saw you. And then you legged it from Ardcloch when this lot’ – she waved in the direction of the Mother General – ‘gave you an escape route. I’m right, aren’t I?’ she demanded.

Brigid inhaled, shocked, blanching under her sister’s vicious onslaught. ‘Imelda!’ she whispered as the stunned guests gasped, not knowing where to look.

‘Mother!’ exclaimed Keelin, horrified. ‘That’s enough! Stop it right this minute. You should leave.’ She went to take her mother’s arm, but Imelda shook it off. ‘You, miss! Don’t you tell me what to do. You disgraced the family too, after she’ – Imelda pointed a shaking finger at her sister – ‘persuaded you to enter the convent, against my wishes, and then you forgot your vows of chastity—’

‘Imelda!’ Marie-Claire’s stomach lurched and her heart began to race as she saw her normally placid father’s eyes darken with fury.

‘What’s wrong with you, Priest?’ Imelda sneered. ‘Did you know, Father Donnelly,’ she turned to Butlersbridge’s parish priest, ‘that my son-in-law here was once one of your lot, until he got his hands on my daughter and made her pregnant—’

‘Granny!’ Marie-Claire gasped, looking from Keelin to Armand in shock. Her dad had been a priest! Her parents had never told her that. ‘Is this true?’ Marie-Claire asked her mother, her voice little more than a whisper. The look of dismay and shock on her parent’s faces was enough to confirm Imelda’s revelation.

‘Now, now, em . . . Missus, eh . . . Imelda, have you been drinking? There’s no need for this,’ Father Donnelly blustered, his florid face like a lumpy tomato atop his roman collar.

Keelin, weeping now, turned to her husband, ‘I’m so sorry, Armand, that she would treat you like this. Marie-Claire, forgive me.’

‘Imelda, that’s enough!’ Brigid raised her voice.

‘Granny, you should be ashamed of yourself.’ Marie-Claire couldn’t hide her disgust at her grandmother’s spite.