Eric saw the smile of relief slide from Peggy’s face. She no more wanted to deal with Gladys than Eric did. ‘You’re a good man, Eric. God alone knows how a man like you ended up with a wife like that. Don’t you be worrying, I’ll find the money, somehow, no one has to pay for us.’ She blessed herself; they both knew she had just lied and, as expected, the guilt kicked in. ‘I’ll call into mass, miracles do happen.’

Peggy ducked back under the window and, as it slammed down, the sound of the church bells faded.

Paddy laughed. ‘Just think, if Maura and Tommy were still next door, you could knock on with the mop and get her to bring you round a quarter of tea from the chest they used to keep in the wash house and we could have a nice cuppa now.’

Peggy lifted down her dressing gown from a nail in the door and shuffled it over her shoulders. Paddy’s words made her feel sad. She missed Maura every day. It wasn’t just that she no longer had anyone to borrow the staples of life from, the tea, sugar, bread, or to provide her brood with a meal when it got really bad and they needed feeding, it was the company she missed and the routines. Maura had made Peggy attend mass on at least one day in the week and always on a Sunday. Maura made Peggy feel good about herself and so she had copied Maura. On the days Maura had washed her nets, Peggy did. When Maura lit the copper boiler, Peggy followed suit. But all too easily, without her guiding light, Peggy had become overwhelmed by the daily drudgery and battle and had very quickly become someone who forgot things and who couldn’t quite manage.

Peggy had loved Maura for the true friend she was. And she was very sure she didn’t love her husband, Paddy. On a day like today, when he was about to refuse to move from the bed and take himself down to the docks for an honest day’s work, she imagined him impaled on the end of her bread knife. She’d had many such thoughts just lately, simmering below her veneer of incompetence, and they perturbed her. She was well aware that if she let the thought take hold, when the kids were crying and hungry, it could all too easily become a reality. She was brought to her senses as a tug passed out onto the river, blowing its horn, heading to the bar to bring down a ship to be unloaded.

‘Come on you, get out of that bed,’ she said and pulled the blanket away from Paddy, onto the floor. ‘Hear the tugs? There must be a ship out on the bar waiting to come in.’