A Daughter’s Secret. Anne Bennett

      The blood in Tom’s veins suddenly ran like ice and his teeth chattered with fear as he stared from the prone figure to Philomena. ‘Are you sure? Maybe he is just knocked out.’

      ‘Tom, his neck is broken.’

      ‘Oh Jesus, Philomena, I never meant that.’

      ‘I know, but if we are both to get away with this then we must keep our heads.’

      Tom could hardly believe his ears. ‘You mean you’re not going to call the Garda and tell them what I did?’

      ‘Not a bit of it. What purpose would that serve? As I see it, you have done me a favour. Bernie had it coming to him. He couldn’t have gone on the way he was and not expected some retribution to fall his way eventually. Aggie is not the first to have her life damaged and destroyed by my husband and, God help me, I can’t feel sorry for the death of a man like that.’

      ‘D’you think it will be believed that he died by accident?’

      ‘Yes, if we are clever about this,’ Philomena said. ‘I will say the horse made his way back to the stable without the rider and with bruised and bloodied knees. Fortunately, the knees are damaged enough so that the mark of the twine won’t even be seen.’

      ‘I’m sorry about the horse.’

      ‘So am I,’ Philomena said, ‘but I’ll see to him and he’ll be grand. But make sure you hide that twine well.’

      ‘I will.’

      ‘Now be off,’ Philomena said. ‘It would never do for someone to be along the road and catch sight of Bernie, and me not even home with the horse.’

      Tom needed no further bidding and he scampered off, stopping only to throw the twine to the bottom of the well. He didn’t care either that his parents both gave out to him for being so long away and getting his good Sunday clothes so wet because that was familiar and safe. He went into the room, changed to his everyday things and followed his father to the cowshed without a word.

      Philomena also took care to change her clothes and footwear, and recoiled her dampened hair into a tighter bun before informing the Garda that her husband was missing. There was no need for them to be suspicious, or to disbelieve anything Philomena McAllister told them. She was known as a respectable woman of the parish and community. When she showed them the damaged knees of the horse, they were very worried indeed and set up a search of the area immediately.

      The body was soon found. The priest was sent for and the whole town alerted to the fate of Bernie McAllister, who died when he was thrown from his horse.

       SEVEN

      Aggie drifted in and out of consciousness, though this was helped by the laudanum that Lily was dosing her with. She saw no harm in this. She took tincture of opium herself, as all the women in the house did. It gave her a warm and delicious feeling of euphoria, especially when mixed with gin, which they all drank in copious amounts. Laudanum was also the usual remedy for fever and ensured that Aggie would sleep till Lily’s return.

      ‘Wouldn’t do for her to come to, like, and find me gone, would it now?’ she said to Susie on Monday evening as they sallied forth to work. ‘Might frighten her half to death.’

      ‘Mm,’ Susie said in agreement. ‘Has she said owt yet?’

      ‘No,’ Lily said. ‘She’s not with it half the time. She’s still a really sick girl, Susie.’

      ‘I know and it’s lucky for her that you came upon her when you did.’

      Aggie didn’t know where she was and who the woman was with the gentle hands and the soft voice, who would wash her so tenderly, for Lily was very kind.

      She was honest too, in her way. She had found the money in Aggie’s possessions, which she had rifled through in an effort to find out who she was. She had discovered from the travel ticket on her bag that her name was Agnes Sullivan and she was from Ireland. Lily had left the money alone. While she might lift a gold watch or a wallet from a well-heeled gentleman, even one of the punters, without the slightest pang of conscience, she wouldn’t steal from one of her own. Despite the money, she knew from Agnes’s clothes that she was a long way off being rich and she guessed that money had been to pay for an abortion she no longer needed.

      It was Tuesday evening when Aggie opened her bleary eyes as Lily was bathing her face and said, ‘Who are you? Please, I have to know.’

      ‘Course you do, ducks, and there ain’t no secret of that either,’ said Lily. ‘I’m known as Lily, Lily Henderson, and a few days ago I found you collapsed on the road and the rain teeming down on you. So I came for my friend Susie Wainwright, and we carried you in here.’

      She let this knowledge settle in and then went on, ‘And I know your name is Agnes Sullivan.’ At Aggie’s startled look she explained, ‘It was on the ticket attached to your bag.’

      Aggie sighed in relief. And then, because in her life so far only one person had called her Agnes and that was Bernie McAllister, she said, ‘I am never called Agnes. I am known as Aggie. And I don’t really understand. When was this?’

      ‘Wednesday night.’

      ‘And what day is it now?’

      ‘Tuesday.’

      ‘And you have cared for me all this time!’ Aggie exclaimed. ‘How kind you must be.’ And then Aggie remembered what she was doing in Birmingham and her one hand touched her stomach. The movement was barely perceptible and yet Lily not only saw it, she also understood it.

      ‘The babby’s come away, ducks,’ she said gently. ‘You lost it that first night.’

      She saw relief flood the girl’s face and so wasn’t surprised when she said fervently, ‘Oh, thanks be to God!’ As soon as the words had left her lips, though, she realised what they must have sounded like to Lily, and she flushed with shame. ‘You must think me awful, but you see I didn’t … It wasn’t … I mean I never …’

      Lily covered Aggie’s shaking hands and said, ‘You don’t have to justify yourself to me or anyone else either, and you just remember that. You’ll tell me or not in your own time and in your own words.’

      Aggie sighed in relief that this woman would never force her to tell anything she didn’t feel happy about.

      Because of Lily’s innate kindness, her soft speaking voice and the tender way she had cared for Aggie, even giving up her bed, Aggie thought her some kind of saint. Lily’s age would be about forty, and she had a kind and open face, with rosy cheeks and beautiful soft brown eyes, so full of expression that they lit up her face when she smiled. Her hair, Aggie guessed, had once been the same colour as her own, but now it was liberally laced with grey and yet it suited her somehow.

      She looked homely and wholesome, and so later that night, when she said she was going to work, Aggie looked at her with amazement. ‘I could make you up a dose of laudanum before I go, if you like,’ Lily said. ‘I make it into a sort of cordial. That’s what I gave you to bring down the fever and ensure that you slept until I returned when you were really sick.’

      ‘What was in it?’

      ‘Opium, mainly, and gin, of course, a bit of water and sugar.’

      ‘Opium?’ Aggie repeated. ‘Isn’t that a drug?’

      ‘Course it is, ducks,’ Lily said, ‘and you takes enough, it makes you feel just wonderful. Bloody marvellous, in fact.’

      ‘I have never taken drugs in my life.’

      ‘You have, love, since you come here,’ Lily said. ‘I had to get the fever down somehow.’

      ‘I’m not blaming you at all, Lily,’ Aggie said hastily, wary of offending.

      ‘Point