Strawberry Fields by Katie Flynn

the narrowness of the straw mattress he shared with Martin and Donal, not the whisperings of the older boys, not even the terrible throttling snores of Niall, who suffered with catarrh. And once he was asleep he did not stir until morning, though he dreamed, and twitched, and cried out a couple of times.
    He longed to dream of Jess again so that he could ask her forgiveness, but all he dreamed of was that the baby ran away from him on the ferry, and climbed the rail and fell over the side, and when he dived in after her it was straight into thick yellow fog, in which not even the brown waters of the Liffey could be seen or felt.

Chapter Four
    When Brogan got back to Liverpool it was to find the snow melting in a fierce, almost springlike wind, and the whole city in an uproar over the missing baby.
    ‘There’s been a piece in the paper,’ Peader hissed to him when they were in bed that night in their lodgings. ‘Mollie’s mammy says as how she’s been stolen away by gypsies . . . but one of the fellers says she’s tryin’ to make capital out of it so she is . . . hopin’ someone will pay her money for her loss. Sure and would you believe a woman could be so wicked?’
    ‘Jeez, I hope they never find out where the littl’un’s gone; and we’ve decided to call her Polly, by the way, for safety’s sake,’ Brogan whispered. ‘Because if they try to take Polly away me mammy will kill me and anyway, that woman, that Mrs Carbery, she never had no time for the kid, Jess said so. Oh, Daddy, I don’t want to be throwed in gaol – specially not an English gaol.’
    ‘Devil a bit will they throw you in gaol; for what can they prove, eh?’ his father whispered back. ‘A nine-days’ wonder, so it is, and that’s the end of it. Give it another week at the most and no one will know who you mean if you say “Mollie Carbery”.’
    ‘I hope you’re right,’ Brogan said devoutly. ‘Best say nothing then, eh, Daddy?’
    ‘Far best,’ his father said shortly. ‘I’m goin’ before a board to see whether they think I could do safety man; there’s a dacent pay rise goes wit’ the position. We don’t want to risk losin’ that, do we?’
    So Brogan decided to pretend that he, too, had never heard the name Mollie Carbery. He would think of the child always, now, as Polly O’Brady. And on that comforting thought he slept at last.
    Sara thoroughly enjoyed her stay with Mrs Prescott, though she was sorry when the snow began to melt so that Snowdrop Street no longer looked white and enticing but grey and drab and wet, instead.
    Despite Mrs Prescott making sandwiches for the wake, neither she nor her young charge attended Jess’s funeral.
    ‘They’re an unpleasant family, or the parents are,’ Nanny told Sara. ‘Neither her nor him would raise a finger to do anything for the child whiles she was alive, and they’ll do precious little now she’s dead. Nesta – that’s the mother – talked to the Echo because she hoped to make capital out of her loss, but whatever money they paid her for her story went on drink.’
    ‘But Nanny, women don’t drink, do they?’ Sara said doubtfully. ‘I know men drink, but I thought women stayed at home.’
    ‘Well, you were wrong. Nesta Carbery drinks whenever she’s got the means to go down to the Jug and Bottle and buy the stuff,’ Nanny said distastefully. ‘It’ll not be long before they’re turned out, anyway. People like them never pay the rent.’
    Sara would have liked to have paid her respects to Jess, particularly as she still felt deeply guilty over having given Jess stolen money. Despite her Nanny’s comforting words she still felt uneasily that the money might have been unlucky in some way. But the days passed, and once or twice she saw members of the family passing by, grey-skinned, apathetic, miserable, and had to echo Mrs Prescott’s words – that perhaps poor Jess was the lucky one.
    And the neighbours didn’t like them, didn’t extend to them the