‘I’m off to Shelagh’s to take the pram I borrowed back,’ she said. ‘Look after your brothers for me, Paddy, be a good boy, they need you.’ She stood and stared at her children and a frown crossed little Paddy’s face; there was something about her tone, her manner, that sent a frisson of fear running across his scalp.

‘Mam?’ he said, but she turned her back on him, opened the back door and walked out of the house.

Chapter Nineteen

Shelagh was in the middle of the same end-of-day chores as every other woman in every kitchen on the street. The large enamel bowl in her sink was filled with hot soapy water as the scouse pan soaked on the wooden draining board next to it, ready for a scouring with wire wool and soap. In the scullery, one by one her children had washed their knees, hands and faces and now sat on the floor in front of the fire, listening to the radio. The kettle had been refilled for the third time in a row and was coming back up to the boil as the day’s washing, draped across a wooden clothes horse, stood open before the fire, absorbing the heat and drying the washing which had been brought in from the line; above her head the pulley was filled with lines of steaming terry towelling nappies.

Shelagh leant her back against the draining board and, slipping her hands into her front apron pocket, sighed, wondering would Seamus be back in time to help her with the big pan. She hated the wire wool she used to clean it, which dug into her red and cracked hands like shards of glass and made her cry out in pain. The only two comfortable chairs they owned were filled with children and even though the veins in her legs pulsated and throbbed she knew that there was no point in shooing them off and sitting down herself, because within seconds she would need to be back up again for one thing or another. A woman’s work was never done.

Little Paddy didn’t knock before he entered Shelagh’s kitchen; knocking was unheard of in the four streets. Earlier that morning, she had baked biscuits and there had been over thirty children in her backyard with hands open and little Paddy and Nellie had helped Shelagh to dish them out.

‘Can I have two please, Shelagh?’ Malachi had shouted out across the assembled heads. ‘If I can, I’ll let your Anthony be in charge of the ball all day.’

Shelagh had shaken her head. ‘If I tell your mam what you’ve just said, Malachi, she wouldn’t believe me. That’s called blackmail and you’ll end up like Jimmy O’Prey, you will, in and out of the nick.’