I rarely sat down in daylight. I did all the light work outside, leaving Bridie at the range to burn the dinner. I gardened and cleaned out the hen house, measured out buckets of meal for the calves, carried water. By the time I was nearly eight months pregnant, Granda Ban had a stroke and had to be put into the old people’s home, Lisnagh House, so Auntie Eileen and Bernie started coming down every week. John had bought her old navy Hillman Hunter now that he had two passengers and, soon enough, three. She had got herself a mint-green Opel Kadett so it took her an age to get down the lane. She was terrified of the potholes damaging her paintwork.

Bridie made such a fuss of Bernie, but Bernie was only interested in one person at Johns Farm and that was John himself. She would wander about outside hoping to see where he was working and usually he would show up if he heard their car. Bernie was on a mission to collect as many hugs as she could and John would often have to walk off when she was still clinging to his back.

–  Don’t throw her to the cows instead of a bale, Auntie Eileen would shout after him, smiling even with her gums.

–  I wouldn’t part with my Bernie that easily, Eileen! he would laugh. Watch this!

We’d watch as he’d get Bernie to stand on his wellies and he’d let on they were jiving even though he was doing all the footwork. God, the smile on Bernie could have been spotted from the moon! He’s a dote, Mary, Eileen would say to me all misty-eyed and dry-mouthed as if I was remotely interested. That man of yours, look at him! A pure dote!

I never told her he wasn’t mine. I never told her the sunny smiles and chat only came out for visitors: with me he was still cold as ice. I could tell by her envious sighs she assumed we’d slept together. The thought of being with him like that made me reel. No one would ever see the Lower Room with its secret bed hidden behind the clothes horse and I was too embarrassed to come clean and ruin Mammy’s brilliant scheme when everyone was so jealous of me and my good fortune.

I smiled along with her instead, reaching for the biscuits she handed round to dunk in my tea, imagining what she would say if she knew what my life was really like. What would she make of me lying awake through the scurrying of the rats at night, the bushes needling at the window, the sound of the rain on the red tin roof which made the rats run even faster, the curdling laments of foxes? In the blinding dark, my only thought was: I’m here, I’m here, I’m still here.