27: The ConfessionalThe Irish church was gloomy and draughty. Eliza waited in the pew, shivering, running the rosary beads through her fingers. She was kneeling away from the rest of the attendees. She wanted to be the last into the confessional box so that she would not be overheard and would feel less hurried by a queue of penitents waiting to unburden their sins.
The priest had a heavy Irish brogue that for a moment made her breath catch as it so resembled the voice of Father O’Driscoll. Eliza rattled off her sins: the usual catalogue – vanity and regret for her lost looks, impatience with her employer, lack of gratitude, covetousness of a gown she had seen a woman wearing in the street, lack of concentration during holy Mass. Then she gritted her teeth, squeezed her fingernails into h
