If she was going to flee the convent, this would probably be her last chance, Brigid mused. Joan, one of the girls from Cork, had left a week ago. Having played the game of subservient novice to the hilt until she completed her nursing training, Joan had pulled off a U-turn of epic proportions. The other novices could only admire her spirit and ingenuity.

Brigid wondered about following suit, but her circumstances were very different to Joan’s. She’d insisted that she wanted to be a nun, and her wish had been fulfilled. Her parents had spent a lot of money on her dowry. She couldn’t throw it back in their faces. How ungracious and ungrateful would that be – to say nothing of the scandal her behaviour would cause, if word ever got out that she’d done a runner. She simply couldn’t do it to them. Nevertheless, she envied the Cork girl, who had become a good friend. She would miss Joan terribly.

A knot of people at the lounge door caught her attention and Brigid jumped up from her seat with delight, eager to get to her family, who were filing into the departure lounge to say goodbye and wave her off. It would be the first time they’d seen her wearing her habit, she thought proudly. There had been the occasional letters between them, but the letters were read by Mother Agnes, as were the ones Brigid wrote back, so they were pretty dull and samey. Her time apart from her loved ones had made her appreciate them more, and had brought home to Brigid that life in Ardcloch had had its good times as well as bad, and she was very lucky with her family compared to her friend Joan, who had been reared by a crabby aunt who had no love for her. In Brigid’s case, absence had made the heart grow so much fonder, and she’d really missed her parents and younger brothers, and, strange to say, Imelda.