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  She couldn’t say she had been unhappy exactly at her secondary school, she enjoyed the classes. Some of the teachers had been very stimulating. But she never clicked with a crowd. She always found herself floating on the fringes with the other outcasts, as she privately termed them. Girls like Mary Kelly, whose father was an alcoholic and who caused such rows at night that poor Mary never got a decent night’s sleep. She often nodded off in class, much to the amusement of the rest, who would nudge each other and whisper, ‘Dozy Dora’s off again.’ Or Sandra Moran, who had terrible BO and bad breath and who looked as if she had slept in a haystack and who hadn’t much of a clue about her studies. They called her ‘Smelly Nellie.’

  Rachel knew her own nickname was Specky-Four-Eyes. She’d heard Eileen Dunphy call her that one day in third year, when she was playing basketball and missed a shot. Eileen turned to Vivienne Riordan and said scathingly, ‘Why on earth does Michelle pick Specky-Four-Eyes Stapleton for her team? The moron hasn’t got a clue!’ This only served to make Rachel feel even more awkward and clumsy and twice she fumbled the ball as she dribbled it, allowing the opposing team to take possession. After that humiliating débâcle she stopped playing basketball, and retired instead to the library at lunch-time, or went for a solitary walk along the prom.

  She had been full of hope when she started secondary school. Away from the stern eye of her father, Rachel decided that she was going to turn over a new leaf. After all, she was thirteen, a teenager, and she had been eagerly devouring the pages of Jackie. She had learned all about how to be self-confident. She knew she had to make an effort to talk to other people and to remember that they might be just as nervous as she was. She was to look people in the eye and be very interested in what they had to say and that way she would forget her own shyness and she’d be fine. Her father didn’t know that she read Jackie. He certainly wouldn’t approve, he preferred for her to read The Pioneer and The Messenger. The trouble was, her father was terribly old-fashioned. He wouldn’t even let her wear nail varnish. God knows how she was ever going to manage to go with a fella. That is if she was lucky enough to be asked to go with a fella.

  At the moment she was madly in love with Harry Armstrong. He was a friend of Ronan’s and he was just gorgeous. He had the most amazing brown eyes and jet-black hair and he was always teasing her in a nice way. He’d make jokes about what a pest of a younger sister she was. Even worse than Becky, his own pest of a sister. Rachel loved it when he slagged her like that. But what made Harry a god in her eyes was that he had given Patrick McKeown a black eye and a bloody nose on her behalf. No wonder she fell in love with him. For that alone she would love him for ever.

  She’d been walking home from school one winter’s evening when she was in fifth class. It was snowing heavily and she was slipping and sliding on the slushy ice-covered ground. She was on her own, as usual, pretending that she was Laura in Little House on the Prairie in a howling blizzard that was getting worse by the second. She was jerked out of her reverie by the hard cold smack of a snowball against her cheek. Then another and another. A barrage of white missiles assaulted her, blinding her, causing her to slip on the ice. As suddenly as it started, the onslaught ceased and she heard shouting and roaring. Rubbing her eyes, she turned to see Ronan’s friend, Harry Armstrong, dragging Patrick McKeown out from behind a wall, as the rest of his cronies ran away. Harry grabbed a handful of snow and shoved it down Patrick’s neck as the other boy yelled blue murder. Patrick swung out with his left hand, Harry ducked and the next minute, with two neat blows, had bloodied Patrick’s nose and given him a black eye.

  ‘Now get out of here, you little toad, and don’t try that trick on a girl again or you’ll have me to deal with if I hear of it,’ Rachel heard her Sir Galahad say as he gave her assailant a kick in the arse for good measure. Patrick staggered off down the road stunned and Harry crossed over to where Rachel was sitting. He held out his hand and pulled her upright. ‘Are you all right, Rachel?’ he asked kindly.

  Mute, she nodded.

  ‘Come on, I’ll walk home with you, it’s very slippy out, and if ever that little rat annoys you again just tell Ronan or me and we’ll sort him out,’ her hero assured her. Though her teeth were chattering and her coat was soaking, Rachel didn’t notice. All she knew was that Harry Armstrong had saved her in her hour of need and now he was walking home with her.

  That night as she lay in bed sniffling and coughing Rachel decided that it was worth getting snowball-attacked by Patrick McKeown to be rescued by Harry. It was rather romantic, she thought happily, inhaling her Vick-covered handkerchief and giving a mighty sneeze. And he had assured her that if Patrick McKeown troubled her in the future, he would take care of him. To have a protector like Harry Armstrong was any maiden’s dream.

  Harry was the deputy chief altar boy and Rachel spent Sunday Mass when he was serving watching every move he made. She enjoyed the way his cassock flowed around him as he walked from one side of the altar to the other, performing his duties with an air of solemn authority. Not one prayer did she say on the Sundays when Harry Armstrong was serving at Mass. It was a joy just to sit watching her hero.

  Harry remained her hero throughout her secondary schooling. Although he never had cause to rescue her from Patrick McKeown or anyone else for that matter, she still worshipped from afar. Harry treated her like a younger sister, much to her dismay. How she would have loved to be a real girlfriend to him. How she would have loved to parade down the prom in Bray holding his hand as the rest of her classmates did with their boyfriends. It was her greatest dream that he would suddenly take a second look at her and realize that she wasn’t just Ronan’s younger sister, but a scintillating, athletic, confident young woman (just like Michelle) who would make a wonderful girlfriend. Each night Rachel said a special prayer to St Jude, the patron saint of hopeless cases, beseeching him to open Harry’s eyes. Ever hopeful, she patiently waited for the moment when the scales would fall from his eyes and he would realize just what was missing from his life.

  Then she heard that Harry had started going with Ciara Farrell. She lost all faith in St Jude and herself. Rachel was deeply depressed because she was sure that she would be manless for ever. It caused her such trauma at school. At least half the class were dating boys. And the other half were made to feel complete failures because of their lack of success with the opposite sex.

  There was one particular girl whom Rachel hated with a vengeance. Her name was Glenda Mower and she made Rachel’s life a misery. Glenda was a skinny gangly girl who seemed to have taken a dislike to Rachel the first time she met her. She had big brown eyes and straight lank brown hair cut in a bob and she thought she was the greatest thing since fried bread. She had oodles of self-confidence. Glenda took the lead in class debates and discussions and she loved the sound of her own voice. She wanted to be the most popular girl in the class. She was very sweet to everybody, batting her eyelashes, her cocker spaniel eyes as innocent as could be.

  ‘Hi Rachel, you’ve got a hole in your tights,’ she’d say ever so helpfully in her loud penetrating voice. ‘You should rub soap on it to stop it running.’ Rachel would be highly embarrassed as all eyes turned to look. Once when the lunch-time discussions turned to talk of boyfriends, Glenda said sweetly, ‘Rachel, have you ever had a boyfriend? Why don’t you bring him to the disco on Thursday nights?’ Rachel, of course, nearly died and turned scarlet as her classmates waited for her answer. She wanted to curl up in mortification. Even if she had a boyfriend, her father would never allow her to go to a disco in Bray.

  ‘I don’t have a boyfriend,’ she muttered, inwardly cringing.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Glenda sympathized with honeyed insincerity. ‘Well maybe there aren’t many eligibles in your little village but now that you’re here in school in Bray you’ll have no problem finding one. Isn’t that right, girls?’ she addressed the others, grinning. Some of them tittered and then Michelle Butler said with a cold glare in Glenda’s direction, ‘Let’s
hope Rachel will have more luck than you had with Robert Tobin, he was going with Rita Clarke at the same time as he was going with you, wasn’t he? And neither of you knew for ages he was two-timing.’

  It was Glenda’s turn to redden.

  ‘Well I’m not going with him any more, Michelle. I’m going with Marty Campbell now and he’s real nice.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Michelle said sceptically, and as she turned to walk away she winked at Rachel. After that, Glenda never gave Rachel a minute’s peace and she would have faced Patrick McKeown’s physical bullying a million times over rather than have to suffer her classmate’s sly barbs.

  Even now, some three years after that episode, Rachel felt a total failure. She was still without a boyfriend, much to Glenda’s satisfaction. When she turned sixteen her mother insisted that her father let her go to the disco in Bray, but he always ruined it by coming to collect her promptly at eleven, to her great embarrassment. Now she was in for an interrogation from Glenda as to whether she’d got any Valentine cards or not. Rachel hated Valentine’s Day. It always emphasized her sense of failure and inadequacy. Watching the other girls passing around their cards and giggling over the messages in them made her feel utterly lonely. Maybe this time next year it might be different, she would comfort herself. But now in her last year in secondary school she was still on her own. Had never been the recipient of a much-longed-for Valentine card and still harboured an unrequited passion for Harry Armstrong. She could see herself at ninety, still manless, she thought forlornly as she turned right and headed in the direction of the town centre.

  ‘Hi Rachel, are you going for the bus? We could do our maths homework together.’ She turned to find Mary Foley walking along beside her.

  ‘Hi,’ she echoed grumpily. Mary Foley was not exactly her favourite person. Mary and she had played together in primary school and had started secondary at the same time and ended up sitting together in the same class. Rachel had been delighted to see a familiar face. Mary and she had great discussions on the bus going to and from school about their exciting new world. It was so different from the schoolhouse in Rathbarry. Gradually Mary made friends with other girls in the class and soon dropped Rachel like a hot potato. At the beginning of their next term she sat beside Susan Shannon and left Rachel to sit alone.

  Mary’s rejection cut Rachel to the quick and erased the faint sense of self-confidence that she had begun to develop in her new school. Mary, longing to be part of the gang, often giggled at Glenda’s smart remarks about her former friend. Many nights in the privacy of her bedroom Rachel cried her eyes out because of them. When Mary was on her own and wanted company on the bus she was perfectly friendly with Rachel, but in class or if she was with the others, she ignored her.

  Well today, Rachel decided, Mary Foley could just go take a running jump. If she thought she was going to pick Rachel’s brains for her geometry she could think again. There and then, Rachel decided she was not going home on the first bus. She would wait until the later one and go and look at Valentine cards and treat herself to Jackie, a cup of tea and a cream slice.

  ‘No, I’m not going home, Mary. See you,’ she said coolly, quickening her pace and leaving her erstwhile friend with her mouth open looking after her.

  Shook you, Mary Foley! Rachel thought with satisfaction, feeling marginally better. She hadn’t acted like a doormat. She decided to buy a Valentine card for Harry. She would disguise her writing very thoroughly and maybe she just might buy a Valentine card and send it to herself and bring it in to school and wave it around triumphantly.

  She spent a happy hour browsing through cards and bought the most romantic one she could find for Harry. She chickened out of buying the one for herself. It would be much too obvious. Everyone would know that she had been reduced to that pathetic deception. Next year, she comforted herself as she ate her cream slice and sipped her tea, next year she wouldn’t have to undergo this ordeal. She would be finished school, she’d be a free woman. And maybe, just maybe, with St Jude’s help, she’d have a boyfriend. Preferably, if he could really see his way to answering her prayers . . . Harry.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Honest to God, wouldn’t you think you’d have more sense at your age, and your sixth at that!’ Helen Larkin scolded her sister Maura as she divested herself of her fur coat and plonked a bag of fruit and a bottle of Lucozade on the dressing-table.

  ‘It’s nice to see you too,’ Maura murmured drily, pulling herself up into a sitting position and wincing at the dart of pain that ran through her. Helen pulled up the comfy but shabby old rocking-chair and cast an affectionate glance at her older sister.

  ‘Well it is nice to see you, you know that! It’s just you’d think you’d have had enough of this carry-on by now.’ She waved a hand in the direction of the Moses basket at the other side of the bed.

  ‘Well it was a bit of a shock, but sure she’s here now and we’re delighted to have her, God love the angel.’ Maura was not a bit fazed by her sister’s outburst. She’d been expecting it. It had been the same the last time she got pregnant two years ago.

  ‘Do you not take any precautions?’ Helen said in exasperation.

  ‘We were practising the safe period.’ Maura couldn’t keep her face straight. She was a terrible giggler, a habit that had stayed with her since childhood, and the sight of her sister’s face was enough to start her off. ‘And anyway,’ she chortled, ‘we had great fun for the whole nine months. I was as randy as hell and Pete thought he’d died and gone to heaven.’

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Maura! You haven’t an ounce of wit.’ Helen started to chuckle herself. Maura was one of the happiest people she knew. Happy and earthy. She and Pete had a very good marriage.

  She was happy with Anthony, Helen mused as she gently started to rock in the old chair that had belonged to their mother. Anthony was a kind and considerate husband. But they just didn’t have the fun that Maura and Pete had. Maybe if they’d had children of their own it would be different. The old familiar heart-scald seared her chest. Here was Maura with six and she wasn’t able to have one of her own. God could be so cruel. There were so many people in the world who didn’t deserve children. People who beat them, starved them, and committed unspeakable atrocities against them. And here was she who would give up her fine house in Dublin, her furs, her jewels, just to hold a child of her own in her arms. The doctors had told her they could find no reason for her infertility. She’d even gone to a specialist in London. He had told her to go home and stop worrying about it – it would happen eventually. Time passed and still the arrival of her monthly period was a day of frustration, bitterness and sadness. It was a great grief in her life and though she loved her sister dearly, Helen had cried her eyes out when she’d heard of the latest pregnancy.

  ‘You’re very good to come down.’ Maura interrupted her musings. Helen’s face softened.

  ‘Of course I’d come down, haven’t I come down for them all?’ she retorted.

  ‘I know you have, Helen, and I know it’s terribly hard for you.’ Maura squeezed her sister’s hand tightly. A lump the size of a golf ball lodged in Helen’s throat.

  ‘Do you know how lucky you are, Maura? God, I wish you lived near me in Dublin so I could see the children. St Margaret’s Bay is in the back of beyonds.’

  ‘Don’t say that about your birthplace,’ Maura chided gently.

  ‘Well it is!’ Helen declared with a sniff. ‘All those nosy old biddy-bodies. I was glad to get out of the place.’

  ‘Oh you’ve gone very grand since you’ve gone to the big smoke, at least the people here will pass the time of day with you. Mind,’ Maura gave one of her giggles, ‘I don’t know if Lancy Delaney will ever speak to me again. I drowned him with me waters at Mass yesterday.’

  ‘You’re not serious, Maura!’ Helen’s face was a study. ‘Lancy Delaney, did he ever get married? God, he was the bane of my life. He must be fifty-five if he’s a day. Do you remember he told Ma he had twenty acres and a
bull and I’d never be sorry if I married him, and he old enough to be my father.’ The two sisters erupted into guffaws.

  ‘You broke his heart all right.’ Maura wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘He always asks after you. That’s why he was sitting beside me at Mass.’

  ‘Oh God Almighty, I’ll be looking over my shoulder the whole time I’m down here.’ Helen groaned. ‘In the name of God what were you doing at Mass and you so near your time?’

  ‘Sure didn’t she come two weeks early. I wasn’t expecting it to happen for at least a fortnight,’ Maura protested.

  ‘How did you drown Lancy?’ Helen grinned. Maura threw her eyes up to heaven. ‘Oh wasn’t I running late trying to get the five of them ready and I didn’t want to traipse up to the top of the church. And anyway Thomas is always tormenting me to go up on the gallery. They all are. We were the same when we were kids.’

  ‘Don’t I remember,’ Helen agreed. ‘It was such a treat to go up on the gallery. Everything seemed much more interesting and I always loved clattering down the wooden stairs to Communion.’

  ‘And you could clatter better than anyone,’ Maura said.

  ‘I always liked to cause a stir,’ Helen laughed. ‘Anyway get back to the story.’ Maura shifted more comfortably in the bed.

  ‘Well I was coming down the stairs behind Lancy after Mass and the waters just went with a whoosh. It was a bit like a tidal wave actually.’ She started laughing. ‘Poor Lancy got the brunt of it in his socks and shoes and you know, I think he thinks I wet myself. I nearly did, I laughed so much. It was so funny, Helen. You should have seen the face of the poor old eejit.’ Tears of mirth were streaming down Maura’s face and Helen laughed with her.

  ‘Maura Matthews, but you are incorrigible and there’s no doubt about it.’

  ‘I was lucky I didn’t have her there and then. I was only in labour an hour and a half. That’s the best ever,’ her sister declared proudly.