I had to stop by the corner of the milk house. A great ache was spreading across my chest. I wished I’d kept my nose out of his business. I had felt stuck down here on Johns Farm but now I understood that he was just as stuck as I was. He hadn’t mentioned Catherine. He was prepared to forgive her everything but it was her who trashed his heart. It was her who’d cut him loose and he’d settled for second best with me because I was on the doorstop. I didn’t make him do it. He didn’t care enough to save himself. I hadn’t been brave enough to make it stop. We’d buried each other. So why did I suddenly feel very much alive?

The yellow glow from the windows was darkened now and again by the shadows of my children running about inside, safe and warm. He had given me that roof and that life and I had rewarded him with silence. That’s when I realised that Pat O’Connell didn’t know that Serena wasn’t John Johns’s daughter. He thought John was the one to get me pregnant and the one to do the decent thing and marry me quickly before too much time passed. He would never know that John had stepped up and done a brave thing, foolhardy as it was. Not many men would take on another man’s child; not many men could have made her feel so loved.

He hadn’t disowned Serena just to save his own skin. He hadn’t ratted on me as the silly girl I was who got herself into trouble. He had kept my secret even though it had earnt him a sermon from his father. He could have leapt off the hook. Why would he take the blame for me? I was hardly worth it. I would never understand what made him tick.

I was back at my post at the range when he finally came in. The waynes all ran to him, nearly knocking him off his feet. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy! Daddy, will you read me this? Daddy, will you take me with you tomorrow? Daddy, Serena called me a gobshite! I did not, Dada! Bridie meets my eyes and laughs at my happy houseful and all I can do is smile back. She would have loved a pile of waynes of her own under her feet.

My mind drifts back to her two boys and my two brothers under the earth at St Bede’s. What a waste of beautiful flesh and blood. The sad smile that the memory brings is caught on my lips by John Johns but he is not about to give me another inch. I’ve had miles already. He scowls his way past, trailing the children in his wake, without a word.