‘Yes. Yes, I do. I so do. I’m so … fucked.’ I didn’t want to hurt him. Or remind him of what a failure I was, what a failure my body was. What a failure I am. I didn’t want him to start telling me about all my brilliant accomplishments that I knew meant nothing. I grabbed his shirt, pulling hard at the small buttons. ‘Look, you have to get me out of here, you just have to …’ I said, suddenly frantic. ‘I can’t take another weekend in here.’

‘You sure?’

‘I have to, I have to get out. I miss it,’ I said, finally admitting some truths.

I missed walking through the Galway Market picking up crêpes filled with banana and chocolate, stepping upstairs into Sheridan’s cheese shop, looking over the blue hues of the market vendors’ tarpaulins below, sipping tasters, reds and browns and yellows and whites, before deciding we’d start with Prosecco, move along from there, a Gneiss Domaine de L’Ecu (no more clunky Chardonnay), or a crisp Gavi di Gavi, sharing a cheese board, Ardrahan and some hard-smoked English cheddar, with spongy orange apricot chutney, pick up wild salmon from Stefane at Gannet on the market, or instead, go to Aniar for eels and turnip, sea buckthorn, or Kai for hearty supper, monkfish with sea spaghetti and cockles in broth for me, him usually having something earthy, ox tongue and pumpkin jam, many whiskey sours. Finish in the Bierhaus or the Black Gate. Drunk. Row. Make up.

And I missed my sons. I missed them. So much of them.

‘I will, look, I’ll try my very best to get you … out,’ he said, ‘but we need to chat to the right people first though, see, you need an ambulance to come … home, they told me, they gave me a list …’ he said, his eyes closed.

‘Do not … I’m fine, I don’t want a fucking ambulance, not again. I’m not an invalid. I can’t do another ambulance, either you sort something or I’ll walk. Last time I came out of an ambulance I was starkers.’

‘OK, I promise, really soon, I’m sorry, it’s just that I don’t want to … you know, put you in … danger.’

I looked over and saw Claire was fixed in an unusually sloppy pose.

‘Would you look at herself asleep in the armchair?’ I said, distracted. ‘Look what Hospital does to … us.’

‘Hegs looks rough, what colour at all is he?’ Alex said.

‘Primrose.’

‘Ah, he’s more red-of-an-egg-yellow than yellow-yellow,’ he replied.

It made me panic.

‘It’s yellow, the yolk of an egg is yellow. How come you don’t know this? It’s not red. It’s not red. I’ve never seen a red yolk in an egg.’

Alex looked stunned.

‘How can you raise children if you don’t know the colour of the inside of an egg? A fucking egg? How can you get to mid-life almost without knowing what the fuck the inside of a fucking egg is called?’