‘You’re lucky you have your own wages. All our money is going on this Station thing and I’m not even getting paid my egg money because Mammy needs it for provisions to feed all these people,’ Imelda moaned, shaking the feather bolster and straightening the bottom sheet.

‘Oh stop giving out, Imelda. I’m giving all my wages up next week. Mammy and Daddy are excited about the Station and they want to put on a good show. We don’t want to disgrace ourselves in front of the neighbours and let them think we’ve nothing,’ Brigid retorted.

‘That’s crooked!’

‘I don’t care!’

‘Don’t care was made to care.’ Imelda glowered at her older sister.

‘Oh shut up. I’m going to wash the eggs.’

‘You got that job cos you’re the favourite.’

‘Ah yeah, washing hen shite off eggs, I’m the favourite all right,’ scoffed Brigid, throwing her eyes up to the holy picture of a sad-eyed Jesus with a bleeding heart that hung on the wall, beside Imelda’s poster of Paul Newman, and feeling quite the martyr herself. ‘And I’ve to traipse over to the bog,’ she added for good measure.’

‘I’ve to traipse over to the well,’ countered Imelda, not to be outdone in martyrdom, flouncing out the door to do her chore.

*

It was a clear sunny morning, the salty sea breeze blowing in from the Atlantic and across the hills, rippling through the clumps of gay, yellow daffodils planted on either side of the freshly painted green gate. Normally Brigid would enjoy the walk through the fields to where her father and brothers were cutting turf. He wanted a supply in for the fire when they were having the Station. Today though, her heart was heavy. She wanted to be far away from Ardcloch, and the daily, repetitious grind that was never-ending. She wanted to be away from the past that intruded on her present, every day.

She hated her job over in Glencarraig, where she worked as a maid for the doctor and his wife. How Brigid longed to take the bus to Galway or Limerick, or – the dream of all young girls living in rural Ireland – to the bright lights of Dublin. The sophisticated capital city had big department stores, cinemas, cafés and buses. What bliss it would be to live in a house with indoor plumbing and electric lights, and to have heating that wasn’t dependent on a range or sputtering, smoky fire. Imagine being able to go to the pictures in proper cinemas instead of the galvanized tin-roofed shed in Ardcloch – that dump was no more a real cinema than the Dunnes’ hen house – where, if it were a wet Saturday afternoon, the sound of the rain hammering down on the red roof would drown out the actor’s voices, forcing the audience to lip-read.