When the bus stopped and John Johns and me stepped down into the dark damp of a country evening, I begged the grey sky above me to not let him speak but he did and I fell into the trap of trying to answer him.

–  Hello, Mary.

–  Hi, hi, I mean hello … J-J-John, I’m fine.

–  Well now, thanks for letting me know.

Bloody Nora, what a gormless wreck! I hated how young he made me feel and me nearly a woman. I hung back to get out my torch to put some distance between us. The Hill is a mile from the crossroads and Johns Farm is a further two. There was one narrow road in and the same one out.

John Johns was ahead when a car stopped and asked me if I wanted a lift. It was none other than Father Pat O’Connell and even by the dim glow of the car light there could be no doubt whose daddy he was! I managed to say no even though a soft rain had started to drift in off the river. He drove on, slowed down to a stop when he passed John who had stepped on to the grass verge. He must have said no too as the car moved on, heading for The Hill.

–  Why didn’t you get in?

–  My mammy says I’m not to take lifts off strange men!

Christ alive! Had I really just started a sentence, perhaps the first sentence I had ever spoken to John Johns, with the words ‘My mammy says’? I was SIXTEEN! I was certainly more worldly than her already. She doesn’t get invited to take tea in the doctor’s house. She doesn’t know other people’s parents speak. She doesn’t know such a thing as smooching exists. She doesn’t know that some people actually like their children. John Johns just snorted at me because he can spot an idiot when he sees one.

A longed-for hole does not open up to swallow me and I have to trudge after him in the rain all the way home. My hair is soaked and clings coldly to my face but it’s like watering a bush; tomorrow it’ll be even thicker and harder to wrangle into a ponytail. The car is there, and the lights of the kitchen at the back and the Good Room at the front throw yellow squares around the darkening street. John takes his ‘goodnight’ with him.

When I come in quietly and shake out my coat in the back hall, I can already hear my mother and her special priest voice booming from the passage between the Good Room and the kitchen. She is dressed in her pure-white linen apron that is kept for such occasions. It serves to make her look very clean and tidy even while it lets everyone know she is dressed in her work clothes because her work is never done.