‘Come on, Poppet. Stop this silliness. The bad man scared you, I know. Running up on you like that! He frightened you didn’t he, my pet? Sit, Poppet, sit!’

Poppet was not in the mood to sit. In fact, Poppet looked like she was about to remove a sizeable portion of the jogger’s left leg! The old lady was offering little comfort.

‘It’s alright; she’s more frightened of you than you are of her.’

The ghostly pleading face that stared at Cormac made a lie of that observation.

‘Please, mate, get it off me! Just get it off me! Please!’

Cormac turned to the four-foot handler, who he estimated to be seventy-five at the youngest and maybe ten years older. The gentle old lady was now pleasantly smiling at him while idly swinging a large chain lead.

‘Excuse me, but could you not put the dog on the lead? I think it is going to bite him. Can’t you see that he is terrified?’

The smile was gone.

‘Where are you from, son? England, is it?’

The tone was pleasant, friendly even.

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Oh, I just couldn’t place your accent.’

Poppet’s continued grunting and growling suggested she wasn’t too bothered about anything else on the planet apart from how best to dismember the jogger.

‘I live in England, but I’m from Killane.’

‘That’s in the north, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, just outside Belfast.’

And then the rest was a blur. He was sure the chain came first. It caught him on the right ear. Poppet came next and attached herself to Harry’s jacket. The jogger became a sprinter. Cormac kicked the dog. The pensioner kicked Cormac. Cormac became a jogger. The pensioner developed Tourette’s syndrome. As he was leaving, he heard at least ten ‘fucks’, five ‘bastards,’ three ‘northerners,’ two ‘wankers’, and one very loud ‘CUNT!’

At a safe distance, he looked back to see Poppet sitting obediently and receiving her treat from her devoted old master. His ear throbbed. His arm ached. He was happy that his foot hurt!

As he looked up to recover his bearings, he found himself standing directly in front of a plaque dedicated to the women of the ‘Magdalene’ laundries. He forgot the pain in his ear, his arm, and his foot. He forgot Bernadette. He mourned for Maggie. For her stolen innocence. For the theft of her childhood. For her lost child. Oh Christ! What kind of pain was that to bear? Poor Maggie, she had suffered intolerable pain at the hands of her own family. Her brother’s evil, compounded by her mother’s misplaced desire to make it right. He felt guilty for his thoughts of his mother in this the week of her death. And what of Maggie’s lost child, now living somewhere in America? A niece or nephew he would never know. But more - an innocent, condemned before its birth to never know the love of a devoted mother. To never know where he or she came from.