She opened her eyes slowly. ‘I’m sorry, Bri, but I can’t go through with it. I can’t.’

Briony smiled half heartedly. ‘You can’t! I can’t go through with it and it’s not happening to me! You just relax. We’ll get you home soon and then we’ll talk. We’ll think of something, love, I promise.’

Kerry grasped her sister’s hand, all animosity forgotten in the closeness of that moment. Kerry and Briony had accepted the child. Between them it would be all right, no matter what else happened.

‘What about me mum? She’ll go mad,’ Kerry whispered after a minute.

Briony sighed heavily.

‘You leave her to me. Now come on, sort yourself out. This place is giving me the heebie jeebies!’

Kerry laughed, a choking, throaty sound that was heavily tinged with relief.

As she dried her sister’s milky body, Briony felt as if someone had stepped on her grave. She fancied they were being watched by the ghosts of hundreds who had never had a chance of life. Denice O’Toole’s calm and collected manner now seemed chilling. Briony was amazed by the way she’d never really thought like this until it directly affected her or her family.

Kerry’s baby was going to cause trouble, she accepted that, but anything, no matter how bad, had to be better than the alternative offered by Denice O’Toole.

Molly’s eyes were bulging out of her head in temper.

‘You what? You’re telling me you brought her back home here with the child? Are you stark staring mad?’

Molly started to pace the room in a blinding rage, her heavy body tense and erect.

‘Sit down, Mum, and for once in your life think of someone else.’

Molly marched towards Briony and bellowed in her face: ‘All I can think of is that my daughter is going to give birth to a blackie! Jesus suffering Christ! I could brain the bitch, I could. I could rip the hair from her bastard head. How will I hold me own head up once this gets out?’

Briony pushed her mother none too gently in the chest, sending her flying back across the room.

‘All I ever hear in this family is me, me, me. How are you going to hold your head up? The same way you did when me dad died, and the same way you did when me and Eileen were whoring for you, and the same way you are now, with our Eileen in a nut house! Jesus Christ, this baby will be a godsend in some ways, give them something else to talk about at last.’

Molly’s face was twisted with temper.

‘Every time I think of her ... with a black man ... it makes me stomach turn. The whore! She’s nothing but a dirty stinking whore!’

Briony’s face went a dull white.