The River Liffey ran brown and sluggish, and Dublin city’s heritage as a flourishing Georgian capital was obvious in the elegant expanse of the Custom House with its distinctive high-domed cupola on the opposite bank. Across the Carlisle Bridge was Sackville Street, another wide boulevard lined with elegant shops, a department store, and several hotels. Farther on, however, as they passed the post office, and the Nelson Pillar, into Upper Sackville Street, the surroundings became shabbier.

“Tuck your watch out of sight, my lady—oh, I see you have already done so.”

“And my purse is safe in my petticoat pocket. I told you—I’m used to areas such as this.”

Breda stepped a little closer to her. “I always think those houses must have been very grand when they were first built, but even when we came here from Mayo, which was almost twenty years ago now, they were in a bad way. We turn here, my lady.”

A young boy, clinging to the bare back of a wild-maned grey horse, came riding at full tilt down the street they now entered. One step in from the main thoroughfare heralded a considerably more dilapidated world. It wasn’t only that the cobbles were obscured by the filth running down the centre of the street, or the boarded-up windows or the missing slates making gaping holes in the shallow roofs. It was the stench of poverty, of unwashed bodies, filthy clothes, stagnant water, damp plaster, and rotting wood.

“Mind your skirts, my lady. Sorry about the smell.” Breda was wrinkling her nose. “I never used to notice it when I was growing up here. Mammy does her best to keep the house clean, but it’s hard work at the best of times.”

“Please, don’t worry about it. I understand perfectly how difficult it is without a fresh supply of water. What is wrong with your mama, Breda?”

“The same thing that’s ailed her nine times before, only she’s getting far too old for it. I had a new baby brother two weeks ago. She thought she was past all that, for my youngest brother is now six years old, and it would have been better if she had been, for something went wrong when her time came. Agnes, who is my third sister, had to take her to the Rotunda—that’s the lying-in hospital just a few steps from here. They thought the little one wasn’t going to make it. He’s very sickly yet, and Mammy has had the priest round to baptise him as a precaution.”

“Oh, Breda, I wish you had told me. If there is anything she needs . . .”