Hide Her Name by Nadine Dorries

Maura had poked some life into the fire. There was a candle lit on the mantel, but Maura hadn’t switched on the lights.
    As Kitty moved towards the switch, Tommy hissed, ‘No, don’t, queen, leave it.’
    ‘What am I getting dressed for?’ asked Kitty, dazed and only half awake, blinking at them both as she rubbed her bleary eyes.
    ‘You are going to Ireland now, Kitty,’ said Maura. ‘Hurry, your da is taking you down to the Pier Head to meet Kathleen in ten minutes, so you don’t have long.’
    Kitty checked the clock on the mantel above the range. ‘Mammy, ’tis only half two,’ she said.
    ‘Yes, and that is why we have to be extra careful and quiet and leave separately, so as not to wake a living soul. It’s why we are meeting Kathleen at the Pier Head, do ye understand?’
    Kitty nodded, but she didn’t understand. Thoughts of her friends and teachers were flitting through her brain. How would they know where she was, if she hadn’t had the chance to talk to them and explain what was happening?
    She was too tired to talk. Maura forced her to take some tea and toast, which was the last thing she wanted, but as she drank, the excitement of the adventure began to filter through and drag her up through the folds of sleep.
    Ten minutes later, with the new, brown, jumble-sale holdall clutched in one hand and Kitty’s hand in his other, Tommy was tiptoeing across the cobbled entry, hugging close to the wall, slipping away into the dark night. Kitty’s secret, their secret, was at last leaving the knowing, prying eyes of those who lived on the four streets.

8
    J ERRY ’ S BROTHER, L IAM , was waiting to greet them when they arrived in Dublin.
    It was a dark and wet night and the girls kept their heads bent low as they disembarked to keep the driving rain from directly hitting them in the face. They had sat at the Pier Head for most of the morning as one crossing after another had been cancelled due to the choppy Irish Sea until at last, a ferry was allowed to leave.
    Now, they were officially on holiday.
    Both girls were still reeling with the shock from the suddenness of their departure. It had all happened so quickly.
    ‘Ye’ll get used to the rain,’ shouted Kathleen who led the way as she bustled on ahead. ‘It rains so much in Mayo, Kitty, that people who stay here for too long grow a set of gills.’
    ‘They don’t, do they?’ Kitty said to Nellie.
    Nellie laughed. ‘Not at all, it’s Nana Kathleen’s joke. She tells it all the time. I must have heard it a hundred times, but me and Da, we just laugh so she feels like she’s being funny.’
    Both girls began to giggle, more from the excitement of setting foot on the soil of a foreign country than Kathleen’s jokes, which they could no longer hear above the sounds of people greeting each other and car horns beeping. Suddenly, they thought they could hear Jerry shout, ‘Mammy,’ but they both looked up and realized it was Liam, who appeared and sounded as much like Jerry as it was possible to.
    ‘Well, well, well, would ye look at the grown-up colleen now,’ Liam shouted as he scooped Nellie up into his arms. ‘Here, would ye let me take a look at ye. What a big miss ye are. The absolute image of yer mammy with that long red hair. I bet ye don’t remember Uncle Liam, do ye?’
    Nellie didn’t know why, but she was overcome by a strange shyness. Maybe it was because Kitty was witnessing this very open display of affection. Or perhaps because he had spoken of Bernadette. She felt stupidly proud to have been compared to her own mammy, the mammy that no one in Liverpool ever spoke about. She did remember Uncle Liam. He was loud, gregarious and always playing practical jokes.
    Nellie loved him. She loved him twice over for speaking about Bernadette as though she were still alive.
    He was the funniest man she had ever met. She hadn’t seen him for two whole years but she certainly did remember him.
    She loved the farm and everyone on it. She