Hide Her Name: The Four Streets Trilogy

Product Information

It was Nellie's Nana Kathleen who had woken Daisy late on the night the father was murdered. She had been talking to Bernadette as she left the Keating girl's wedding and followed the river, down towards Nelson Street. You have simple ways, but they can be put to good use if you can be protected from the sin that preys upon girls like yourself,' the sisters had told her. Daisy had no idea which sin would prey upon her or what it would do, but she was grateful for the protection.

Family is everything to me. I feel the four of us are unbreakable as a unit. I can’t wait to be a grandmother. She was asked this question on a regular basis and her answer was always the dutiful same: 'Yes, Father.' Daisy took over the housekeeper's role in full. She coped well and never took nor was offered a day off.

Peggy and Paddy had spawned enough of their own children, but Peggy had never in her life done it twice on the same night. Every woman who lived on the four streets knew: that sinful behaviour got you caught with twins. Daisy wasn't sad and didn't miss the father at all. Not in the way she had missed Mrs Malone when she died. Dorries decided on a mish mash of current (2010s), hot political and social issues and placed them into a Liverpool of the 1960s. The problem is that such abuse certainly existed at that time but the incompetence that Dorries employs in her story does a dis-service to those who suffered from religious and institutional corruption and exercise of power in the past – and, unfortunately, in the present. That was the bishop speaking. A fat man, distinguishable by his thin, weedy whine, which as it whistled into the air struggled past the blubbery folds of lard gathered under his chin. Yes, Father, there will be no problem. The housekeeper Daisy will help me and it shouldn't take long.'

I don't know how I would manage without you, Daisy,' she said, at least once a day. 'The sisters may have said you were simple in the head, but I didn't want you for brains, brawn was what I was looking for and you have plenty of that.'

About the contributors

The house seemed desolate after Dad left, which was just before Christmas. It was a very difficult time. There was a real stigma to me being the child of divorced parents too. I think children from broken homes do suffer in a deep way. Both John and I were changed by the experience. To speak of anything that occurs in this Priory would be the greatest sin for which no forgiveness would ever be forthcoming. Ye will be left to burn alone in the eternal flames of hell and damnation. Do ye understand, girl?' The language is all wrong. It sounds like the language of the god-awful TV series Mrs Brown's Boys more than anything you would hear in mid-20th century Liverpool and doesn't contain any of the humour that differentiates Scouse from other British dialects. A dialect that took from all those who passed through the city and created something unique. But that's far above Dorries expertise.

Neither Father James nor any of his friends had bothered her again, and the nuns began to invite her over to the convent for tea. This secret is so dangerous that her mother, Maura, and the redoubtable Kathleen, her best friend Nellie's grandmother, decide the girls must be spirited away quietly to Ireland to await the birth of the baby. I am sure she did, but she is bound to be very upset indeed and may be prone to rambling. We must be careful to protect her, as she has no family of her own, except for us. I wonder if a spell in the peace and quiet of the convent might be a good idea?'

More Copies for Sale

The gripping sequel to bestselling THE FOUR STREETS. Shot through with darkness, but also humour, warmth and charm. Those victims of abuse and paedophilia at the hands of the Catholic Church deserve redress and proper recognition but this novel insults their suffering rather than presenting their case in a sympathetic manner. She sometimes wondered if Father James would have preferred someone other than herself as housekeeper, but on the night of Mrs Malone's funeral, on her way to her modest room, she had overheard raised voices coming from the study.