In the kitchen Brigid laid rashers of bacon on a pan, while in the gate-lodge at the end of the avenue the child who had been illegitimately born to her spread sugar on a slice of buttered bread. Tom had the same round face as his mother and the same dark hair. Hers was soft, like a mist about her head, his smooth and straight except for the curve of his fringe. When Tom had asked his mother about his birth—not understanding what Holy Mullihan, an older boy, had been hinting at—she’d told him that the wedding ring, and bits and pieces of furniture for the gate-lodge, had been bought; that the wedding would have taken place within a week. She’d reminded him that it was the time of the Troubles: late one night his father walked into the wires of a mine that had been trailed across the avenue of Carriglas. They’d been as good as married.

The gate-lodge kitchen, where Tom ate the bread and drank the milk that had been left for him, was small, with a red-painted cupboard opposite the range. It contained a sink, a mangle, a table with three chairs around it, a statue of the Holy Child over one of its two doors and a picture of St Bernadette in glory over the other. A window, its frame red-painted also, looked out into an area of grass and weeds, with a privy in a corner.