Mary looked up and saw her brother outside the kitchen window, laughing openly at her discomfort, his hands and face pressed against the glass. He was too short to reach, which meant one of her other brothers was likely on all fours in the yard and Malachi was standing on his back. He had no shirt on and his vest was streaked with dirt, his face mucky and smeared. It would be her job at the end of the day to make sure each one of them was washed and scrubbed in the metal bath. She thought of her da and she knew he would indeed have been angry if he’d been the one to catch her with Jimmy. He was always giving out about Jimmy O’Prey, using his stints in prison as a warning and an example to his own sons.

Deirdre started putting lipstick on in the mirror over the fireplace. Her face was white, her hand shaking. She’d spoken to Mary through the mirror. ‘You don’t understand, Mary, your life can change for the worse with a lad like Jimmy O’Prey. Would you want to be knocked up, married to a jailbird not because you wanted to, because you had to? The shame of it, can you imagine? It would kill your father – and me, never mind him!’

Deirdre wasn’t one for curlers during the day. She was one of the most frequent visitors to Cindy’s, the hairdresser on the parade, and was a disciple of the new order, sleeping in curlers at night and backcombing during the day. Her hair was short, bleached blonde with dark roots at least an inch long, and it seemed to Mary that no matter how many afternoons her mother spent in Cindy’s chair, whilst Mary watched the children and prepared the tea, the roots were always there. Now Deirdre snapped the cap back on her lipstick, extracted her compact from her handbag and began to wipe the pad over her nose. She regarded her plain daughter.

‘Never see him again, do you hear me, Mary? Never! If you only knew how miserable your life would become if you got yourself hitched to a boy like him.’

Mary felt lost, could her life be more miserable than it was already? How on earth could that be possible?

‘Right, now get into the wash house where I know you will be safe from the likes of that scallywag and keep yourself busy. The washing is nearly done in the copper, so rinse and mangle it and get it on the line for me before the weather changes. I need to speak to Kathleen so I’m off to number 42.’