‘Oh no, Mam!’ Brigid exclaimed, horrified, feeling utterly selfish. Her mother had been saving her egg money for a new metal butter churn to replace the old wooden one she’d had for years.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll sell some stock,’ her father replied easily, and Brigid had burst into a fresh bout of tears, overwhelmed by her parents’ self-sacrifice.

‘Stop your crying there now, like a good girl, and give me an extra sausage for my breakfast – and give yourself one because you won’t be getting rashers and sausages in the convent,’ her father joked when they reached the farmhouse, before he and Elizabeth had gone to change out of their Sunday best to go and feed the animals.

Her brothers were already home, chopping wood for the range. Imelda, as usual, was dawdling with her friends so she wouldn’t have to help set the table. Typical. Brigid scowled, lacing slices of bacon in one pan and a pile of sausages in the other one for the weekly fry. While they were sizzling and spitting, she got knives and forks from the dresser drawer and set the table. It might be one of her last Sunday breakfasts with the family.

She was going to be a nun and dedicate herself to God, she thought, a little bemused by the suddenness of her decision, as the smell of the fry filled the warm kitchen. She was going to work in a country where people lived in mud huts with thatched roofs, and wild animals roamed the edges of the villages, and the rainy season turned scorched land into a lush green oasis, where dates and oranges and figs grew from the trees, ripe and sweet and plentiful.

How far more exotic a life would that be than cleaning the Murrays’ house and going to live with Granny?

I’ll be bringing the word of God to pagans. Could there be a better thing to do in life? Brigid thought, filled with a newly discovered missionary zeal. The early morning sun burst up from behind Hensley’s Hill, and Brigid knew it was a sign that she was on the right path, and freedom beckoned.

*

‘You are going to be a nun!’ Imelda’s pinched little face grew even tighter when she heard Brigid’s news. They were doing the washing up after the breakfast, before peeling the spuds for the Sunday dinner.

‘Yes, I am,’ Brigid said, wiping the grease out of the big cast-iron pan before putting it in the soapy warm water she’d boiled up on the range.

‘Don’t you have to be pure, to be a nun? You’ve kissed boys, and probably more,’ her sister accused slyly.

‘I will make my full confession, Imelda,’ Brigid said tightly. Sometimes she hated her sister. ‘I didn’t know I was going to be a nun when . . . when . . . Well, I thought I might get married. I didn’t have the calling then.’