‘Huh!’ Brigid sniffed, turning onto her tummy and burying her face in the soft downy bolster. Where did her sister think she was going to end up? Imelda had such notions. Her parents had spent a small fortune on today’s gathering. Things would be tight for a while now and they’d need more of her small wage. There was always something that stopped her from saving enough money to leave Ardcloch.

And then a thought – like a Divine revelation – struck her, lying in the bed under the eyes of her martyred Saviour. There was an escape route! Father O’Connor had mentioned that some Missionary nuns were coming to Ardcloch. French nuns! Soeurs du Secours Miséricordieux – the Sisters of Merciful Help, he had translated. They were seeking nuns to join their Order.

If she joined the Missionary nuns, she’d get to travel far from Ardcloch and escape a life filled with little opportunity. Brigid had recently overheard her parents discussing Granny Dunne’s failing health. ‘Brigid can go and live with her,’ Elizabeth had said firmly. ‘We don’t have enough room for her to move in with us, and if Brigid’s with her, we won’t have to be worrying about her being on her own at night.’

Brigid had nearly had a heart attack. While she was very fond of her grandmother, her small cottage was dark and pokey. The toilet was down a winding path and not outside in the yard, like the one they had at home. Granny still boiled her kettle on the hook by the turf fire and baked her bread in the cooking pan hanging on the other hook. She was afraid of the ‘electric’, as she called it, and was adamant she wasn’t going to have it connected up. Brigid would be stuck in the Dark Ages, reading by candlelight, if she was to end up living with her grandmother.

If she left to work in Dublin or Galway, Brigid knew she would be turning her back on her parents. She wouldn’t be able to do that to them. She would be riddled with guilt. Unless she’d a vocation. She knew she didn’t have one right this minute, but she could soon develop one, she was certain of it.

Sister Brigid. It rolled off the tongue. And she would be the best nun the Order ever had, so that perhaps, when she died, all her sins would be forgiven.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

‘I want to become a nun,’ Brigid announced firmly as they walked home from early Mass two weeks later. It was a biting cold morning with the frost crackling underfoot, her breath a wispy film in front of her as velvet darkness began to give way to a soft light in the eastern sky and Venus sparkled over the dark hills.