Relieved that someone else was in charge, Michael followed Joe’s orders without question, straightaway running back out of the door and up towards the crossroads and the tailor’s.

‘Paddy, do you have a gun?’

Tig heard Joe’s words and flinched. Fists and boots were the village way, but he knew Joe was right. They were lucky to have him with them, Tig thought, cursing his leg as he hobbled up the stairs behind Keeva, shouting, ‘Are they there? Are they there?’

Keeva burst into the bedroom. Despite the commotion, her three youngest were sleeping peacefully exactly where she’d left them, exhausted from a day of playing down on the football pitch and by the river’s edge, their faces flushed pink and their cupid lips parted. The youngest was sucking his thumb loudly.

‘Thank you, thank you, Holy Mother of God,’ she gasped as she collapsed to her knees at the side of the bed and sobbed with relief, her arms spread out across the covers.

Tig waited a second for his beating heart to calm and his lungs to fill. ‘Keeva, steady on, would you. The lads must have been dreaming, to be sure, and you know Aedan, he would imagine any excuse to get up from his bed and take himself over to the Malones’ to join in a party. He would have brought Iain to give him cover.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Would you look at the trouble they’ve caused. Everyone running around like madmen downstairs. Feck, they’ve done it this time, so they have. Mammy will skin them alive. And Father Jerry will have them serving at the altar for first Mass every day this week for lying again.’

There was some truth in what Tig said. Five boys who did not have red hair for nothing ran Keeva ragged most days and tied their father in knots; the only person they behaved for was Granny Josie, who brooked no nonsense and loved them as much as she scolded them. Tig’s words began to penetrate Keeva’s distress. She rose from the bed, lifted the covers high over the younger boy’s shoulders and tucked them in protectively around all three.

The crochet throw she had made herself had been kicked to the bottom and she straightened it out, appearing to Tig quite calm now. But then she spoke, through almost clenched teeth. ‘The little feckers,’ she hissed, her equilibrium restored. ‘I’ll kill them, if your mother doesn’t get to them first.’

Tig, who normally did nothing but admire his sons’ high spirits, tried as hard as he could, but he couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he negotiated his way back down the wooden stairs with his stick in one hand and his torch in the other. The only time he and Keeva argued was when she chastised him for being too easy on the boys. He had never once so much as raised his hands to one of them, unlike his mother, who always managed to make contact with at least one backside out of five when she took her slipper off and hobbled after one of them.