On those days, little Paddy called into the chapel at the convent on his way into Sister Theresa’s class. He felt weighed down with the guilt and compelled to confess. He liked Mr Coffey, and the lady who was sometimes there, his friend, Biddy. Once he’d carried her bag from the bus to the Seaman’s Stop and ever since then she would give him a barley twist, whenever she saw him. He really liked Biddy and it near killed him to steal the milk, in case she found out it was him. His mother, he knew, acted from a desire to feed them all, but he wondered, so many times, how it was his mother and big Paddy were so different from just about every other family on the streets whose kids managed to eat a breakfast every morning.

But now little Paddy finally grinned, for this was a good morning. Eric had delivered, little Paddy was spared and there would be breakfast before school.

‘Go on, get your clothes on or some other little bugger will be stealing the milk from our step – it’s like the wild west out there.’ And Peggy roared with laughter as little Paddy went back into the second bedroom to retrieve the trousers Maura Doherty had bought him before she had left for Ireland. He folded them every night carefully and hung them over the brass bedstead. Maura had bought them two sizes too big and, initially, he’d had to thread string through the waistband because even the belt she bought with them was too big.

‘Don’t you be worrying, little Paddy,’ Maura had said. ‘They will fit you a dream by next year. Just don’t go getting holes in the knees because I won’t be here to sew them. Your mother’s not the best with the needle. If you’re desperate, take them to Maisie Tanner’s and say Maura said you were to go there, do you hear me?’

Little Paddy had nodded, his eyes wide. Maura had left him with so many instructions he was afraid that he was going to forget something. On the day he stood in Maura’s kitchen, as she pinned up the hem of the trousers so that he would get more wear out of them, Tommy had sat in armchair by the fire, reading the Echo.

‘Peggy will pawn those before the boat docks in Dublin,’ Tommy said.

‘Shush, you!’ Maura had hissed at him. ‘There, Tommy, doesn’t he look just grand? Paddy, you’ll have all the girls in the school after you, so you will.’

Little Paddy had blushed at the mere thought, but it didn’t matter, nothing in the world could diminish the pride he felt at owning a pair of trousers with no holes and which had been bought from new, along with the shoes Maura had also bought for him.