I was soaked through and she was all fuss and bother, trying to find out what in God’s name had happened to me at all! Had I been interfered with? Was there British Army about the place? RUC? God forbid, was it one of our own? The big brown teapot being slammed down on the range made me look up and meet her eye at last. I had no answers for her but when she stroked my face, I knew she knew but I knew she would never tell on me.

I studied and studied and studied; my head was crammed with words that outsang the whine of worry. I worked so hard that even Daddy noticed; he told Mammy he was going to take us to Bundoran the first Sunday after my last O level. A blast of sea air was just the ticket to put the roses back in my cheeks. He’d never taken in that I don’t have roses in my cheeks and never would. It was a particularly lovely June; every tree seemed to swoon under the weight of its green leaves, every branch housed a songbird at the top of its game. The beach would be beautiful.

I showed up for every exam prepared, strangely calm and put down every word I knew on paper. As the last O level approached a feeling of panic had space to move into my head. How would I soothe my nerves when I could no longer study? I was forming a plan to talk to Auntie Eileen so that she could help me. In the wild event she wouldn’t, I would get the bus to Derry and throw myself on Kathleen’s mercy. Maybe Kathleen could hide ‘it’ in the nurses’ home? Nurses loved babies, didn’t they?

I broke up from school on Friday. Thirty-five of us covered in talc and eggs and marker pens rampaged through the corridors spraying Crazy String at the teachers. We fixed our ties around our heads and roared along with cassettes played too loud in the common room. Mr Spears, the science master, took a few snaps of us draped over each other and promised he’d have copies in September. You only get to be sixteen once in every lifetime, he says.

The drill for ‘a nice day out at the seaside’ was rise early, get to the first Mass in St Bede’s, make enough ham sandwiches to withstand the next famine, half with mustard and half without, load the gas ring and gas tank into the boot where it slid dangerously around for the forty-mile trip because tea had to be freshly made if we ventured away from the range for a whole day. Mick agreed to come along but Matthew made noises about cows and feeding and slipped away without a word.