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his words to remain unchallenged. He glanced back at her, and Dana saw him flinch when he saw her thighs. For a moment, there was silence between them.
    ‘No, I’ll take your word, Dana. Cover yerself up now. I have to believe ye, because your mammy’s heart would be broken if there were to be any scandal about you in the town. You are her golden girl, and I don’t want her to be made unhappy. But let this be a lesson to ye. Ye can’t lead someone on the way ye have Patrick for all these years and not expect there to be consequences when ye let him down. What has happened to ye tonight, ’tis yer own fault. Now, pull yourself together and then come back inside as though nothing has happened. I will make sure Patrick is taken home.’
    Dana’s breath came in short gasps. She wanted to run at her father and throw herself at his back and pummel him with her fists. To scream at the injustice of it. To make him suffer for what Patrick had just put her through. She watched as he retreated down the path, knowing he would take her word, not because she spoke the truth, or because he believed in her, or because there was blood trickling down her thighs or because he was moved by her tears, but for the sake of her mother. His first instinct was to protect her mammy, not herself, because Dana had not been the son he had wanted to carry on the farm. He had never forgiven her for that. For a moment, she felt too weak to step back inside the hall. She was shaking like a leaf and all she wanted was to be comforted by her mother, who had loved her twice as much to compensate for her father, and to be back in her own bed in her own room. Her evening had been ruined in a way she would never forget.
    In her heart, Dana knew she would never forgive her father for doubting her. For thinking she had led Patrick on. For doubting her morals and her integrity. It would be a long day before Noel Brogan’s daughter ever spoke to him again.
    *
    The day she left home was both the best and the worst of Dana’s life.
    ‘Make us proud,’ her mammy said, as Mr Joyce waited at the gate with his van ticking over, ready to take her to the station. He ran the closest thing they had to a taxi and serviced the villages for miles around.
    ‘I will, Mammy. I’ll try my best,’ she said, as her grandmother shuffled out of the door into the yard and pressed a ten-shilling note into her hand. Her father remained indoors with his back to the fire, smoking his pipe, ignored. Dana had not confided the events of the previous evening to her mother. She knew all hell would erupt, and she was anxious that nothing should delay her leaving. One day she would tell her, just not now.
    Suddenly she heard her name being called, and when she looked up the road she saw some of her friends running to catch her, their mothers and siblings running behind. Dana beamed and waved. Mr Joyce took her case and her heart sang while her friends clamoured around her, chattering and hugging her as between them they loaded the last of her bags into the back of Mr Joyce’s van, and her mother cried.
    ‘Go on now, get in the van and be away,’ one of them said, ‘before yer mammy’s a wreck.’
    Two minutes later, she was peering through the back window at the people she had known all her life, standing in solidarity, waving her off as a group. She knew that within five minutes they would all be in the farm kitchen drinking tea, her daddy being told to go and find something stronger to slip into it, this being the day Dana left for Liverpool. As the van moved down the road and along their bottom field she could see the cows impatiently lowing at the field gate waiting to be milked just as they had, twice a day, every single day of her life, and it occurred to her then that her entire life had revolved around that very routine and that now, from this moment, that would no longer be the case. The steadfast boundaries which had controlled her life were fading into small specks in the