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.The dark mountains on either side of the road had blurred into forbidding clouds.The bus travelled long stretches of lonely winding roads where sheep huddled against stone walls.A sheep dog barked lethargically at the bus from the gateway of a tumbledown farm.It was a helter-skelter ride occasionally punctuated by their passing through small deserted towns with their streets of dark-grey terraced houses.The doors of the houses were closed against the driving rain, weak light filtering through faded curtains.Smoke curled up miserably from chimneys.A group of ponies stood forlornly in a silent square.Turning a steep bend, Will gasped at the sight of the house.Of course, he should have realised it would still be there.He supposed that it had for so long been a part of his dreams that he no longer thought of it as a real house of bricks and mortar.There it was, a lone house perched halfway up the mountain reached by a narrow stony track.A board proclaimed it to be a bed and breakfast.Sunny Views.Dear God! He couldn’t imagine a worse place to spend the night!He had visited it many times on his rounds as a young constable.It had been as desolate a place as he had ever been in.A dank and dismal house, the brown distempered walls running with condensation, a place of ill-lit corridors, the air redolent with the smell of drying nappies and cloying baby milk.From behind closed doors came the sounds of muffled sobs and anguished partings.It was a house awash with the reek of shame, a veritable hell-hole.He thought now of all those young girls and their babies.Babies crying.Babies soon to be separated from their young mothers.It should have been a house full of joy at the absolute miracle of birth.Instead it had been a house where you could almost taste the shame.He wondered if all those young girls, middle-aged women now, still thought about the last look they ever took of their babies.He sighed.Lost babies.Lost girls.Did those girls still dream of this house? Still wake in the night filled with terror? He had dreamed about it many times, it was the nightmare he dreaded above all others.He turned his eyes away, he didn’t want to dwell on memories that were too painful.Memories that racked him with guilt and blemished the love he had felt for his wife, Rhiannon.The house hadn’t had a board proclaiming its name in the old days, but everyone for miles around had called it the home for bad girls.August 1stStill boiling.The Merediths’ back door was open on to the bailey.It was always open even when it rained.At four o’clock it was as hot as ever.Three doors away, the Tranters’ door was shut tight.It was always shut even when it was hot.The Tranters only pulled back the bolts when someone wanted to leave or get back into the house.Iffy crossed the bailey, ducking and diving between the washing on the lines.She knocked hard on Bessie’s door until her knuckles hurt.The Tranters’ door was painted with thick green paint, the colour of shiny cucumbers.She hoped Bessie would answer and not her mam or dad.She never knew what to say to them.Bessie’s mam and dad were really old, nearly as old as her nan and grancha.Mrs Tranter cleaned the doctor’s surgery and the doctor’s house.She made felt toys and crocheted and knitted patchwork blankets for black babies.She never smiled.The Tranters were chapel.Carmel.The Merediths were Catholic.Mrs Tranter played the organ and the harmonium.In the infants, Fatty had made up a dirty song about organ players.Fanny Morgan plays the organ and she plays it very wellBut her sisters all have blisters in the middle of theirFanny Morgan plays the organ and she plays it very well…Bessie had got mad, had her hair off as they said.She had sobbed and stamped her shiny patent shoes up and down on the playground floor.Chapel people were different to Catholics.They didn’t drink or bet on the horses but they ate meat on Fridays and God didn’t give them so many babies.Bessie grunted noisily as she pulled back the bolts.Bessie was famous for her grunting.The door was dragged open and the smell of polish and disinfectant came over the step in a rush that brought tears to Iffy’s eyes.Bessie blinked her small eyes in the bright sunlight.Iffy thought that Bessie had eyes like a pig but not so intelligent.Her cheeks had been scrubbed until they shone, and below her hemline her bony pink knees were polished to shining.Her fat, glossy ringlets dripped down onto her shoulders.She smelled of talcum powder and the cod liver oil that she took for her chest.Bessie had a chest that rattled like an abacus when she wasn’t rattling from all the pills she took.Her mam gave her medicine for everything.Medicine to make her pwp regular.To get the wax out of her ears.And the badness from her blood.The worms from her bum.But she never looked healthy.“Hello, Iffy,” Bessie said, in a voice that sounded as though it had been washed in vinegar and put through the mangle twice.“Hiya, Bessie.”Bessie closed the door carefully behind her and the bolts were drawn back across from the inside.They walked across the bailey of Inkerman towards the broken steps at the end of the row that led up to the rutted road.Bessie walked carefully so as not to stand on any cracked stones and get mud all up her socks, even though it hadn’t rained for weeks.She hated having dirty socks.Bessie was Iffy’s best friend but only because she couldn’t find a better one.Bessie was spoilt rotten.She was the youngest.She had two brothers who were in the army.Derek and Brian.There were framed photographs of them on the harmonium in the parlour.Mrs Tranter polished them every day, twice.They had heads the shape of swedes and were dead ugly.When they came home on leave they brought Bessie dolls in foreign costumes: Dutch, French, Spanish, Irish.Iffy liked the French one the best.It had red lipstick and no knickers.Just like Bessie’s sister.Dolores.Dolores had white hair and two babies who ran about half naked, but no husband.Bessie’s mam had no truck with Dolores.Iffy liked the name Dolores, just saying it made her shiver.Dolores’s real name was Hilary and they called her Lurry for short.She changed it when she ran away from home.D O L O R E Z.Bessie said her hair was really ginger but she put peroxide and toilet cleaner on it.One day it would all fall out, or, if she was lucky, it would just turn green.Mrs Meredith told Mrs Bunting that Hilary Lurry Dolores was hot in the knickers, but Iffy couldn’t ask what she meant because she was hiding under the kitchen table and shouldn’t have been.Fatty was waiting for them down by the Dentist’s Stone at the bottom of the hill.Fatty sat cross-legged, busily shaving a lolly stick into an arrowhead with a penknife
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