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the priest standing there she knew her prayer had been answered so promptly she could only gape in wonder, holding out both hands as if to warm them at a glowing fire.
    ‘Father!’ She drew the priest inside, pulled the rocking-chair closer to the fender, pushed the kettle over the coals.
    ‘You’ll have a pot of tea, Father? It’s blowing outside fit to whip your tonsils out. The wind’s been whacking at the windows all night.’ She moved an outsized clothes maiden festooned with steaming undergarments away from the fire. ‘I bet it snows when the wind drops. I bet it does.’
    Father O’Leary unfastened his long black cloak and draped it over the back of a stand-chair. Annie’s mother had had her roots deep in Methodism but she had always made him welcome, listened to him gravely, then sent him on his way feeling that somehow she had been too clever for him. Her husband now … well, Jack Clancy was another matter.
    ‘No good coming here for a hand-out, Father,’ he’d say. ‘And no good trying to persuade me to come to Confession. I’d keep you too long. There’s not much short of murder that I haven’t done!’
    Putting his fingers together like the steeple of a church, the old man smiled on Annie.
    ‘A warm drink wouldn’t come amiss, and by the look of you, my child, you’ll be glad of one yourself.’
    He was taken aback when Annie suddenly dropped to her knees by his chair. ‘You’ve come in answer to a prayer, Father.’
    ‘Indeed, my child?’
    What a pathetic sight she was in that man’s cap, bundled up in clothes not fit for the rag bag.
    ‘Take your time, Annie,’ he said, removing his glasses which had steamed up and no wonder with the room like a Turkish bath.
    ‘I don’t know how to say it, Father.’ She had her head down, speaking so quietly he couldn’t hear a word she said.
    ‘Speak up, child. There’s nothing so bad that a good confession can’t put right.’
    ‘I didn’t know what I was doing, Father …’
    ‘I’m listening. Take a deep breath, and take your time.’
    ‘There was a man, Father.’
    The priest drew in a deep breath. Surely …? Oh, no! He had often grieved for the life this young girl led since her mother’s untimely end. It was all wrong that young Annie Clancy should be bringing up a family of boys, taking in washing to keep them fed. Never leaving the house as far as he knew except to lug a heavy clothes basket round the streets. And look at her … just look at her … He shook his head. For a minute he’d thought the worst.
    ‘This man. Did he say something to frighten you, my child?’
    Annie’s head drooped even lower. ‘He came as a lodger , Father, back last September. Our dad told him he could stop here. He was a sailor.’
    Light was beginning to dawn. ‘And now he’s sailed away on a troop ship?’
    ‘No! He doesn’t … he didn’t work that kind of ship.’ Her voice was ragged with shame. ‘I’m going to have a baby! An’ nothing will shift it. Nothing!’
    Father O’Leary closed his eyes, but not in prayer. What he was thinking at that moment wasn’t fit for anybody’s ears, let alone God’s. The blind panic in Annie’s eyes shocked him into an anger so great he could feel himself beginning to tremble with the force of it.
    ‘To even
think
of trying to get rid of a baby is a mortal sin, child,’ he said automatically, in the instant before his natural compassion took over. ‘Are you
sure
?’ His mind groped for an explanation. ‘You can’t have a baby with just kissing a man, Annie.’ He put the glasses on again and coughed. ‘Did your mother not talk to you before she … before she died?’
    ‘I did more than kissing, Father.’
    Annie stood up, and as she did so the shawl dropped away. The kettle came to a spluttering boil and she leaned over to lift it from the trivet.
    It was true … Father O’Leary glimpsed the thickening of her normally slender waist, saw the big safety-pin bridging the placket of the