Cat cursed and inserted another d.

‘I don’t think Nicholas was right, sending her home. I feel it in my bones, I do. I know she has to go, but I don’t think she’s any safer there than she is here. It’s running right through me. Maybe it’s because she’s such a trusting and innocent girl, I don’t know, but I always feel as though there’s something around the corner with Mary Kate. Like when she first arrived in Liverpool – remember? – and she was mugged.’

‘I can’t forget, can I?’ said Cat. ‘She ended up at my door. That’s how we both got to know her.’ Cat chewed on the end of the pen and looked thoughtful. ‘She’s a liability, you’re right, because she’s one of those people. Not ordinary like me and you. Nothing ever happens to me from one month end to the next, but Mary Kate, she’s just different. You know what I mean, don’t you?’ She looked up at Mrs O’Keefe.

‘Aye, you’re right, she is different. It’s not just that she is the prettiest girl to have ever lived in this avenue, and Lord knows, that’s enough to bring its own fair measure of trouble, but there is something about Mary Kate and it makes me worry too. You’re right, that’s a good word to describe her – a liability. Mind you, it’s a liability I’m happy to know.’

‘And that,’ said Cat, ‘is the reason why I have to write this letter to Bee and get it in the post right away.’

Chapter 7

Peggy hauled a sack of flour from inside Malone’s General Store onto the wooden pallet under the shop window and waved to Keeva as she stepped out onto the wide road at just the same moment, to watch her five boys make their way to school.

Despite it being November, a weak and watery sun had made a reluctant appearance, but that was doing nothing to take the chill off the breeze blowing in from the coast a mile away. One by one, Keeva tucked hand-knitted woollen scarves deep inside the jumpers of each of her sons, before dropping a kiss on the upturned brow of the youngest only. She loved motherhood and took immense pride in making a good job of it.

Scrubbed clean and pink faced, each one of her sons was the image of their father, Tig, and of each other, with hair the colour of ripe carrots and piercing bright blue eyes. It was only their age and height that enabled the villagers to tell them apart. ‘’Tis like watching five little Tigs set off for school,’ Grandad Paddy had said with pride as they filed past him in an orderly line, under Keeva’s instruction.

The line had disintegrated into a tussle and scrum by the time they reached the opposite side of the road, all five of them calling out their hellos to Peggy as they passed.

‘Has Finn left already, Peggy?’ Aedan, the eldest, asked her.