Pack Up Your Troubles. Anne Bennett

Copyright

      Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      This edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

      Copyright © Anne Bennett 2000

      First published in 2000 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

      Cover photographs © Gordon Crabb (woman); John Topham /TopFoto (street scene).

      Anne Bennett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780007547807

      Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780007547814

      Version: 2017-09-08

Dedication

      I am dedicating this book to Denis

       for the immense help and unfailing support he has given me over the years. Thank you.

      Table of Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

       Chapter Twenty-Six

       Chapter Twenty-Seven

       Chapter Twenty-Eight

       Chapter Twenty-Nine

       Chapter Thirty

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       Also by Anne Bennett

       About the Publisher

ONE

      Maeve Brannigan couldn’t believe she was actually leaving the little farm in Donegal where she’d lived all of her eighteen years. It had been worth the cajoling and pleading, her mother’s tears and her father’s bad humour that had made him moody and snappy with them all. She’d survived it all, as well as the old biddies in the parish, who’d prophesied that no good would come of it, and did she think she ought to go when, after all, she was such a grand help to her mother, for wasn’t the woman herself always saying so?

      Maeve had been brought up to have manners and it had only been that innate politeness that had stopped her screaming abuse at the interfering old gossips. Did they think she didn’t know all that? She was the eldest of seven and even when Maeve had begun work in the grocery store in the town when she