‘I’m all right, Mam.’ Olive forced a smile. The roof was going to go off this house tonight one way or another, and much as she disliked Father McHaffie she needed the priest present when Ruby returned. Father McHaffie saw things in black and white and he ruled his flock with a rod of iron. Non-Catholics were in league with the Devil and on course for the fiery pit; his flock, one and all, were sinners and only confession each week and attending Mass regularly gave them any chance of avoiding the worse sufferings of purgatory, and lastly, and most importantly, his word was law. He had told her yesterday that Adam must marry her as soon as it could be arranged, just as she had known he would, and he had agreed he would be present when she confessed her sin and its consequences to her family, after which he would pay a visit to the Gilberts.

Pulling her hat well down over her forehead she walked to the back door, opening it and turning for a moment to say, ‘I’ll be just a few minutes, Mam,’ and then stepping out into the icy-cold night.

She hurried the short distance to the little church of St Mary but then hesitated before opening the arched wooden door. Once she walked over the threshold the die was cast and Father McHaffie would take over. But no, she corrected in the next moment. The die had been cast before this night, right from when she had suspected she might be pregnant, in fact, or even before that, on New Year’s Eve when she had crept upstairs to Adam’s bedroom. She had known what she was doing, she couldn’t pretend otherwise, but Adam hadn’t exactly fought her off either. True, he had been as pickled as an onion, but he hadn’t been so drunk that he was incapable, as the child growing in her belly proved. And he had known she wasn’t his precious Ruby when he had taken her, cursing her even as he had repeatedly thrust and groaned until it was over. It had been painful and brutal and not at all what she had expected from her first time, and afterwards he had flung her off him with a ferocity that had frightened her, shoving her out of the room and turning the key in the lock for good measure. She had stood on the landing feeling sick with shame and humiliation, but even then the jealousy and loathing she felt for her sister had been enough to carry her down the stairs and act as if nothing had happened. She had watched Ruby in the time before they had departed from the Gilberts’, and the knowledge that with the power of a few well-chosen words she could take the silly smug smile off her sister’s face for good had been enough to sustain her.