Free It Was Only Ever You by Kate Kerrigan Page B

the passage over. Although, they’d have to be engaged before he could even ask for anything like that – and if they went to London, or even Dublin, they would have to marry for sure.
    Patrick looked at her sideways for a moment and a small feeling of doubt crept into Rose’s heart. Perhaps he was changing his mind about the whole thing. Perhaps her reticence about telling her parents had upset him. Had he guessed at the truth? Should she go ahead and tell them, and to hell with the consequences? Then they could run away together. It would be crazy but they loved each other so much, she knew they’d manage somehow. That would be the right thing to do: honour their love. Be brave. Be fearless as lovers should be.
    But before she had time to put words to her thoughts, Patrick said, ‘We’d best be getting back.’
    He helped gather her things as she shook down her skirt, then as he leaned in to kiss her goodbye, Patrick stopped and picked out a daisy head from a tangle of curls on her shoulder. As he looked at her face he felt overwhelmed by the sheer wonder of how beautiful she was. He desperately wanted to pick her up in his arms then lay her down on the grass, give in to his most base desires and take her, right there in the open country. He knew from her pleading eyes that she would not stop him. In fact, he believed she wanted it too. But she was too young, and they had already taken things far enough. Even if he didn’t feel like it, even if it went against every natural desire in his body, Patrick knew he had to be a gentleman.
    So he simply smiled, then they kissed and parted under the tree, as they had done a dozen times before.
    As she walked back over the hill towards home, Rose felt a sheet of melancholy fall down over her heart, although she could not say why. Their kiss was tender, and sweet but nonetheless it had felt, to Rose, like an ordinary goodbye.

7
    E LEANOR HOPKINS was preparing dinner when she looked out the window and saw Rose coming towards the house from the small hill across the road. Her appearance was messy, as usual. Her cotton dress was crumpled, her slim athletic legs, on which she refused to wear stockings, were doubtless spattered with muck where she had trudged through a puddle in her flimsy plimsolls. And, Eleanor noted, her hair was not tied back in a neat bun like her own, but instead it tumbled around her shoulders, probably full of tangles that she would have to try and brush out that evening.
    Eleanor tutted to herself disapprovingly but, at the same time, felt a flash of fear. Although Rose was a good girl, with her quiet demeanour and her love of art and her good manners, she had a savage beauty that worried her mother. She looked untethered – wanton. Eleanor had always tried to keep Rose tidy as a child, tying back her hair and containing her growing curves in smart clothes. Now that Rose was eighteen, Eleanor did not have any jurisdiction over her daughter’s wild beauty.
    She often felt powerless over her adopted child and worried about her growing older in a way she believed she might not have done if she had been her own. Rose did not have Hopkins blood so how she turned out was God’s department. Eleanor could only hope He knew what He was doing. Sometimes, anxious Eleanor wished she was more like the ardent rural Catholics. They seemed to get great comfort from their faith, with their whispering confessionals, endless chanting novenas and statue-turning, candle-lighting, medal-kissing rituals. Eleanor was reluctant to leave her daughter’s welfare to God alone. She loved her too much. She could barely express her fears for her daughter, even to her husband. He would have said she was being irrational, but he only half knew the truth about his wife’s experiences before they met. He would not have wanted to know more, even if she could have told him.
    As her daughter neared the house Eleanor thought Rose looked more pensive than usual. These days, she came back