She gave them a spelling test, confusing them by calling out the same list of words twice. Jonathan pointed out her mistake and she rounded on him, telling him to do as he was told and not to be such a busybody, the words flying from her mouth. The boy’s face flushed with shame and she turned to the board to avoid looking at him. She wrote the first verse of ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’, the staccato tap of chalk against board going through her, and told the children to copy it. She left the room, aware of the glances they were exchanging in her wake, and ran along the corridor to the back door. Outside, she leaned against the nubbly pebbledashed wall. Her chest was tight and she was trembling all over. What was wrong with her? The thought of Joanna Agnew had troubled her for the length of time it took to smoke a cigarette. Was it that her body had become her conscience, sending shudders through her to remind her of her badness? She stayed outside until her breath returned to normal, and went back indoors. Along the corridor, she expected to hear giggles and whispers, but there was not a sound. She was not usually a cross teacher; her outburst had frightened them.

When the bell rang at three, Davy moved slowly. He was shy of her and she felt like a harridan. Come on, she said, forcing cheer into her voice, helping him put his pencils in their case, a camouflage-patterned canvas one with red ink in the corner like a bloodstain. She left the car park and passed the main entrance of the school, parking outside the parochial house. Davy stayed in the car and Cushla walked around the corner to the newsagent’s. She hovered in front of the magazines.The cover of Cosmopolitan showed a woman swathed in green satin, full red lips around a rosy apple, as if she was about to perform an intimate act on it. Cushla brought a copy to the counter with a Beano for Davy. His father had left Intensive Care and the children had been allowed to visit him. Davy had been quiet in school and, when she asked how his father was, said he was sleeping and covered in bandages.

The local paper was set aside every week under Cushla’s name. The woman who served her asked her twice to spell it, calling her Cursula. For the umpteenth time Cushla wished her parents had called her Anne or Margaret or Rose – not Mary, with its connotations of Marian shrines and rosaries – any name that didn’t mark her out so obviously as a Catholic. She felt guilty for the thought which, she realised, also marked her as a Catholic.