Patrick grinned. ‘Oh, there are a lot of things happening in Upper Armley, my lad. It’s a busy place. Dances at the dance hall on Saturday nights, plays at the church hall, and twice a year the Feast comes.’

‘Whatever is that, Uncle Pat?’

Patrick chuckled. ‘Too hard to explain. However, I think it’ll be coming next week, and your aunt and I will certainly take you. We’ll all have a bit of fun, the likes of which you’ve never had.’

Eileen Kennedy was humming under her breath as she stood at the kitchen counter preparing dinner, glad she was feeling better and not so tired. She enjoyed cooking as well as baking, and, most especially, when she was preparing something for her husband.

She had adored Patrick since she was twelve and he was fourteen, and she had made up her mind to marry him at that time. As for Patrick, he had liked her a lot, enjoyed her company. But he hadn’t really fallen in love with her until he was fifteen, a year before he had joined the Royal Navy. She had not attempted to dissuade him from enlisting, fully understanding he would pursue his childhood dream no matter what.

Patience, she kept telling herself in those early days of their relationship. And being loyal and supportive had paid off. Three years after becoming a sailor, he had proposed to her and she had accepted. He had fulfilled his dreams of being a naval man, and she had realized her own by becoming his wife.

A little sigh escaped as she mashed the potatoes, thinking of his disappointment in not having children, and the miscarriages she’d had. But her idea of bringing Blackie over to live with them had been accepted by Patrick, and enthusiastically so. Now the boy was here with them, and Patrick hadn’t stopped smiling since his arrival.

As she opened the oven to put the bowl of mashed potatoes inside, she couldn’t help thinking what a lovely boy he was. ‘Boy’ was hardly the word to describe Blackie O’Neill. Tall and broad like Patrick, he looked older and acted older. But then perhaps that was because he’d had a lot of responsibility in his family, looking after them in the face of extreme poverty and hunger, and nursing his sister, Bronagh, until her untimely death.

Faith, and wasn’t it a pity Bronagh had not managed to find her strength again, to go on living after catching a bout of scarlet fever. Only seventeen when she died, more’s the pity, Eileen thought, sadness filling her face. Life is hard, unsupportable sometimes, but we have to live what we are given.

And God doesn’t give us a burden we’re too weak to carry. At least that’s what my mother believes. Oh, and I suppose so do I, Eileen admitted to herself.