‘Let me stay on my own in the cottage and Granny can have the room to herself,’ she pleaded.

‘Indeed, I won’t let you stay there on your own – and after me buying a lovely new bed for you. We’d only be wasting money trying to keep two houses going,’ her mother retorted irately.

‘But why do I have to share and mind her and do everything for her—’

‘How very selfish of you, Imelda. I hope when you’re that age you’ll have children prepared to look after you, miss!’ her mother snapped. ‘When we were young, three of us shared a double bed and your Auntie Peg had a settle bed by the fire – and here’s you turning up your nose at a lovely bed of your own.’

Imelda had had to listen to the old refrain ‘Have you any idea how lucky you are?’ and bury deep her bitter resentments because she knew she’d get nowhere arguing with her mother.

In the middle of September, when the nights became chilly and the trees were on the turn, Imelda and her grandmother moved back to the farmhouse. The welcome luxury of having electricity, rooms blazing into light at the touch of a switch, could not comfort her.

Granny snored like a hippopotamus, and farted great rasping gusts of wind, especially if she ate onions, which she loved. She wouldn’t allow Imelda to read with the ‘electric’ on. What was the point in having this magical bright light if you couldn’t use it? Imelda wept with indignation, to no avail.

So she’d had to read her precious Mills & Boon romance novels under the blankets by torchlight because Granny blew the candle out when it suited her. Worst of all though was that Granny Dunne insisted on Imelda accompanying her saying the Rosary, though the family Rosary had already been recited in the parlour at seven p.m. every evening. ‘Two Rosaries a night! I’m saying more prayers than Brigid!’ Imelda raged to Teresa one evening, when they met at the crossroads by the pub on their way home from work and stopped to have a chat and a smoke.

‘That’s cat altogether,’ Teresa sympathized. ‘You’d better come to the hop in Ballydoran at the weekend and see if you can shift a fella. It’s a good dance for meeting farmers.’

‘I don’t want a farmer, I want someone to take me out of this kip,’ Imelda moaned. ‘I want to live in Dublin.’

‘Don’t we all,’ Teresa said gloomily, dragging the smoke deep into her lungs. ‘Did you see the new Mrs Larkin is driving around in a Beetle. Needless to say, it was her da that bought it, not Johnny. He did well for himself, marrying her,’ Teresa added conversationally. Teresa always referred to Johnny Larkin’s wife as the ‘new’ Mrs Larkin to differentiate between her and her mother-in-law.