Hide Her Name by Nadine Dorries

would enter her bedroom and be overcome by a heady smell of flowers. There were no flowers anywhere in the house. None even within a mile of the four streets. Nellie knew it was her mother, the woman no one ever talked about, not even her da.
    Nellie didn’t always see Bernadette. Sometimes she could only feel her. On the night Nellie had been discharged from hospital following the accident when she and Kitty had been knocked down, she had been curled up on her da’s knee, reading the paper with him in front of the fire, when Bernadette came, or at least the feeling did.
    As she arrived, her presence washed over them, gradually at first and then wrapped around them both. As Nellie rested her head on her da’s chest, she looked at Jerry and they smiled. They hugged one another tightly and watched the flames leaping in the fire, not making a sound nor moving a muscle, not wanting to scare Bernadette away. And then she left slowly, in gentle waves, just as she had arrived, until she was with them no more.
    Jerry softly kissed the top of Nellie’s head and she felt his hot tears drip through her hair onto her scalp.
    Nellie knew her da still missed Bernadette and that, when she joined them in these special moments, it was painful for him, even though she had died on the day Nellie was born.
    Nellie knew that if she looked away from the kitchen window now, Bernadette would disappear in a flash. Her eyes began to water – she was scared to blink.
    ‘What are ye gawping at, miss?’ said Nana Kathleen, swivelling round on her chair to see what it was that Nellie was staring at.
    She blinked. Bernadette left, leaving Nellie alone again.
    Maura, timorously, began to speak.
    ‘Kitty, we have a problem, child, and it is something we need to talk about and sort out before we tell Daddy. He will be distraught when I tell him the news and so we must be well prepared, so we must.’
    Maura began to cry. She was never going to get through this.
    Her Kitty. Maura had dreamt of her daughter taking the veil. Kitty, who was like another mother in the house, so good was she with all the little ones. With two sets of twin boys, Maura found life hard and Kitty had eased her burden by half.
    But Maura wasn’t selfish. She didn’t want to keep Kitty to herself. She wanted to share her with God and thereby elevate the status of the Doherty household above that of her neighbours. Maura craved status; in fact she craved anything that would reward the family for her endeavours. She longed to be looked up to and, indeed, many a less holy neighbour already did look up to Maura. If there was a problem on the streets it was Maura or Nana Kathleen they went to. But that wasn’t enough. Maura wanted one of the Doherty clan to do something, to be someone. She yearned for her household to be set above and apart from the others. What could achieve this more than having a child become a nun or a priest?
    She had prayed about sharing her children with God. About giving God back some of the issue with which she and Tommy had been blessed.
    Kitty had been shared with God.
    Just not in the way Maura had prayed for.
    Maura knew that what she now struggled to say to Kitty flew in the face of every motherly instinct. Earlier in the day she had questioned Kathleen.
    ‘Once I have spoken those words, there will be no going back, Kathleen. Are we sure?’
    ‘Aye, Maura, we are sure, queen. I wish to God we weren’t and I have prayed that every day you would run up this entry to tell me Kitty was started, but you haven’t. There is no use us putting it off any longer or denying it: the child is with child, God help us, so she is.’
    Now that they were here and the time had come, Maura lacked the strength to speak. Her mouth felt as though it were stuffed full of wool and the words she had rehearsed so well were lodged somewhere deep in her throat. The tears began to pour uncontrollably down her cheeks.
    Everyone round the table stared at her expectantly, but