Nellie shook her head; she was sure it was Peggy. The woman’s hair was not in curlers and she was talking to another woman, a woman Nellie had seen down there before. When she’d asked Jerry who she was, he had replied, ‘A woman of the night, Nellie, and not someone you should ever speak to.’

Peggy and the woman were huddled together, talking at the back of the administration building, and Nellie kept looking backwards as she was swept along by Nana Kathleen. She had a funny feeling something was wrong and that woman down on the dockside – she was sure it was definitely Auntie Peggy.

Chapter Twenty

Maura and Tommy had never before made love in a bed that wasn’t their own and she had found the experience both frightening and exciting all at the same time.

‘I’m not sure if we can,’ she had whispered, terrified of making a noise and trying to work her dates back in her mind. ‘When am I due?’

Tommy, a man who always depended on his wife to ensure they did not make love on the days she was likely to be caught, for fear of another pregnancy, had thrown caution to the wind. ‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ he had said as he pulled her towards him.

‘Tommy, have you lost your senses? And you’ve left the light on; what are you thinking of?’

Maura had also only ever made love to her husband in the dark and the urgency of his need was confusing her. It felt as though she was in bed with another man.

‘Maura, how did you feel when we were leaving Liverpool to move back to Ireland and start our great big adventure? When I made the biggest mistake of my life and bought us the Talk of the no feckin’ Town? Were you happy? Was I happy?’

‘I don’t know, I’m not sure, there was so much to do, with the kids and everything…’

‘Maura, if we had been doing the right thing, nothing would have mattered, so how did you feel? Think, remember!’

Maura had no idea what had just possessed her husband, a man of few words, to own up to a mistake. Usually he had to be worn down into submission first.

‘Scared, I suppose,’ she blurted out.

‘Aye, me too. What do you feel like now? Tonight, here in this bed and breakfast?’

Maura’s face broke into a tentative smile. ‘Excited.’

Tommy threw his head back and laughed out loud. ‘Yes, so do I. That’s because we are going home. We should never have left. It was the money, it went to our heads.’

Maura pulled a face. ‘Well, it won’t now because there’s hardly any left.’

And Tommy had almost told her his secret, the news it had half killed him to keep from her for days.