But no knight in shining armour had come her way, so when, on her eighteenth birthday, Larry had asked her to marry him, Imelda agreed.

She liked her husband-to-be very much. He was kind and stalwart and he made her laugh. But she didn’t love him, not even when she walked up the aisle of the small chapel in her white, swing tea-gown-style dress and short veil, and he put the ring on her finger and made her his wife.

She would have a house of her own, which thrilled her. They were building it on a plot of land his mother had given them for a wedding present, and she was now, finally, her own mistress. It was, Imelda supposed, watching the roof being put on her new home, an escape of sorts – but a far cry from the life she’d planned.

CHAPTER TWENTY

December 1970

Imelda felt a wave of nausea wash over her. She was sitting in a hospital queue with her mother, waiting for Elizabeth to have a pulmonary function test. They were running late and she’d told her mother-in-law that she’d be back from the hospital by three-thirty, so she’d be able to feed Keelin and Cormac after school.

‘Excuse me, Mam, I have to go to the loo,’ she whispered to her mother.

‘Don’t be long in case I get called in,’ her mother said nervously. She hated hospitals and doctors.

‘Mmmm.’ Imelda nodded, afraid if she opened her mouth she’d puke. She hurried down the grim, green-tiled corridor at a lick, praying there’d be a cubicle free in the Ladies. Moments later she was doubled over, retching miserably, breaking out in a sweat, the smell of bleach and stale urine making her feel even sicker. When she was finished, she opened the cubicle door and stood at the hand basins staring at her reflection in the chipped, black-spotted mirror on the wall above them.

Her face was flushed, her brown eyes glazed and watery, and strands of her thick chestnut hair clung limply to her damp cheeks.

She looked like a woman in her fifties, not her thirties, Imelda thought glumly. She splashed her face with cold water, brushed her hair and reapplied her lipstick. This was her third day in a row to be sick. That and her missed period were enough to tell her that she was pregnant again, and not suffering from a tummy bug as she’d so fervently hoped.

Tears blurred Imelda’s eyes and she struggled to compose herself. She wanted to lie down and cry out in despair at the thought of pregnancy and birthing and minding a new baby and all the stress and extra work it entailed. She had three children: Keelin, her eldest, and only daughter, and her two boys, Cormac and Peter. Three was more than enough. She didn’t want any more. She could just about cope with her life as it was.