Mrs O’Keefe lived further up the avenue and Mary Kate had met her on the boat from Ireland. Her arrival in Liverpool had been disastrous and if it hadn’t been for the kindly Mrs O’Keefe, and Cat, her great-aunt’s neighbour, she might well have ended up back in Tarabeg within a week. Now those two women were her closest friends; their unquestioning support felt like a warm blanket draped across her shoulders.

The words echoed through Mary Kate’s mind as she stared at Nicholas’s reflection in the mirror. She would never mention that possibility to him. He was obviously blissfully unaware and had enough to deal with. His first thoughts were always for his patients, and as Bella often told her, ‘He’s the hardest-working doctor in all of Liverpool and his patients love him more than any doctor I’ve ever worked for – and I’ve worked for some very important doctors in my time. I saved the best till last.’ Bella, who threatened to retire at least once a day, would place a soft hand on top of Mary Kate’s and give it a little squeeze. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t leave him,’ she always said, ‘if you don’t either.’

Mrs O’Keefe regularly counselled Mary Kate to share her concerns over their morning coffee together and not to worry Nicholas. ‘Don’t burden him. His patients do enough of that, with all their problems. God knows how much he does for them. There are only so many problems one man can shoulder in a day. That Lavinia, she was a truly wicked woman, and thank God there aren’t many like her. But, despite her wickedness, he has all the guilt and the shame to shoulder in this because he would wish it any other way for your sake and for his boys too. He would stop the tide for you, that man, if he thought it would make you happy, because you make his boys happy.’ Wise and true words from the woman who had become the closest to a mother any girl away from her own home and family could have wished for.

Nicholas sat on the bed and pulled on his socks, his heart heavy with the words Lavinia had spoken to him the previous day. She had threatened to report him. He would never let Mary Kate know that she hounded him on a daily basis, and he had secured a promise from Bella that she wouldn’t breathe a word about the intimidation or the telephone tantrums to a living soul. Even though Nicholas held a letter that proved Lavinia’s adultery, she vowed to ruin him should he ever use it to sue for divorce. And because he and Mary Kate were living together, in sin, as man and wife, he knew he would be struck off the register and forbidden from practising again if she did report him. That nightmare possibility haunted him, along with the sound of Jack’s pitiful tears; he was all too aware that he and Mary Kate were teetering on the edge of an abyss, their situation so precarious that it couldn’t possibly last.