Ruby heard her mother gasp but she and the priest were glaring at each other and she didn’t look her mother’s way as Father McHaffie growled, ‘What is done is done and this is helping no one. Furthermore, your speech and conduct leave a lot to be desired. Olive has confessed her sin and is repentant before God—’

‘Repentant before God? And that makes it all right?’

‘First and foremost it is against the Almighty that your sister has sinned.’

‘Well, forgive me, Father, but I don’t see it that way.’ Ruby had always been afraid of the priest like everyone else but her sense of injustice had done away with the fear. For the first time in her life she was seeing Father McHaffie as merely a man, and a man who had been sitting at the table with her parents and Olive sipping tea as cosy as you like. It was this that caused her to say, ‘If you think Olive is repentant then that’s because she’s pulled the wool over your eyes, and even if she is, which she isn’t, a few Hail Marys and attending Mass till kingdom come won’t take away the wickedness of what she’s done to me.’

Father McHaffie had gone red in the face, and it was Cissy who said quickly and apologetically, ‘Ruby is upset, Father. This has been a terrible shock for us all. She doesn’t mean anything.’

‘I know what Ruby means, Mrs Morgan, and of your two daughters I think it is the younger one you need to pray for the most.’ The priest glanced at George who was still sitting at the table and his voice was a bark when he said, ‘If you are ready to accompany me to the Gilberts’ I suggest we leave now before your daughter further puts her soul in peril.’

‘I haven’t put my soul in peril by speaking the truth and God knows what’s in Olive’s heart even if you don’t.’

‘That’s enough!’

The look that Father McHaffie gave Ruby as he spoke caused her to step back a pace, and even in her rage and pain she wondered how a man of God, a priest, could appear so devilish. It was the shock of what she had seen in his face that kept her silent as the priest strode out of the kitchen into the hall, her father following a moment later but stopping long enough to squeeze her shoulder as he passed her, his eyes full of pity and sorrow.

They heard the front door shut behind the two men and Ruby turned to look steadily at her sister.