‘Have you any idea of the suffering of a full udder?’ Trassa asked him.

‘Have you, Trassa?’ I said.

‘I’m not a cow!’

‘And neither is Ronan. Take a look at these.’ I passed her a sheaf of credit-card bills.

After a bit of a production with her reading glasses, she scanned them…As the penny dropped, the blood visibly left her face.

‘Telling my business to all and sundry!’ she slung at Ronan.

‘Would you like to tell the other members of your group what you have in your hand?’ My tone was reasonable. ‘Or should I?’

‘I…’ Her rage at Ronan was colossal. ‘I’m your mother.’

‘Trassa, I have more copies of those pages.’ I rustled them. ‘Should I distribute them?’

‘No,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll tell them. They’re…credit-card bills.’

‘Whose?’ Dennis was always bursting with curiosity.

‘…Mine.’

‘How many credit cards?’ I asked.

‘Eleven…’

‘Totalling how much?’ I asked.

‘…I don’t know.’

‘You do. So do I. Should I tell everyone?’

Tearful and defiant, Trassa sat up and looked around at her group members. ‘It’s a lot. But I was unlucky. It’s the fault of the banks and the government for the high interest rates—’

‘Trassa?’

‘It’s…about fifty-nine thousand euro.’

The shock in the room was immense. The session the previous Thursday afternoon had done a lot to reveal the true Trassa and everyone had thought that that was as bad as it would get. This latest revelation was too much to take in immediately.

Ella paled so dramatically that her freckles popped. Oh my God, she was thinking, I am nothing like this Trassa. There’s no way I should be here.

Dennis was even more shaken. He’d believed Trassa, he’d identified with her, but if she was an addict, where did that leave him? The sacred time when the denial of an addict begins to crumble, and the truth of their situation starts to land, always made me visualize a river meeting the sea: fresh water churning into salt water, two powerful, separate streams having no choice but to merge, to become one new blended body.

‘Ronan,’ I said. ‘Can you tell your mother how this has impacted your life?’

Haltingly, reluctantly, he said, ‘I’ve had to take out a second mortgage on my house to get the money to pay this off and—’

‘You’ll get your money back!’ Trassa exploded. ‘You’ll get the house when Seamus Senior and I are gone.’

‘It’s not just about the money,’ he blurted.

‘Course it’s about the money.’ A glint of steel had appeared in her. ‘All I heard from you was fifty-nine thousand euro this, fifty-nine thousand euro that. But you won’t be out of pocket.’

‘But…Mam. Listen, can you?’ His body was clenched tight. ‘The sheriff came to your house to seize goods—’

‘How do you know?!’