I skip on up to wait by Lizzie Magee and the rest of the class after Miss Lynch ticks me off the list. I hope you’re ready to be made clean, Mary, she says and I nod. I am ready.

The priest isn’t too sore on me in the end. I thought he might drag me out of the confessional and throw me on the floor of his chapel but instead he sighed and blessed me before he closed the grille. I was shaking. I never thought I’d have to tell what I did but Father O’Brien asked me to explain myself. How in the name of God have you come up with the sin of pride, he says, so I had to speak up. You can’t say no to a priest.

I was glad to get back into the light of the chapel with my penance: an Our Father and three Hail Marys and the Prayer for Peace. Lizzie Magee says the Prayer for Peace isn’t about being extra bad but that there’s an extra need for it in Northern Ireland. She doesn’t know what I’ve done.

I’d told him the story of what happened after Mick and me found a stray cat sleeping in an old bucket in the barn about two months before. She was fat and skinny at the same time. We gave her some milk and before long she was waiting for us in the same spot every morning.

One day we had to hunt around for her and we found her in an old tin bucket with three kittens who were too small to even have eyes yet. We knew we had to keep them a S.E.C.R.E.T, cross our hearts and hope to die. Mammy does not like pets. We’re not even allowed to give the pigs and cows names. They are food.

There were two black and white ones and a tabby. The tabby had a bright ginger belly and white paws. I thought I had never seen anything so gorgeous in all my life. I loved it the way I loved my Blue Ted and I called it Angel because angels sit on your shoulders and make you feel everything is going to get better. Mick wouldn’t jinx his with names.

They were balls of fluff in no time. We let them sit in our hair and hang on to our jumpers with their soft claws. Mick was always upset when we had to leave them alone but I never looked back in case Mammy would be watching. She would figure it out for sure and try to give them away. Matthew begged us to be careful. If I’ve seen, she’ll see, he said. He didn’t need to say any more.