There are pictures of all seven of us Rattigan children, nailed to the wall in Baptism, Communion and Confirmation clothes. Mammy only framed the sacraments. There are no memories of seaside smiles or weddings. There’s not a single photograph of Frank Rattigan in The Hill, though images of God hang in every room. He was the man of the house, not Daddy. He was firmly on the kitchen wall with His Sacred Heart all ablaze outside His body, reassuring her with His big sad eyes that she was doing just fine. He was in the kept-for-best Good Room suffering the little children to come unto Him. He was in the back scullery in a lovely pink robe shepherding sheep. He was in her and Daddy’s bedroom with moonbeams bouncing off His head as He’s borne aloft by doves to keep His toes out of a powerful waterfall.

Upstairs He’s peppered about the place on crucifixes and in pictures which shimmer and shine and are lit up by electric bulbs in the shape of candles. When Mammy says, ‘Good Holy God is watching you,’ you cannot doubt her. He will condemn you on her behalf.

Alongside Him she has my particular favourite, No Siree Bob, the firebrand. On her scale of fury, 0 being mild rage, 10 apoplectic, No Siree Bob sat at around number 7. Good Holy God was a 9 and then it was straight to the perfect 10, the Virgin Mother herself, the Bo Derek of Catholic retribution. It was a busy house, though we rarely had visitors.

The weather in West Tyrone doesn’t help any mood, melancholy or otherwise. The wind and the rain batter us all day and all night for what feels like weeks on end and that’s just the summer. The Hill fairly rattled through every season. The tiny gaps at the windows sang like saws when the gales flew at us from the Blue Stacks on Donegal. The width of the block walls was all that stood between us and death by exposure – and not because Mammy cared about us freezing in our beds – she cared only for the health of our souls.

To help us get ahead in the race to Heaven, she made time to clean the chapel. It was a privilege, we were a chore. When she had scrubbed us, every room in The Hill and the doorstep clean and cooked three decent meals, she cycled off with a light heart to do it all again for God.

She polished the brass plaques, she mopped the marble under the altar, she swept the wooden floors and dusted the pews and she fed the priest whatever titbits he had a fancy for. She ripped the flowers from our garden and put them in vases under the dead-eyed statues. She looked like the perfect Catholic woman with her big family, her immaculate house, her devotion to the Church.