She’d never worked like other women. She used to clean doorsteps when he met her, had specialised in that. She’d been a tweenie since seven and at fourteen had begun specialising in her damned doorsteps! For a split second he saw her as she had been when he met her. High-breasted and tall, she had looked a fit mate for the big handsome Irishman he’d been. But marriage and the bearing of children had changed all that. Her and her fancy ideas about the girls going to school. Not working, oh no. Or even doing adecent day’s housework until they were twelve. He gnashed his teeth in temper. With the four girls working they could have lived the life of Riley, but oh no. Not good enough for Molly Cavanagh. Her children, her girl children, were too good to slave fourteen hours a day in a sweat shop to earn their brass.

As he neared home Paddy’s rage was reaching astounding proportions. He even began to blame his wife for his own drinking and gambling. If she had treated him as a wife should, he wouldn’t stay out like he did, he justified it to himself. He omitted the fact he had always led the life of a single man even when married.

He opened the front door. His face was blue with the cold, but one look at his eyes and the girls saw their father was in the mood for a fight. Dressed in their Sunday best, they waited patiently for their mother to braid their hair ready for Midnight Mass at St Vincent’s where Kerry had been asked to sing a solo.

Molly was busy buttoning Rosalee’s dress. Hearing her husband enter, she cried: ‘Where the hell have you been? You know Kerry’s singing at the Mass. You promised me you’d be home early.’

She looked up into his face and her heart froze in her chest. He was drunk, roaring drunk. He wouldn’t miss Midnight Mass, though. He’d stumble up to Communion like he did every Sunday, oblivious to the staring faces around him. Most of the Irishmen left it to their wives to attend church for them. It was no sin for them to sit in the pub all day Sunday, but let an Irishman’s wife miss Mass with the children and she would be ostracised by all and sundry. Not for the first time the divide between men and women irritated Molly Cavanagh. Maybe it was this that prompted her to fight with him instead of ushering the children from the house to Mother Jones next door and then letting Paddy do his worst ’til he fell asleep in front of the fire. She resigned herself to a black eye for Christmas and decided that this time she’d get it for a good reason.