When the letter home said that the Troubles and our duty as Catholic youth would be high on the agenda, she refused to sign it. She did not want me out in the world debating the pros and cons or forming any alternative viewpoint. She tore it in two and put it on the fire with a pah! I was going nowhere without her.

When I had to explain myself to the Mother Superior, Sister Pious, I stammered through a too-long speech on how I was needed at home because there’s always so much work on a farm. I watched as she wound a new piece of paper on to her typewriter to produce a special letter to make Mammy release me from The Hill. Sister Pious wrote that I was entering a very difficult phase in my young life and this retreat was vital to my development.

–  If your mother wants to debate this further, tell her that I’ve sent a copy to your parish priest, says Sister Pious.

This time, Mammy punched a hole in the paper over the ‘i’ in Sadie with the biro. She was livid and she didn’t even know what was on Lizzie Magee’s agenda.

With the signed release paper submitted, something shifted inside me. My head was light! I was getting five whole days OFF from The Hill! A door had opened, a door I could reach to get out of the kitchen. The reality was that men had starved themselves, that the Six Counties was being watched by the whole world, that we rarely made it through a week without running for cover. Yet all me and Lizzie Magee could think about was the fact that we’d be away from Carncloon and all this bloody nonsense TOGETHER for the first time ever and that Joe Loughrey would be there too. It seemed set down from God.

–  It’s way past time, Mary darlin’! What are you keeping it for? Next Easter?

–  Lizzie! Jesus’ sake. STOP, will ye? I’m scarlet!

–  I can’t stop! Every lad that looks at me is a minger and I’m not givin’ mine up to a minger!

–  What if I get pregnant?

–  Oh what if, what if! I’ll nick a rubber johnny from Dessie’s stash. It’s your one chance, Gortnahook; if you don’t take it you’ll be forced to give it up round the back of a cattle shed in the summer up by Brooky Hay. And SURELY you don’t want to give it up standin’ in cowshite?

She was right; she was always right, damn her hide. I definitely didn’t want to give it up standing in cowshite.