Angela, their eldest since Kitty’s death, sensing danger, inserted herself between them and slipped her hand into Tommy’s. There were certain responsibilities Angela had assumed from Kitty, and one of those was to look out for Tommy, who could be far too trusting for his own good. A quiet man of simple needs, loving his family, football and friends, Tommy had bumbled through life until he had, late one evening, without any warning whatsoever, found himself standing at the doors of hell and nothing had been quite the same since.

‘Da, where are we going now?’ she’d asked, hoping the answer was not into the low, stone-built, partly-thatched building before them.

‘I’m not sure, queen,’ Tommy replied, his heart beating so fast it made him dizzy. Maura had ripped the letter from his fingers and scanned it with her flashing eyes.

‘Oh, for the love of God, Tommy, tell me, is this it? Did you did ask the man how many people actually lived in this place before you signed the contract and handed over the money?’ Her dark hair, free from the curlers she wore for most of the day in Liverpool, was pinned to the nape of her neck in a tight bun, her headscarf, tied into a knot under her chin, making her look much older than her forty years. ‘Oh Tommy, by all the saints in heaven, what have you done now?’

For a brief moment, Maura thought she saw tears well in her husband’s eyes, but with a blink, they were gone. Angela looked up into her da’s face; she had seen the tears too and threw her mother a threatening glance. She squeezed Tommy’s hand tighter, willing him to look down at her and say the only thing she wanted to hear, ‘We’ve come to the wrong place, queen.’

Niamh slipped her thumb into her mouth and her free hand into her mother’s, her eyes wide, while Harry rocked from side to side with the baby on his hip and the younger boys, tired from their long journey, flopped onto the suitcases that Tommy – carrying one under each arm and one in each hand – had dropped on the ground into puddles which splashed the shoes Maura had polished, ready to make a good impression on arrival at their new home. Each one of them was staring at Tommy, the man of the family who everyone looked up to. Tommy, who dragged men out of the Anchor and back into their own kitchens, tipping their money into the bread bin of a grateful wife and mother. Tommy, the man who organised the hauls from the tramp ship, got them up the dockers’ steps and into his wash house, then distributed around the four streets before it was time to light the copper for the next week’s washday.