We were leaving on the Sunday for the retreat at Gortnahook and I was up at 6am. We were allowed to wear our own clothes when we got there and I wanted to pack mine fresh in the morning so they would be perfect. Lizzie and me had the five days planned. We were going to sit in the middle of the bus, away from the swots and the nuns at the front and away from the stupid loud girls at the back who would be drawing fire the whole way there from Sister Pious.

Lizzie was even more excited than I was, unhealthily so as she was further down the fingering stage than me. She’d had a handful in all so was a pro, I was a rookie, she reminded me daily. I, therefore, had to listen to my elders and betters because she knew what she was talking about. I was going to skip being a novice and go straight to the sisterhood. Time was precious, time away from home was priceless, I had to make the most of it. On my life, at sixteen, Lizzie Magee could actually make me blush inside as well as out.

The gardens were in the middle of the compound, the old monastery wrapped around it; we would sleep in one wing, the boys would sleep in the other. They were arriving the same day, on a different bus. They were on a different bus from the same town, and not because they were Protestants, just because they were boys. It made no sense when the nuns and brothers were going to mix us all together later that we couldn’t be trusted to sit on a bus together beforehand. Lizzie and me laughed over that one, giddy as we were about what we were planning for the gardens. It was always ‘we’ even though ‘I’ was going to have to go it alone quite soon.

I still hadn’t even tried to explain to her that I was panicking. It was a big step and the doctor’s son might just decide that I wasn’t worth the bother. I had been staring into the bathroom mirror every chance I could. I wasn’t getting any better-looking. The black hair was too black, the white skin was too white, the grey eyes looked alarmed – I should do something about myself but I didn’t know where to start. I wished I could put my head in a raffle box and pull out a better one.