‘Angela, get me my rosary from the press,’ Maura barked at her anxious-looking daughter. Angela didn’t need to be asked twice; the sight of Harry’s curls, plastered to his scalp with perspiration, along with his rambling and wailing, set her own emotions on edge.

‘Here, Mammy,’ said Angela as the rosary slipped from her hand to her mother’s. Angela’s dark hair fell long and unkempt down both sides of her face, her eyes were wide, her thumb in her mouth and her precious teddy under her arm. ‘Here, Harry,’ she whispered as she placed her teddy into the crook of Harry’s arm.

‘Good girl,’ said Maura and smiled up at her. ‘Now change this water, would you? Not hot, not cold, we don’t want to shock him, just in the middle, for I have to keep washing him down to try and fight the temperature off.’

‘Ma…’ Harry opened his eyes. They were glazed and bright and for a moment they held Maura’s.

‘I’m here, Harry. Don’t you be worrying now, just lie there nice and still.’ Her son turned his head and looked about the room.

‘Where’s Da?’ Harry croaked.

‘Angela, get me some water for Harry to drink.’ She knew they had to get fluids into him whilst he could hold it down. She placed her arm around her son’s back and held the drink to his lips. Harry guzzled the water and Maura laid him back down. ‘Da’s gone for the doctor, Harry, he’ll be back in a minute,’ she said, but Harry wasn’t listening. His temperature had rapidly risen again and he began to ramble incoherently once more.

‘Mam, is Harry going to die?’

Angela had laid her hand on her mother’s shoulder. She had never seen anyone that poorly before and Maura felt the question like a slap across the face. She stared at her daughter. ‘No, Angela, he isn’t. The good Lord has taken one from me, he won’t be wanting another.’ But the very thought that that would even be a possibility chilled Maura to the bone and she began to wash Harry down again. ‘This water is hot already, Angela, bring me a jug of fresh.’

It felt to Maura as though the night would last forever as she waited for Tommy to return, raising her son’s limbs one by one and running the cloth soaked in tepid water along each one, whispering comforting words as she did so, while Angela sat in the rocking chair and slowly rocked back and forth, her eyes never leaving her mother or Harry. Maura hardly realised it, but as she comforted her son in the dark and tense atmosphere, with nothing by way of light other than the peat blocks smouldering and a spluttering candle on the stone mantelpiece, her thoughts slipped from where they now lived to the place she thought of as home.