Imelda was in despair. She was a slave to Franny, and a slave to her mother and grandmother, and there seemed to be no escape from the drudgery of her life. She scoured the Situations Vacant columns in the papers and begged her father to let her go to interviews in the big towns further afield.

‘Will you just wait for another while, pet? Your mother and I can’t lose two daughters in one year, not with John heading off to ag college, and me with a contract from the creamery. Maybe next year. Sure, you have your whole life ahead of you.’

When he put it like that, what could she say?

It was so unfair though. Brigid had not been made to feel guilty for leaving home, why should she? Imelda fumed resentfully to Teresa McHugh, her best friend.

‘She got her chance to go, we’ll get ours,’ Teresa, who was a laid-back type, assured Imelda. ‘At least we’re getting a few bob, working. It could be worse.’

Later that autumn, Imelda remembered those words, ‘It could be worse’, and truly despaired. Elizabeth and Tom decided that Granny was too old to be living on her own, day or night, having suffered a couple of falls over the summer. They felt the best option was for her to come and live with them. Now that Brigid was gone, there was room for her.

The brass double bed that Brigid and Imelda had shared was sold, and two new divans installed. ‘You’ll have a bed all for yourself. No more sharing,’ Elizabeth cheerfully pointed out the silver lining.

Imelda was beyond horrified. It hadn’t been all bad, living with her granny. When the old lady went to bed, early, as she always did, Teresa would sneak in for a cigarette and a sip of the altar wine she robbed out of the parochial house where she worked as a maid.

‘This is the only thing keeping me going, Teresa,’ Imelda sighed the night before moving back home, exhaling a thin stream of smoke in her best Bacall impression before taking a sip of the wine, reassured by the thunderous snores coming from her grandmother’s bedroom. She felt quite the sophisticate, drinking alcohol in the glow of the Tilly lamp, with the flames from the fire casting amber and gold flickering light. There’d be no way she’d be able to drink alcohol in front of her teetotal mother.

Imelda had hung gay coloured scarves over all the depressing holy pictures in the bedroom and brought her Paul Newman poster to hang on the back of the door. It had been bliss to have the whole double bed all to herself. Now she was going to lose the few perks she’d gained since Brigid’s departure, and her life was going to be even worse than it had been.