Mary had known that Deirdre couldn’t wait to tell the women about what had just happened. It would have been a crime for them to witness it for themselves, but not to hear the embellished version from Deirdre. The fact that Deirdre had caught her and Jimmy kissing in the entry would spread across the four streets like a bush fire before teatime. Deirdre would be the centre of a drama, elicit the sympathy of the other woman for the cross she had to bear, the trauma of such a near miss and praise for the way in which she had averted a potential disaster.

Once the morning chores were over and the potatoes for tea peeled, the women of the four streets spent most of the day in and out of each other’s homes, vacating one kitchen to reassemble in another, discussing something, anything – the murder of the priest, the price of fish, the state of Peggy’s front step, the number of men taken on in the pen that morning – whatever it was that had occurred since the previous day. No one, though, ever gathered in Peggy’s. Even women who had nothing were particular about which ashtrays they flicked their ash into, whose chipped cups they drank their tea from.

Mary hadn’t waited for Deirdre to leave for Kathleen’s; she’d dashed back down to the wash house, slamming the door behind her, wondering where Jimmy had gone. She could see no way out, no escape from the drudgery that was her life, which felt so much harder than it had even before Jimmy had first spoken to her. Jimmy had unexpectedly stepped into her life and from that moment on she had begun to dream and, for the first time, felt truly alive. She wondered, could she get the washing done before Deirdre returned and then head up to the bombed-out wasteland? That was where Jimmy would wait for her, she was sure.

It was where Jimmy, a handsome nineteen-year-old, had first spoken to her, smiling down at her with an impish grin on his face and stealing her heart in an instant. His cap was low over his eyes, his smile full of mischief and promise. Jimmy did not lead the dull and boring life that Mary did and it showed. The air between them felt charged and so the clandestine meetings had begun at the back of the Anchor pub, behind the bins. They’d sit on the wall at the back of the bottle dump and Jimmy talked whilst Mary listened. He told her about all the bread vans he had robbed and the parties he had catered for in the four streets.