Mrs. Cunningham, or Mrs. C, as she is called, works as a housekeeper for the two priests up at the Parochial House, just outside the village. It is a large white stone house, basically a cube consisting of two floors and a basement. It stands a good bit back from the road, hidden behind orchard trees, barely visible during the fall and winter months. As a boy, I would stand and look at that eerie old house, imagining all...

The taxi pulled up outside our town house and the driver took the luggage out of the boot. My father paid the driver, gave the nun a welcoming hug, and grabbed her two suitcases. We had been waiting for what seemed like ages for her to arrive; the whole family had been lined up in the yard, excited to meet her. Sister Maura had been Dad’s schoolfriend when they were young. She had spent the last twenty-five years on the m...

The first thing I noticed about Nell was how much she looked like me. We were both sixty-ish, the same height, the same weight, petite, equally flat-stomached and flat-chested. We both wore minimal makeup, just the slightest trace of lipstick and discreet nail varnish. We had the same natural stripey-white hair colour. But while she had dreamy curls falling over her shoulders, I had the same pixie cut as always; it was ju...

I Mum and Dad were travelling to Dublin for the week. They didn’t want to leave me on my own, so they asked me if I would be OK staying at Dana’s farm for the week. “At Dana’s? Of course,” I said, trying to sound disinterested. What they didn’t know was that Dana and I were lovers. Dana was an old friend of the family, but she had moved away when she got married. After she divorced, she kept the farm and began to renew he...