She had paid for what she’d done that New Year’s Eve, she told herself as the ever-present humiliation and pain washed over her in a great wave, bringing her hands to her face as she rocked herself back and forth. She paid every day for it. And some nights. Oh, yes, some nights.

‘Mama, Mama.’ Alice’s voice brought her out of the maelstrom of despair and she saw her daughter was holding out her arms to her, struggling to climb out of the highchair now her father had left. Whisking the child into her arms, Olive held her close, drinking in the smell and feel of her as two chubby little arms wrapped themselves round her neck and Alice’s cheek nuzzled against hers.

This was what it was all about; for this she would endure what needed to be endured. Her bairn loved her because she was her mam; it didn’t matter to Alice that she was ugly. Alice didn’t wish she was someone else or think she was wicked or judge her wanting.

She didn’t deserve her bairn, she knew that, but please, God, keep her healthy and safe, she prayed as hot tears streamed down her face. It was a constant fear, loving her as she did, that she would be punished by losing Alice to one of the childhood diseases that swept the towns and cities every so often. Just the other Sunday Father McHaffie had preached that God wouldn’t be mocked and sin had to be paid for, and he had looked straight at her when he had said it.

How she loathed that man. Immediately the thought came into her mind she was begging God to forgive her for it. It was the most heinous of crimes to criticize a priest, even if the criticism wasn’t voiced out loud; everyone knew that, and if they didn’t you could be sure they soon would when Father McHaffie preached his Sunday sermons. Priests were only one step down from the Almighty Himself and on the same par in holiness, if the father was to be believed. Eh, she was doing it again, and she had enough sins on her conscience as it was.

Shaking her head at herself, Olive set Alice down and once the little girl was occupied in playing with the brightly coloured wooden bricks Adam’s mother had bought for her granddaughter, she finished clearing away the dirty dishes and washed up.