His voice, whining and pleading, fell into a void and the sun on the kitchen window caught the blade of the knife and winked at her. ‘Go on,’ it whispered to her, ‘it’ll be no trouble, I’ll help.’

She had two Anadin left, but despite the pain in her back, she would give them to Paddy, just to stop him complaining. Her fibroids had been playing up since she had been on the change.

‘We can have it all taken away,’ Dr Cole had told her last year. ‘Your uterus, it’s just an empty sack now, Peggy, waiting to become diseased, so we may as well. Let me tell the consultant at St Angelus that you are ready. He says in his letter he made you the offer last time he saw you.’

Peggy had shaken her head, made her excuses and left the surgery in haste. ‘I’ll have a think, but I’ll be back soon and let you know,’ she had said and had avoided both Dr Cole and the hospital since that day. Two weeks in hospital and four weeks in bed recuperating when she got back home to have it all taken away? How the hell could she do that? No, she would keep going for now.

Peggy sighed. ‘All right then, I’ll put the kettle on before the coal burns out.’ The last of the Anadin was the least of her problems; the coal, now, that was a worry. On the way to the kettle, she began to remove her curlers. There was nothing for it; she would have to go to the rent office and throw herself onto the mercy of Mr Heartfelt. In the past, when a brown envelope arrived, Maura would come with her and Mr Heartfelt, who obviously had a soft spot for Maura, would have been amenable and open to discussion and a compromise. Today, Peggy would have to try to sweet talk Mr Heartfelt all on her own.

She threw the curlers into the enamel dish on the windowsill and ran her fingers over her scalp. A woman of no means and financially dependent on a man who refused to get out of his bed, all she had was her hair to help her. It was that or a pimp on the corner of Upper Parliament Street. Tears filled her eyes and she let them fall, one hand on the kettle, the other on the sink to steady her.

‘Oh, Maura, what has become of me?’ she sobbed, her predicament made worse by the fact that there was no one to hear her and no one to help.

Chapter Nine

Captain Conor was looking out to sea from the bridge of the Morry just as his first mate, whose nervous facial tic had earned him the name Blinks, arrived with his tray. The sea was calm and the port behind them rolled backwards into the distance.