His heart was broken. He had never seen her face again after the ambulance men had taken her away. When Catherine died he had wandered every inch of London looking for peace and when none was found he came home to Johns Farm and Bridie but he couldn’t bear to tell her or any other living soul the story.

He had come to understand how someone could take their own life; the blessed relief beckoned more than once. He just buried Catherine and the baby whole and untouched in his memory and hoped the years would make it bearable. Maybe one day we could agree on the number of years? And then I was born, says Serena with a flourish, and the clouds were on the back foot for him forever. He got to have a perfect daughter after all!

–  Mammy? Don’t cry! It was a hundred years ago!

–  Oh, I’m not crying about me! It’s just so sad the many things that can happen to a person in one lifetime!

I hate to lie to her. The tears are all for me. They should be for him, only him, and the fact that he got stuck with a foolish girl who never took the time to realise that he was hurting. Did he never tell me about Catherine? Why would he when he knew I wouldn’t listen? I had stuffed my ears with self-pity the day that Daddy left my suitcase on the street. I had been comparing myself to a ghost for years.

I thought of his face as he drove me home from Omagh hours after the miscarriage. I had been inconsolable, so much so that I had selfishly thought that my loss was greater than his. Had we ever tried talking to each other I might have known that he was the one person who could understand, the one who’d already been on that lonely, bloodied road.

Now Serena thought that I’d been hiding down here in Johns Farm long enough; she thought that I should get back to my books. I nodded and nodded, hearing the sense being preached and feeling the panic rising. I would soon be out of excuses for hanging around the house.

John was obviously sick of me. I was dead wood so I would have to go. Back to school because he couldn’t think of anywhere else to send me. If I could make a living, his responsibility for me would be over and, anyway, in a matter of a few short years all of our children would be grown and gone, no need for a mother then and my days as a wife were numbered.

–  Come on, Mammy! Northern Ireland is going to need all sorts of people! Tony Blair is going to be throwing money at us!

–  I’ll certainly think about it, says I to my daughter.