‘I’ll refill these,’ he said as he picked up her glass. ‘We can have another before we leave.’

Maggie’s breath caught in her chest and her stomach lurched. Before we leave… He had said it out loud, converted her fantasies and flirtations into an impending deed and, as he left for the bar he turned and said, ‘Once would never be enough for me, Maggie.’

Chapter Twenty-five

It had taken only seconds for Shelagh to run to Deirdre Malone’s house, even with a baby on her hip. She left doors open and a bin scattering in her wake and gasped the words out before she was even fully in the kitchen as the door flew open with Shelagh virtually swinging on the latch. ‘Deirdre, have you heard the news?’ She had intended to savour in the delight of holding something over Deirdre, but, carried away in the moment, she blurted out, ‘Maura and Tommy are back, for good. Can you believe it?’

‘No they’re not,’ Deirdre said, as cool as a cucumber.

‘They are, I’m telling you. Seamus came back for his pipe and told me. I saw Nellie with my own eyes. The kids came for a shovel of coal and I asked them, what do you want it for and they said, Peggy was short and Maura’s back. Honest to God, she’s in Kathleen’s but I don’t think we will see her now until tomorrow, it’s so late.’

Deirdre took her coat down from the kitchen door. ‘Oh, I think we will. I need to see this with my own eyes. Malachi!’ Deirdre shouted up the stairs. ‘Get down here in the kitchen until your da gets back and watch the kids don’t make a mess.’

Shelagh juggled the baby onto her other hip. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked. ‘We can’t just go into Kathleen’s, she’s not knocked on with the mop yet.’

Deirdre fastened her headscarf under her chin. ‘No, and she won’t, will she? It’s bloody Maura, always calling the shots, but no one’s slept in Maura’s house for months, there’s no beds made. We can go and start getting it ready for her and that way we will have to see her, won’t we? They can’t leave us out because that wouldn’t look very nice, would it? Mary, put that mop down, you’re coming with us.’

Shelagh looked twice at the girl. ‘Holy Mother of God, Mary, what happened to your hair?’

‘Don’t ask,’ said Deirdre. ‘God alone knows what Eugene will say when he sees the state of it, and she paid Cindy good money for that.’