Hide Her Name by Nadine Dorries Page A

often thought about them all. What she loved most was that it was where her daddy was born, and where Nana Kathleen had also been born, and her daddy before her and his before him. Uncle Liam had built a new house on the same land as the old house, so for a long time there had always been a Deane on the farm. The new house had a fully fitted indoor bathroom. That was a novelty on the four streets in Liverpool. It was a novelty in Ballymara and in the main village, Bangornevin, too. Nellie knew there were lots of people in the village and out in the country who were envious of what a good farmer Liam was and of how well the Deane farm fared.
    Nellie had also been taken aback by the suddenness of their departure. Last night she had sat on Jerry’s knee in front of the fire for a cuddle. Jerry had played with her ringlet rags and wrapped them round his fingers as they both stared into the fire.
    Jerry whispered so that Alice couldn’t hear.
    ‘Yer mammy, Bernadette, had loved the farm so much, she used to swing on the big five-bar gate to the yard and do nothing more than gaze up the hill opposite and dream of you. Yourself, little miss, were just the twinkle in her eyes back then.’
    She gave Jerry a big hug to try to make him smile. His expression was wistful and sad but she knew that wherever it was he vanished to when he mentioned her mammy, it was somewhere Nellie couldn’t reach. She could feel the ache in his heart but it was his ache and his alone, untouchable and not one she could heal.
    Uncle Liam placed a kiss on her cheek and put her back down as he bent to greet Kitty. ‘And you must be Miss Kitty?’ he said grandly as he took off his cap and bowed in an exaggerated manner.
    Kitty blushed a deep pink and took the hand Liam proffered.
    A self-conscious Kitty had never shaken anyone’s hand before.
    ‘Now,’ said Nana Kathleen, ‘if ye would stop play-acting, Liam, and take these bags, I’d be very grateful.’
    Kathleen playfully hit Liam across the back with her umbrella. Liam pretended it had hurt much more than it actually had and began to walk doubled over as though he were in great pain, lifting up the bags and howling with agony.
    Kitty and Nellie were in fits of giggles.
    ‘Here, Nellie,’ shouted Liam as he threw her the keys. ‘Would ye drive? Me back is so bad now thanks to that Nana Kathleen.’
    Nellie squealed loudly as she caught the keys, but she and Kitty were laughing so much they could barely protest that Nellie was too young to drive.
    Liam, affecting a miraculous recovery, lifted up the tarpaulin on the back of the van and placed the bags underneath.
    As Kathleen shuffled herself across the van’s bench seat to sit next to Liam, she shouted, ‘The rain is playing merry hell with my wash and set, so get in quickly, girls.’
    As Liam passed the girls to reach the driver’s seat, with a wink he slipped them each a brown ten-shilling note. God, how can he afford that? thought Kitty. The reason most of the Irish were in England was to make money, but Nellie and Kitty’s first impression was that they had more money in Ireland. No one on the four streets owned a car. A ten-shilling note was a huge amount of money, enough for two days’ shopping at home.
    ‘Flippin’ heck, we are millionaires,’ whispered Nellie to Kitty, as they scrambled along the bench next to Nana Kathleen, to begin the long journey in the rain across Ireland to the west coast.
    Kitty had never before travelled in a car, a train or a boat, and in the space of a day, she had experienced all three.
    She had never visited the land of her parents’ and her ancestors’ birth, yet here she was with her feet on Irish soil and, inexplicably, it felt like her soil. The furthest distance she had ever travelled had been to St John’s market with her mam at dusk on a Christmas Eve, to buy a fresh turkey and some bacon from the meat hall at the end of the day at a knock-down price.
    To date, that had been the most