We all three cried then ’til we had to laugh again. I was learning that too. It was never that long before you had to laugh again. Crying was so dull; it fixed nothing really and it only served to ruin your good face and brine your eyeballs.

When Bridie was clearing up, I went in to the kitchen to show Serena the coloured paper chains that Bridie and me had made and strung across the brace over the range and to put the kettle on for tea. It’s Christmas-time, I said to her but she just yawned with her perfect pink mouth and got on with burrowing her way deep, deep into my heart.

17

There was hardly time to think after Serena landed, never mind feel sorry for myself. Everything to do with a baby took so long, especially at Johns Farm. The fire had to be stoked for night-time to heat the bottles and to boil the nappies. I tried to feed her myself but I had no milk to speak of so I gave up and anyway Bridie loved bottle-feeding her; that way we could share her.

I was in love again, totally smitten with Serena’s tiny fingers and her soft-as-silk hair. I couldn’t stop kissing her. My mother came to call. It was the first time she had crossed the threshold of Johns Farm for years.

–  John tells me it’s a girl you have? Better luck next time.

John Johns’s mood and mind seemed changed with Serena’s arrival. He had been lifted the night she was born. The RUC figured that errant Paddies might be afoot in the terrible rain and had set up a checkpoint. He had nearly ploughed straight into them with their one stupid torch and they had taken exception and he spent the night in Carncloon Barracks.

He looked stricken by the fact that she had arrived in his absence and he kept telling Bridie over and over how I must go to hospital anyway, how the baby should be checked out. But the district midwife had already been and said that I was fine to stay put. Popping out babies was a young woman’s job and I’d done it well. She hadn’t seen me wailing like a banshee. He peered in at Serena where we’d put her to nap outside in her pram wrapped up in a green blanket against the frost, just touching her chest with his fingers as if she was made of glass.

–  I like her name.

–  Serena Bridget suits her, I think?

–  Serena Bridget Johns. Yes, that suits her fine!