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up in a loveless hole like this one. It sent a shiver down her spine to think that she’d come that close. 
    Rita had developed a special bond with little Sean. She’d love to get hold of his mother and demand of her how she could’ve been so cruel to just leave him there but her actual identity was a secret locked away in a filing cabinet in the Mother Superior’s office. Rita had even put it to her husband that they might think about adopting Sean but her husband was dead against it. He didn’t want to ‘bring somebody else’s bastard into our home’ and he wouldn’t hear anymore of it. But Rita worried about little Sean. There was just something about him that made her worry about his future. Call it a premonition or an instinct. But it was there.
    It broke her heart to have to get his things together and pack them in the little suitcase. She was going to miss him and she knew that he was going to miss her. She could take the cowards way out and swap her shift so that she wasn’t on duty when all the children left. But she couldn’t do that to Sean. His own mother had kicked him in the teeth and she was about to do the same. Except she couldn’t offer him her home and her family in which to nurture him and make sure he grew up feeling loved and wanted. She had to play her part in sending him off as if he’d done something so wrong and so terrible when the only thing he’d done was to be born.
    She was about to take his little suitcase downstairs when she turned and saw him standing watching her at the door. It was written all over his face. He knew. 
    ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
    Rita sat down on his bed and tapped the space beside her. ‘Come and sit with me, love. I need to talk to you about something.’
    Sean didn’t move. ‘What about?’
    Rita held out her hand. ‘ Come on, Sean, love. Come and sit with me?’
    Sean started to cry. Rita went over to him but he cowered away from her. She’d never felt more awful in her life.
    She knelt down and held his shoulders. ‘Sean, you’ve got to be a very brave boy for me. Do you understand? You’re going away to a far away place and … ‘
    ‘…why can’t you come with me?’ he pleaded, trying to untangle himself.
    ‘I can’t, sweetheart, I just can’t. I’m sorry.’
    As she tried to calm him down one of the nuns, Sister Philomena, a particularly nasty bitch who liked using a ruler on kids’ knuckles, came storming down the corridor.
    ‘Mrs. Makin!’ she raged. ‘ I warned you about getting too attached to these urchins!’
    ‘They’re not urchins!’ Rita retorted. ‘They’re in pain and they need love.’
    ‘Oh I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous,’ snapped Sister Philomena. ‘ We, the sisters, give them a good home and you criticise us for it? Collect your cards from the Mother Superiors’ office!’
    Sister Philomena grabbed Sean so violently that the fear inside him made him wet his pants. She didn’t like that one bit. She pulled his trousers and underpants down and rubbed his face in them before thrashing the living daylights out of him. Rita tried to intervene but Sister Philomena was stronger and she pushed her away. Sean disappeared, screaming in agony and hurt, his eyes full of fear, looking back and appealing to Rita as Sister Philomena dragged him along the floor by his hair. But Rita knew she was helpless.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Rita as she sobbed, her hands reaching out to him but not being able to go as far as he needed them to. ‘I’m sorry, Sean. God bless you, sweetheart.’
    ‘Rita! …Rita! …Ree – ta!‘
    *
    ‘But how did you interpret what Rita Makin was thinking?’ asked Angela. ‘How did you work that out?’
    ‘I didn’t have to,’ said Paddy, who was feeling tired after his great disclosures. He wasn’t used to going down so deep into talking about himself. ‘Rita used to talk to me a lot. I knew what she was thinking.’
    ‘But you were so young.’
    ‘But I remembered