Why couldn’t Liam see that what Mr Cleary had done was very wrong? Only she and Tommy were indignant at the way Harry had been treated. She was Irish born and bred and she knew the ways well enough, but that didn’t mean that those who had experienced better should tolerate less. Maura knew the difference between right and wrong and what Cleary had done to her boy was very wrong. A feeling of dread she had yet to acknowledge or identify, slipped into the pit of her stomach, made worse by the sight of her first customer walking towards her. There was still the fire to light, food to get ready for the children, and all the while the oaf lumbering up the path towards her would be barking out his demands: ‘Get the fire, Maura. Fill my pot, Maura. Close the door, Maura.’ She sighed. ‘God in heaven, was it meant to be like this?’ This wasn’t the life she and Tommy had dreamt of.

‘Get the door open, Maura,’ her customer called out and she bit her tongue and fought back the urge to shout back, ‘Open it your fecking self!’

Chapter Four

Paddy farted so loudly that it woke his wife from her deep and dreamy sleep. Her eyes opened wide and the vision of a twin-tub washing machine disappeared in a flash. Maggie Trott had taken delivery of one only the week before and Peggy, along with every other woman on the four streets, had formed an orderly queue in order to inspect it. Since then she had dreamt every night about owning one. Then the efficient rumble of a spin dryer vibrating on her kitchen floor was replaced by her husband’s flatulent emissions. She turned her face towards Paddy.

‘You dirty fecking bastard,’ she snarled at him and, heaving her large frame up from the brass bedstead, threw back the old stained army blanket she had meant to wash in the copper boiler on the first sunny spring day. But that had been weeks ago and though there had been other sunny days since, somehow some inconsequential events got in the way and the blanket got dirtier and dirtier.