‘What do you say to that, sister?’ Michael pressed on. ‘And bear in mind that I will know by your face if you are lying to me.’

‘I will not lie to you, Michael,’ said Clorinda calmly. ‘You were aware that I took the necklace, when our Mam died. I kept it safe for a long while, as I knew I must, but the only means by which I could start my business in Bath was to sell it. Here is the Bill of Sale.’

From a little beaded purse which Sir William had given her, Clorinda produced the document from the jewellers and handed it to her brother. He reached into a worn pocket for his spectacles and put them on. His hands shook as they held the paper.

‘It was a simple exchange,’ Clorinda went on, ‘a transaction which transformed something which had been hidden in the dark for generations into a place of shelter and light.’

She saw Kathleen peer over Michael’s shoulder. His shaking hand showed her the large sum, written in both figures and letters, which had been paid to his sister and then they looked up and stared at her and she thought it was the kind of stare a judge might give to some felon on whom he had just passed sentence.

‘A place of shelter and light?’ Michael burst out. ‘What, in God’s name, is that pretentious rubbish? You’ve committed daylight robbery and we will employ a man of the law who will hound you until you pay us our share.’

‘That’s right,’ said Kathleen. ‘Michael knows a law fella who works for the Brewery, don’t you, Michael?’

‘Indeed I do. And he will be willing to serve notice on you.’

‘As I expected,’ said Clorinda, ‘except there will really be no need of your “man of the law”, Michael. We will agree to divide the sum shown on the Bill of Sale and I will pay what I owe you.’

‘How in the world are you to do that?’

At this moment, Sir William stood up. In his black frock coat, with his white hair, he might almost have been Michael Morrissey’s ‘man of the law’, suddenly arrived like an apparition in the mournful room.

‘Let me explain,’ he said, ‘that Clorinda has been very prudent with the money she’s made from her tea rooms. She has a sum put by. But because it does not reach the amount owing to you, I have told her that I will make this up from money earned at my practice, and she will repay me as and when she can. I trust this is satisfactory to you. It will mean that Maire can have her operation performed here in Dublin, by your own surgeons.’

Michael and Kathleen fell silent. They looked from the Bill of Sale to Clorinda, then to Sir William, then back to the Bill of Sale. And Clorinda felt that she knew what was in their minds: that the relief they felt about Maire was tempered with something else – by a feeling that the world was a pitiless place, in which some people prospered unfairly and others were left to suffer in a forgotten, silent street, where the wind was always strong. She and they were on opposite sides of that divide now and Clorinda knew that, whatever happened to Maire, she would never be forgiven.