‘Sorry, Ei, I was only joking.’ She put her arm around her sister’s shoulders.

‘It’s that eejit Joshua. He wants to postpone the wedding now. It’s that scut of a mother behind it, I swear. He turned up last night all sweetness and light, saying they should wait, it was all a bit quick, and he thought they should have a bit longer together courting. The bastard of hell! And there’s me, making them tea and leaving them together while I went in to old Mother Jones’. When I came home I found this one crying and your man nowhere to be seen. I’d have scalped the face of him if I’d have seen him.’

Briony knelt before Eileen and said: ‘Has he mentioned anything before now? Anything that would make you think he’d changed his mind?’

Eileen shook her head. ‘He hasn’t said a word, but he’s been funny for weeks now. For the last month. It’s as if I got the plague overnight or something. And his mother, she cut me dead the other day at Mass ... She doesn’t like me, Bri. I don’t know why.’ She dissolved into tears again.

Briony’s face took on a hardness noticed by Molly. Both women were thinking the same thing. Joshua and his mother didn’t want to be related to her, Briony, in her new role. It was bad enough when she owned the houses, though her offer of help in buying Joshua his own home had been gratefully accepted. But now they were actually frightened of becoming involved with the Cavanaghs whose name was synonymous with violence. Well, Joshua O’Malley would find out what violence meant before he was much older! Briony determined she would see to that personally.

Elizabeth O‘Malley shook her head at her son. ‘Sure, you’re better off home with me. That Eileen was a pasty-faced bitch if ever I saw one. Not a spark of life in her at all. Jasus, she’d breed you mewling brats.’

Joshua stared into the fire. It was Eileen’s passiveness that had attracted him, but his mother was right on one thing. The Cavanaghs were not a family to get tied to. Not now anyway.

‘That Briony ... a murdering hoor if ever one was born! Your father must be turning in his grave. All those girls with skirts up their nostrils and legs bare to the world!’ His mother blessed herself fervently.

According to her, Joshua thought, his father must be like the Spinning Jenny in that grave of his. Yet he himself had been a rake who had been finally driven from the house by the harridan standing before Joshua now. His mother’s first sight of Kerry and Bernadette with their lipstick and bare-legged mode of dressing had incensed her, especially the short Eton crop worn by Bernie.