Grand Affair

‘What does it matter, Lorcan, dotie?’ she would ask, sighing, whenever the matter was raised. ‘In the scheme of things what does it matter, when you come to think of it?’ Gone were all her usual cheerful family catchphrases such as ‘Let’s give it some gumption now, shall we?’ and ‘Nothing stops the O’Flahertys except heaven’s gates’, all said in her soft Western Irish voice.

So Lorcan went out to work, and Ottilie went to school.

Although she went to a very different school from Joseph and Sean, a small convent run by a nun and a priest, Ottilie hated lessons quite as heartily as the boys, and longed to be free like Lorcan to go to work in the morning, to come back with some money to give Ma.

Maybe if she could give Ma some money she would love Ottilie the way she used to, and maybe she would smile and laugh the way she had always done until that dreadful day in the shop when both of them had to go to the police station and Ma had cried so awfully after Lorcan arrived wearing his best white shirt, his head of thick curly hair all tidied.

‘What you doing there, Ottie?’ Lorcan came into the kitchen, his handsome face dark and tanned now from being outside all day so that the colour of his blue-grey eyes stood out in a most startling way from the brown of his face. It was now deep winter and their little cottage was being rocked by the winter winds, and when you walked down to the beach at St Elcombe the sound of the waves pounding the beach was so loud that not even the crying of the seagulls could be heard above it, nor Ma walking along the beach every afternoon as she did now, whatever the weather, talking to herself. ‘You’re not to upset Ma by making a mess.’

‘Not making a mess, Lorcan, making jam tarts,’ Ottilie told him, standing on a kitchen stool to mix the flour and the margarine for the pastry while Joseph, his dark head bent over his homework, sat studying opposite her at the table.

‘You don’t know how to make jam tarts, Ottie.’

‘I do, I do, I do!’ Ottilie raised her voice in indignation.

‘Oh, you do so? So how do you?’

‘You take eight ounces of flour and half as much of fat and then you add the water little by little, and you roll it out with a rolling pin. See? I know because we did it at school.’

Lorcan nodded solemnly. He had no idea whether or not Ottilie was right but when he looked down into the bowl he had to admit the mixture did look like raw pastry. He went out, saying, ‘Well, as long as Joseph’s watching you.’

‘Don’t worry, Lorcan, I’ll put the jam in the pies, and the tray in the oven for her. I won’t let her burn herself.’

Joseph helped as he had promised and Ottilie watched the clock as if it was ticking away her last minutes on earth. Finally there were the tarts looking as good as anything. Ottilie picked up a plate and a cup of water and went through to Ma who was asleep in the tiny sitting room before an unlit fire.

‘I’ve made you a jam tart and some tea, Ma,’ she said, and she pushed her arm gently. Ma did not stir, so Ottilie pushed her some more. Still she did not stir, so Ottilie, having carefully placed the jam tart and the cup on a side table, climbed onto her lap and rocked her face between her hands. ‘Please, please wake up, Ma, please?’

Lorcan must have heard her because he came through from the hall where he was mending a lamp. Seeing Ottilie rocking Ma’s face between her small plump hands he caught her up and took her out, saying, ‘It’s no good, Ottie. When Ma’s like that nothing will wake her, pet, nothing at all. You’ll just have to wait to give her your jam tart, you understand? Just wait till she wakes of her own accord, OK?’

Ottilie nodded, confused and worried, but she ran off back to the kitchen.

‘Ma sleeping it off, is she?’ Joseph looked up from his book as she came back in. ‘Sleeping off the gin. Gin. The big sleep drink,’ Joseph went on, giving a fair imitation of an American accent.

‘Why does she have gin, Joseph?’ Ottilie wondered, transferring her kitchen stool to the sink so that she could wash up.

‘She has gin because she’s upset still, you know? Because of the incident with the old man that day in the stream, remember? Well, since then, all the local people – well, not all of them, but some of them – they’ve been out to get Ma. That old man. Well. See, he’s related to practically everyone in St Elcombe. And it seems Cornish people don’t like Irish people because of what’s on the news, Lorcan says. But Ma should never have punched him like that. It was asking for it. But then you should never have got into the stream that feeds into the troughs. That water’s very sacred to people round here, you know, like in church? Everything that’s happened, it’s all your fault, Ottie,’ Joseph added, meaning to tease her.

But even though she knew that Joseph was really only teasing Ottilie had to swallow hard to stop herself crying, because although Joseph did not mean what he’d said about its being all her fault that Ma had changed so much she knew it was true. It was all her fault. If she had not climbed into the stream that day the man would never have put his hands on her shoulders and Ma would never have defended her and the people in the grocery shop would never have pretended that she stole their tea and biscuits.

Every day after that Ottilie brought Ma a gift, something she had made or something she had drawn or painted, or a piece of fruit given to her by the greengrocer on her way home from school. Much as she wanted to eat the apple or the banana, she always kept it in her satchel for Ma. But when she ran into the cottage hoping against hope that today she would find her old Ma, the one who was always so happy and kind, she would stop at the sitting room door the moment she heard the sound of Ma snoring, and not bother to go any further into the room, knowing straight away that the old Ma was still not back, that she was lost to them for another day.

One day Lorcan came back full of news. The builder was so pleased with his work he was to get a pay rise, another two pounds a week, but better than that Mr Hulton’s firm had been asked to renovate the old Grand Hotel on the seafront.

‘You know, the one that looks like a crumbling sandcastle?’ he told the other children. ‘I reckon we’ll be there for years and years. Mr Hulton says there’s enough work there to carry us into the next century.’

Lorcan was so thrilled with his news that he even tried to wake Ma, but as usual Ma was sleeping so heavily that not even he could wake her properly.

‘I just wish I could get her to stop being like this, just once,’ he said, turning away from her in sudden and uncharacteristic despair. ‘I wonder should I go and see the doctor? Should I tell him she’s not well most days now?’

‘Don’t be daft. You can’t tell anyone anything, not here in St Elcombe,’ said Joseph. ‘Please, Lorcan. Just leave Ma alone. She’ll soon go back to being like she was before. One of these days she’ll stop falling asleep, she will, really. I expect it’s just what Ma herself was always going on about, just a – what was it? – oh yes, just a phase.’

‘If only they hadn’t put that thing in the paper,’ Sean sighed. ‘It was when she saw that – “St Elcombe Woman Fined” – that she got really bad. Such a fuss. They spelt her name wrong anyway – “O’Flannery” – and it was only a small item at the bottom of a silly page of news, after all, nothing to write home about.’

‘People have been blown off those cliffs you know, Ma. You must take care of yourself, particularly in those old shoes of yours with the laces always coming untied.’

‘I know what I’m about, Lorcan. I’m still the woman of the house, think what you may. And I’ll thank you not to tell me how to go on, dotie darling, for all that I’m sure you mean well.’

‘I’m not telling you how to behave, Ma,’ Lorcan told her, trying to take her hands in his to make her look at him. ‘I wouldn’t do that, Ma, ever. I just don’t want you having an accident, none of us do. And of course you’re still the woman of the house, and always will be.’

Ma looked up at her eldest son, her eyelids swollen and her face plump now from the water retention caused by alcohol. She said nothing, but Ottilie could see that as she turned away her lips were trembling from the effort of not crying. She thundered from the room, her new much fatter figure making her seem clumsy where once she had been so graceful. Even her hair was no longer as lustrous as it had been, but flat and unkempt, and the long plait was not now anchored firmly on top of her head with a kirby grip in moments of crisis or decision but left to hang down around her face.

Ottilie already knew what would happen next. Lorcan would have to watch helplessly as Ma once more escaped from the cottage, perhaps to walk yet again down to the beach or across the cliffs to Branhaven, and the usual feeling of inadequacy would sweep over him, the feeling that he might as well not be there for all the use that he, her eldest son, was to her. He loved his mother, but only she could stop herself from being destroyed, only she could pull herself back from the state into which her own hurt pride had sunk her. Ottilie knew all this because she loved Lorcan with all her heart, and because she loved him she would see the hurt in his eyes, and the look that was so much older than his years – the shoulders already a little stooped from anxiety, the hands already roughened from manual work, everything telling of the old young man that he was, the fated eldest son so often required by absent fathers to throw away their precious youth so that Da could be free.

‘Are you ready for school, Ottie?’ he asked, looking down at her.

Ottilie nodded, silent as always at these moments when she knew that Lorcan and she were feeling just the same even though he was seventeen and she was seven. Nowadays Lorcan might work all the time at the Grand Hotel on the front, but Ottilie was sure that she was fast catching him up in cleverness. She could make pastry, write her name and tie her own shoelaces, but what neither of them could do was bring their beloved Ma back to be with them the way she had always been.

Sister Raphael said to pray to God for things that you really wanted, and He would know all about what was truly in your heart. But to Ottilie praying meant just saying over and over again ‘Please make Ma better’ and squeezing her hands together so hard that they hurt, so strongly that they ached when she finally stopped begging God, besieging Him, to make Ma better soon.

Lorcan and the boys always walked Ottilie to school together. It meant leaving as early as seven thirty because Lorcan had to be on site by eight o’clock. It also meant that Ottilie was left alone each day in the school hall for nearly an hour. Nowadays she would spend the time kneeling in front of the statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, absorbed in prayer for Ma and mesmerized by the sight of the statue’s golden heart with all the rays of love coming out of it.

Today Ottilie prayed so hard for Ma to be the way she had been before she was accused of taking the tea and the biscuits from the shop that for the rest of the morning, even when she was writing her alphabet or reading aloud from her Early Learning Book, she still felt as if she was praying, as if she was elevated in some way, watching herself from above and seeing everything that was happening in the classroom, but not being really there.

So intense was her experience that when all the other children went out into the playground to skip, if they were lucky enough to own a skipping rope, or to practise netball, Ottilie stayed behind to pray in front of the statue, and it was there, as she was praying perhaps harder than she had ever prayed before, that she felt a firm hand suddenly fall upon her shoulder.

So elevated was she, so much apart, that she almost passed out from the fright of that hand on her shoulder. So it was that when she turned to look up at the nun standing behind her, Ottilie’s face had already lost most of its colour.

Lorcan walked along talking all the time, thinking perhaps that by keeping going he could make sense of everything to her, but most of all to himself.

‘It’s not that surprising really, Ottie, now we come to think of it, is it? I mean I’ve been expecting something like this, and so has Joseph, we all have. It’s not as if we haven’t been warning her, and the way things have been – well, even you must have noticed, Ottie. Ma has not been herself for a good long while, not since being in the paper.

‘And Joseph and I, you know – we couldn’t stop her going over those cliffs to Branhaven any more than we ever could stop her doing anything she wanted. We did try, Ottie, all of us, but sometimes no-one can stop another person from doing what they want, they will just go on in their own way. That’s how Ma has been these last months, going on in her own way, so it’s not our fault what happened. She just must have slipped and fallen the way we all feared she might. But she didn’t suffer. She must have died instantly. The police said so, and they know all about that kind of accident, Mr Hulton says. He told me, you see, he came and told me that Ma had fallen off the cliffs and her body had been seen by another lady walking her dog.’

Lorcan stopped, and Ottilie stood still too and stared up at him. Quite suddenly her eldest brother appeared even older than he had seemed when he dropped her off at school earlier. He seemed taller too, more like a real man than ever, perhaps because he had been called away from the Grand before he’d had time to change from the work clothes that made him look like other men they passed, all of them wearing overalls.

‘Will Da come back to us now, Lorcan? Will he come and take us back to Number Four?’ Ottilie wanted to know. Not that she knew Da, not even what he looked like, but she thought she just ought to say something quickly, there and then, in case she cried. Being brought up with boys she knew never to cry or they laughed at you.

‘Oh, Da hasn’t been near us in years, Ottie. I doubt if Ma ever heard from him again, after he sent her the money for the cottage that time. I think she knew it was a kind of pay-off, you know, that he would not be seeing us or her again for a good long while, if at all.’

Lorcan paused, thinking to himself and then speaking out loud as if hearing the words rather than just thinking them was reassuring, calming.

‘I think that’s why she moved us like that, you know? To be away from any memories of Da at Number Four. They were very happy until the police and that came for him. And of course, Ma being a country girl, she liked the idea of going back to fields and meadows. Remember those pictures she was always picking up and staring at in Number Four? The ones of the fields and the sea? That’s why she brought us here. That was how she remembered Ireland, when she was a child, and that’s why she wanted to come here. She thought it would be like Ireland.’ Lorcan stopped pacing up and down the road, and kneeling to Ottilie’s level he looked at her very seriously. ‘I’m sure Da is around somewhere, of course, I doubt that he’s dead or anything, but there was nothing at Christmas from him, you know, not even a card, so there’s no way of reaching him in America and telling him Ma’s had an accident. He travels around so, for the work, and to keep ahead of the Green Card thing.’

Lorcan could not bring himself to say that his mother was dead.

In his mind even as he voiced his thoughts Ma had still only ‘met with an accident’. Fallen over the cliffs. Tripped on her shoelaces. Broken her neck. She was not dead so much as not alive. And she was simply not alive because she had done what he and Joseph had kept begging her not to do, walked over the cliffs to Branhaven just for a bit of a shop in windy weather.

‘Fact is, Ottie, Da could be anywhere and America’s a very big place. Look, I’ve gotta go now. You’re a good girl. Be brave now, and try hard at your books. Don’t let me down.’

Lorcan reached down and hugged Ottilie and as always Ottilie swallowed hard, her nails pressed into her small hands, trying not to let Lorcan see that there were tears in her eyes, trying not to show Lorcan just how frightened she was at the idea of not having Ma with them any more. What would it be like not to find her sitting on her chair outside the cottage, or even sleeping in the sitting room, what would it be like not to hear her say ‘Come here while I give you a kiss, dotie’?

‘I’ve to go and see the others, and then back to the site. Mr Hulton said I must go straight back once I’ve told you all about the accident because I’m a professional and it wouldn’t do in front of the other men to have too much time off because then they’d all want it, you know? I’ll pick you up at tea as usual. Stay until we come. Don’t move now, whatever happens, after the bell rings, just wait for us.’

Ottilie turned back towards the school. Back into the dark panelled hall, and back past the small altar with its statue of the Sacred Heart before which she had prayed so hard that morning, begging God with His big golden heart with all its golden rays to turn Ma back into a happy person again, to stop her sleeping, to make her, please, please, please, like the way she had been before, the way Ottilie always thought of her, laughing and singing and making little jokes and always looking on the best side no matter what, being the Ma she remembered from Number Four. She so wanted her to be back with them again just how she was before they came to this foreign country called Cornwall, before Ottilie had sinned by paddling in the stream that day and making the old man angry, before God punished her and Ma had her name in the paper as ‘St Elcombe Woman Fined’.

As she passed the statue on its plinth Ottilie stopped and stared at it as if she had never seen it before, which in a way she felt she never had, for now she looked at it, now she knew that Ma was dead, she realized that the statue was not God with a big golden heart, someone full of love for small children, but just something painted by a man, and the man with the big heart – he was just something painted too, nothing to do with God or being kind.

Sean was taking advantage of them all, pushing home his point, making sure that Ottilie felt that she was yards younger than the rest of them, too young for this, too young for that.

‘I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming!’ Ottilie bent her head down low. ‘I want to come.’

‘You can’t come. You’re too young, and you’re a girl.’

Lorcan appeared wearing a black tie and a white shirt and a suit that Mr Hulton had given him from his attic, which had once belonged to Mr Hulton’s son.

‘Of course Ottilie’s coming, Sean, and that’s that. Ma was her mother too, the only one she has known.’

Sean shook his head of red curls towards his sister, his green eyes taking in her appearance. ‘But she’s not got a black dress, Lorcan. Everyone will talk.’

Lorcan disappeared back into the cottage and then reappeared with the black lace mantilla veil that Ma always wore for church, which he placed gently over Ottilie’s dark hair. ‘There,’ he told her, ‘you’re as smart as paint now.’

Carrying their missals, they all walked up in a file to the tiny modern Catholic church with the corrugated iron roof where they had worshipped so many times with Ma, whom Ottilie fully expected to see seated at the back of the church saying her rosary, or slowly reading her way through one or other of the Catholic newspapers on sale outside the door. Or sighing gently through most of the service, as if the priest was keeping her from something far more important.

But Ma was not there, she was in the wooden box with the single red rose on it, and Lorcan’s hand holding Ottilie’s tightened as they all walked towards it.

‘Please help Lorcan not to cry,’ Ottilie could not help praying. It would be terrible if Lorcan, who had always been so tall and so old and a father to them all, it would be terrible if he started to cry because that would mean that they really were truly alone.

Lorcan did not cry. He conducted himself as perfectly as a man should, and although Ma had not known many people in St Elcombe there were others in the church, whom Lorcan had shaken hands with when the service was over, and they had followed the coffin to the churchyard and thrown the earth upon the wooden lid. Lorcan now asked them back to tea at the cottage. Mr Hulton and his wife, and two people whom Ottilie did not know at all, Mr and Mrs Cartaret, a handsome dark-haired couple who Ottilie was told by Joseph ‘might be going to look after you’.

‘And you. They want to look after you and Sean and Lorcan too, don’t they?’

‘No,’ Joseph said, running ahead to the cottage door at which he jumped with flattened hands before turning to look at Ottilie, his dark eyes thoughtful and concerned. ‘They don’t want me or Sean but they’ll let me help with the building work on their hotel once I’m sixteen, and they’ll look after you. Mr Hulton told Lorcan they don’t want boys, they want a girl because Mrs Cartaret lost a little girl in the sea years ago, and now you could be a new daughter for her and she could bring you up, but you’ll have to be called Cartaret like them, not O’Flaherty, but since the Little People brought you that doesn’t matter, does it, Ottie?’

‘I don’t want to be called Ottilie Carter-let. I want to go on being me.’

‘Shsh.’ Joseph nudged her, and pulled her into the kitchen away from the other mourners and shut the door. ‘Listen. It’s good they want you, Ottie. They’ll give you new shoes and clothes and you’ll have lots to eat because of its being a hotel where they live, and when you grow up Lorcan says you’ll learn to arrange flowers and answer the telephone like a lady, and there will be lots of money. Always. Think of that, Ottie, you’ll always have something to eat.’

‘But I don’t want to do flowers, I want to be here with you and Lorcan and Sean.’

‘Shsh,’ Joseph said angrily, and he widened his large dark grey eyes with their thick black lashes dramatically, at the same time jerking his head in the direction of the door which was now opening to reveal Lorcan. ‘Shsh, Ottie, or you’ll spoil everything for all of us, do you hear?’ He squeezed her arm hard and with intent, the way he would do sometimes when Ottilie wriggled too much while he was watching television. ‘They’re Mr Hulton’s friends, these Cartarets, and they’re going to help us all. Tell her, Lorcan, tell her how lucky she is that Mr and Mrs Cartaret want her to go and live with them.’

But neither Joseph’s words nor his arm-squeezing made any difference to Ottilie.

‘Please don’t make me go and live with Mr Hulton’s friends, Lorcan,’ she cried, and she threw herself at her eldest brother and clasped his knees to her face. ‘Please, please, don’t let me go and live anywhere except with you. I just want to be with you and Joseph and Sean. Oh please, Lorcan. I’ll be so good. I won’t make jam tarts or anything again, not ever, not if you don’t want it, oh please don’t send me away.’

‘Shut the door, Joseph, for God’s sake, before they all hear her.’

Lorcan unclasped Ottilie’s arms from around his lower half and lifting her up quite easily he placed her on a tall, wooden kitchen stool, the one from which she always used to wash up, the one she was ready never ever to make tarts from again, if only Lorcan would not send her away.

‘Now stop this, Ottie, do you hear? Ma’s dead and we have to make the best of everything, see? Mr and Mrs Hulton, well, they’ve been very kind to us, being that they’re Catholics and all that, and they’ve found you a place in a proper home where you can be a proper girl, and grow up to be a lady in a pretty dress, and have all those things Ma would have wanted for you, but couldn’t give you.’

‘I don’t want anything, I just want to be here, always,’ Ottilie sobbed. ‘Please, please don’t send me away, Lorcan.’

‘You will go away and like it.’

Lorcan’s face was suddenly furious and he shook Ottilie.

‘You will go away and like it, do you hear? And you’re not to cry or they won’t want to take you, they don’t want a little girl with a blotchy face and untidy clothes. They want you same as you were in church just now, see? Looking like a little angel in black lace and being good. That’s why they came to Ma’s funeral, to see you, and because Mr Hulton told them you were a nice little girl who needed a home. You’re lucky, Ottilie, we all are. Ma was a thief, and most people don’t want anything to do with the children of a thief.’

‘Ma was not a thief! How dare you, Lorcan!’

Joseph sprang at Lorcan ready to hit him, but his eldest brother fended him off with one hand, determinedly speaking in a low voice for he was terrified of being heard by the other mourners.

‘She was, Joseph. Ma was a thief all right. A good thief I’ll warrant you, but a thief all the same. All those trips over the cliffs to Branhaven, all those tins of peaches and that, they were all stolen. Every single one of them. You didn’t know, none of you knew, but I knew. She didn’t take that tea and those biscuits from the St Elcombe shop, but she took a hell of a lot of other things. Ah, for goodness sakes, Joseph, she even took the bucket and spade she gave to Ottilie here.’

Joseph and Ottilie stared at Lorcan, completely silenced. Realizing he had their attention now Lorcan continued with one eye on the still shut kitchen door.

‘It all began in London, when Da left her, see? She started to take in children and look after them for people who didn’t feed them enough and didn’t have money. That’s why she was called “Mrs Mac” never “Mrs O’Flaherty” while we were at Number Four. MacDonagh’s was where she took all the things, see? She stole food for us and the other children she looked after. Don’t ask me what went on in her head for her to think that she could, don’t ask me, please. But at Number Four it didn’t matter, because the manager of Macs always turned a blind eye and of course the story in the neighbourhood was that Ma went there at the end of the day just so she could buy all the cheap foods, and that’s why they – you know, the neighbours – they called her “Mrs Mac”. As a matter of fact, in the end I think even Ma came to believe that story herself, that she was actually paying, just getting everything cheap, not stealing it.’

Lorcan paused.

‘It was all right when we were back there, all that time we were at Number Four, but then we came down here, and of course it wasn’t the same, for why would it be? There was no kind manager and no Macs or anything like that, no greenies on Saturday from Charlie’s uncle, just Ma and her big coat pockets and her paper bags waiting to be filled up with things she hadn’t paid for.’

Lorcan paused as he looked at the shocked faces of the two younger children and for a second he felt for them, but he also knew it was better that it was he who was doing the telling and not someone else. It had to be said, especially now that Ma was dead. They had to understand, all of them, that their mother was a human being, that they had not lost an angel or a saint.

‘The three of you, you thought it was some sort of conspiracy, that the shop people were just getting back at her because of her getting punchy with that fellow who was ticking Ottilie off the first day here, but of course it was nothing of the sort. He’s just a poor old gombeen, queer in the head and simple at that. The poor people who owned that shop, when they put the things into the box to catch Ma – which I am sure, quite sure, they definitely did do – you have to feel for them, for weren’t they all at the end of their tether because they knew her pockets had been filled with their stuff on so many occasions? All those times Ma was meant to be watching Ottilie on the sand, she was in and out of there when they were at their busiest, taking things. You couldn’t blame them for wanting to catch her, really you couldn’t, it’s their livelihood too, you know.’

‘But Ma always said she’d put my hand in the fire if she caught me stealing.’

‘That’s it, Joseph, that’s just it, and she would have done exactly that. She didn’t want us to grow up the way she was. But for herself she – well, you see, she never thought what she was doing was wrong, she didn’t see it that way. I reckon she was so much in the habit of doing what she did, I reckon she just thought she was feeding us, helping us, the way a mother bird brings back the worms, you know? That’s why I think she took to the drink the way she did, after it was in the paper about her being fined. She drank not because she wanted to stop taking the things, because she didn’t, but because she just couldn’t understand being caught. That’s different, isn’t it? She still went on going over the cliffs, still went back to the same old ways. Only in Branhaven she started to steal gin as well, which she’d never done before – she never stole for herself before – and then she’d drink it on her way home. The police told me that they found the path where she walked was littered with the half-bottles that she’d thrown down towards the sea. It was inevitable that one day she would fall. And shall I tell you something?’

Ottilie and Joseph stared up at him.

‘It was far better that she did. Better for her to be dead than locked up in some six foot by nine foot prison cell with only a lavatory for company.’ Lorcan looked directly at Joseph, excluding Ottilie. ‘She was a wild bird, our mother, she would have just battered her poor wings against the prison bars. As it is she’s gone before us, and sleeps the sleep of peace, God rest her.’

Lorcan turned and looked into Ottilie’s eyes, his own beautiful grey ones as sad and solemn as Ottilie had ever seen them.

‘So now you know, Ottie,’ he told her, still speaking in a hushed and urgent manner, ‘why you’re so very lucky that Mrs Cartaret has decided to take you in as she has done. God help you, being taken on by Mrs Cartaret, you must be the luckiest little girl in the whole world. And do you know something? Do you know that from now on, for ever and ever, you will never want for anything? Imagine that, Ottie, imagine being that lucky? You will never need to take things from a shop to feed your children, you will never believe that you have to do those things to help your babies. You will always have shoes for your feet, as they say in Ireland.’

Ottilie turned away from Lorcan, a helpless despair descending on her. From now on she was quite sure that for her the sun would never shine again, the flowers would never flower again and she would never again he in the grass listening for the sound of grasshoppers or ants on the march.

If she had known that in all her life she would never feel sadder than she did at that moment she might have been comforted, but as it was all she knew was that from now on she was completely alone.