Run to Him by Nadine Dorries

everyone, but luckily, shortly after Jerry had moved in with his aunt, she had put his name on the rent book, which meant that he could remain in the house without question. The houses on the streets had transferred from one generation to the next in this manner ever since the first wave of immigrants had flooded through the gates of Clarence dock during the potato famine.
    However, the pressure was too great for Jerry and Bernadette to put off the wedding until after the full twelve-month mourning period. Bernadette was helping Jerry to cook and clean and look after the house, and not being able to run up the stairs was driving them both mad with desire. But Bernadette was a good Catholic girl and she was taking no chances with sex before marriage. No shotgun wedding for her. Suddenly, being alone in each other’s company in the close proximity of a bedroom was becoming an almost unbearable temptation. Bernadette would never stay overnight and the pressure built to an almost unbearable pitch.
    ‘Just stay tonight,’ Jerry begged, one Sunday night as Bernadette was leaving. ‘Please,’ he murmured into her ear in the midst of a very passionate kiss. ‘I promise I will be good and ye will still be a virgin in the morning.’
    ‘Not at all!’ replied Bernadette forcefully. ‘Are ye crazy? Can ye imagine what they will be saying here in the streets tomorrow when they see me leaving in the morning?’
    Her resolve did indeed drive Jerry crazy. He wanted to put his fist through the wall, but he also knew she was right. They were married within three months.
    During those three months Bernadette got to know everyone on the four streets as well as she did her neighbours back home. Bernadette and Maura came from the same village, Killhooney, and had known each other since Bernadette was a baby. You didn’t need to travel far in Liverpool before you met someone from back home. The two women became special friends, which extended to Tommy and Maura’s children, especially their eldest daughter, Kitty, who spent as much time with Jerry and Bernadette as she did in her own house.
    Although Maura was older, she and Bernadette had attended the same school, knew the same families and had a shared history. Their deep yearning for home had drawn them together from the first day Bernadette had arrived in the street. Maura was daily homesick. Both their families came from the sod houses, close to the coast. Every day they talked about how there was no better view of the Atlantic than that from the cliffs overlooking Blacksod Bay. No better dancing at a ceilidh than that to be had at the inn. No better fish to be tasted than salmon poached from the Morhaun River or fish from the Carrowbay Loch. They had so much to talk about and their conversations about home acted as a salve to Maura’s always aching heart.
    Neither mentioned the poverty, the lack of shoes, the rain, the hunger or the wet ceilings. The sun always shone on Mayo when it came to the reminiscing.
    Bernadette spent hours talking about her work to Maura, who loved to hear the chambermaids’ tales about the guests staying in the hotel. Stuck in a life that would never alter, Maura found every detail fascinating, from what the ladies wore to the staff-room gossip, especially about the head housekeeper, Alice Tanner, who had worked at the hotel since she was fifteen and who was legendary for never having taken a day off or having had a visitor since Bernadette arrived.
    ‘Sure, that Alice is a mean one altogether!’ Bernadette would exclaim, at least once a week, as she flounced into Maura’s kitchen. ‘I cannot wait until Jerry and I are married and I can give in me notice. She would drive a saint to drink. I have never given out like some of the others, Maura, but God help me, I will one day soon.’
    Maura was all ears.
    ‘She knew Jerry was coming to the staff entrance for me last night and she deliberately sent me off on a wild-goose chase across the hotel to make