She’d had to give up on the idea of emigrating to Boston. That had been a pipe dream, she acknowledged disconsolately, but her plan of getting a job in the Civil Service in Dublin and moving up to the capital had been more realistic and, she’d hoped, achievable.

To live in a flat or a bedsit, free from all parental control, able to do as she wished – that had been her goal. She’d so looked forward to the exciting social life that would have been hers to enjoy. Dances in the Ierne Ballroom. Nights out at the big-screen cinemas like the Savoy and the Carleton, so different from watching Laurel and Hardy or the Three Stooges in black and white at the parish hall, or the rackety crackling of the film reels in the ‘cinema’ in Ardcloch. She’d daydreamed of having afternoon tea in the Gresham or even the Shelbourne. Of getting her hair cut and dried in swanky hair salons. Shopping in the big department stores on Henry Street. Grafton Street, she’d decided, might have been too posh until she developed a more sophisticated persona. And she would have, Imelda knew. She would have been the most sophisticated girl in Dublin and she would have swanned back to Ardcloch like Nan Doyle used to, strutting around in her Capri pants and tight top, holding a long cigarette holder, for all the world like Lauren Bacall or Jane Russell, regaling everyone with tales of her glitzy and glamorous life in the capital. Nan was a bank clerk, a step up from a clerical officer in the civil service, but Imelda would have worked anywhere if it meant she could live a life of liberty in Dublin.

Instead, after Brigid’s triumphant departure to enter the convent, Imelda had moved into Granny Dunne’s dark cottage, trying to study for her Inter Cert by candlelight. A week after Imelda had finished her exams, Elizabeth had had discussions with a friend of hers who owned a small drapery and hardware shop in the next parish. ‘It would be a grand job for you, and you’d still be able to help me out here,’ Elizabeth informed her youngest daughter, who could think of nothing worse than standing behind a shop counter day in day out, being bossed around by Franny Moran, who wore a hat and ‘best pinafore’ in the shop, and loved the sound of her own voice. Imelda was put on a month’s trial, handed a duster and Brasso and a white coat to cover her clothes, and told it was her responsibility to have the countertop, shelves and brasses gleaming!