Peggy wiped her dripping nose with the back of her hand. Her tears had made her feel hot and flu-like and the pain in her back was sweeping around her abdomen to the front. She steadied herself with her hand on the yard wall and then, when the pain subsided, made her way out of the gate, feeling as though the sky had fallen onto her shoulders as she realised that, in all the commotion, Kathleen hadn’t given her the half a crown for the children’s tea and big Paddy’s fags. She had forgotten in all the fluster of the news and the arrivals into her always busy kitchen. Peggy had written to Maura with Kathleen’s help but had received no reply and that almost broke her heart. It must be that Maura was settled in her new life and no longer had any interest in Peggy or her troubles. The rent office was open until twelve, that was the reason she’d had to leave; she would need to get down there without Maura to help her and beg to keep the roof over their heads – and she had to succeed. The alternative was not worth thinking about.

*

Mary had returned home only to find the house empty and the dishes piled up in the sink. Malcolm asked her to return at four, to help him make the evening meal for the guests he was expecting. She had slowed her pace as she walked past Annie O’Prey’s back gate but all she could hear was the tinny sound of the radio on the kitchen windowsill. No sign of Jimmy being back home, or Callum, for that matter. She knew Callum had been taken on down at the docks and was under the wing of Jerry Deane.

‘Jerry is going to be the gaffer down there any day now,’ she had heard Eugene say to Deirdre the previous evening. ‘When that happens, there will be more work around here on the four streets for the likes of us. He’s got Callum O’Prey taken on every day already. The gaffer has as good as handed over.’

Deirdre had been wrapping up potato peelings in newspaper to burn on the fire and glanced from the corner of her eye at Mary, who was darning one of the boys’ jumpers. ‘He’s not a total waste of time like his thieving git of a brother, then?’ she’d said.

‘Callum? Not at all, a grand worker he is. Whatever Jerry says, goes with him. There you are, Mary, now there’s a good husband for you. Try flashing your eyelashes at Callum. He earns a full week’s wage every week.’