The world outside the street at Johns Farm – my family, the gossip from Carncloon, the Troubles – all faded as if a bulletproof bubble had settled over the little house. Life became about what Serena had eaten, what she’d drunk, what she’d tried to say. Thank God, she was proving interesting; she had to fill the lives of three love-struck adults. John Johns turned into the Good Provider and I had to let him even though it killed me. Did Serena need anything? Anything at all, name it and it would be hers? He bought her clothes in Woolworths when he was in Strabane. She had frocks of every colour and every single colour suited her. Oh, she was perfect!

She slept in with me; I bolstered her with pillows against the back wall in the Lower Room so I could feel her breathing, perching on the edge in case I harmed her. I was so tired but I could hardly bear to sleep in case I missed one tiny yawn. I fought the idea of a cot, a cot right beside the bed would have been too far. She was all I had to call my own, I would not risk her being beyond an arm’s-length away.

As there were so many little dresses and Babygros and terry nappies, I felt I had to take over washing the clothes from Bridie. I’ve never seen a woman move aside so quickly. The laundry included John Johns’s stuff and my heart lurched when I knew I’d have to deal with them and where they had been. I grabbed everything he owned and submerged the lot in Daz as if they were contaminated. I left them there ’til I figured they were clean and I couldn’t smell his mossy smell and rinsed them all out in the big water barrels in the scullery. There wasn’t a pair of man’s pyjamas – brazen. And I had looked for them, Yes Siree Bob!

Drying weather doesn’t come along too often in a Northern Irish winter. The clothes had to be hung above the rack on the range and turned and turned like Mammy had turned her underpinnings. Usually John grabbed his clean stuff from there but he’d been so busy, it built up and had to be shifted so I took a deep breath and packed it all under one arm. Is it strange to be afraid to go into someone’s bedroom when that someone is the man who can call himself your husband?

I had never been in the Upper Room. It ran parallel to mine with just the kitchen to divide us. Standing in it would make me feel like the total stranger I was. Man up, Mary! You’ve wrung out his undercrackers, you can put them in a drawer. I reached out and turned the handle and stepped in.