‘How thoughtless,’ they said, ‘how very English of Sir William Adeane to believe that we would permit this!’ But of course they would not permit it. If Sir William showed his face at the hospital door, he would be turned away.

Despite his anxiety for his daughter, Michael was not ashamed to admit to himself that he enjoyed giving this news to Sir William and seeing the disbelief on his face. The surgeon and Clorinda were seated in Michael and Kathleen’s parlour at the time, where Kathleen had put a clean white cloth on the tea table, but the two girls just sat staring vacantly at their aunt and her ageing paramour. Maire plucked with nervous little hands at her goitre and Aisling, whose face wore an expression of deep sadness, played with a toy pig.

Kathleen stood at the doorway, as if ready to show the couple out before any tea had been taken. When the news descended into the sooty air, a silence fell over the room which was agonisingly complete.

But then, quicker than anybody could have predicted, Clorinda Morrissey stood up and said: ‘this is of no significance. None at all. Sir William is one of the few surgeons who can perform this operation without endangering Maire’s life, but where he performs it does not matter. We will take Maire with us to Bath. She can live with me until everything is made ready for the surgery, and when she has recovered enough to make the sea journey, I will bring her back.’

Michael looked over at Kathleen. Neither of them spoke. Sir William now rose up and put a protecting arm round Clorinda.

‘There you are!’ he said. ‘There is the solution. What do you say, Maire? Would you like to go on a steamer to England? You would, wouldn’t you?’

Maire did not answer. It was as if she had not understood what was being asked of her. Michael stared at his suffering daughter for a moment, then he said, ‘perhaps it is a kind offer, but I really don’t think this would be the thing at all. I can’t have my daughter going to England. Since the famine—’

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ exploded Clorinda. ‘Why be dragging the famine into this, when it’s long past?’

‘It may be long past, but nobody here has forgotten how England starved our people.’

‘And now you would starve your own daughter of life rather than let it be saved in England?’

‘I’m a man of principle – in case you have forgotten that, Clorinda. You may not remember the suffering in the forties …’

‘Of course I remember it. Didn’t we go hungry ourselves? And sure, the English should have died of shame, but how would that have helped us? And now you’re willing to sacrifice Maire to history, and I for one do not see the sense in that.’

Silence fell once more in the room. Kathleen moved a fraction further out of it. Sir William looked all around him at the drab parlour and noted one small item of value standing in a corner: a glass-fronted bookcase displaying a bone china tea service. This tea service tugged at his heart. He saw now – if he had not seen before – that Clorinda’s life had been filled with deprivations and sacrifices of a kind he could not have imagined until this moment.