The young visitors brought some carnations, bright bottles of soda and a varied selection of biscuits, mostly Mikado, as these are easily digestible to the stroke victim. Chocolate Kimberlys and Ginger Nuts should only be attempted after a dunk-in-tea, or if you have all your own teeth, they warned. They were clumsy with the grocery bags until Margaret Rose ushered them this way and that and eventually after some coaxing, they shoved them in under her bed, with a sideways flick of an Adidas runner.

Hegs wasn’t interested in them. Not in them filling his water jug, not in them looking at him, not in them trying to make polite and meaningless conversation. He’d make the most peculiar eye squints when Margaret Rose had visitors, especially when the young men called. He administered frosty hostility, though all the while remaining most cordial to Margaret Rose. The young men wiped clotted jam off Jane’s fingers, stared at Shane and blessed themselves. I couldn’t judge them for this, his peg feeds had become monotonous, as he lay awkward with his laptop opened all day and all night, nothing happening on it, no sound, just left on. I couldn’t see the screen but there were no headphones sprouting from it, and if the charger came undone or fell, he’d cry out until it was fixed back and in its proper place, propped up by an ugly doughnut cushion from the maternity ward. I was sick of the brutality of his feeds, the repulsing falseness of it, the laptop on constant charge and the way he’d look at it all day with one eye open, drooling.

‘What was it, Mammy?’

‘Was it diabetes?’

‘Yar father has diabetes, not me,’ Margaret Rose said, correcting them.

‘Did ya catch it off him?’

‘Bet ya did, the fat fuck.’

‘Haha.’

‘Stop that. Ya canny catch diabetes. Ya have ta have it. Or ya can get it. But it’s not contagious,’ Margaret Rose said.

‘Ya can catch it in Supermac’s,’ one boy said, and everyone laughed.

‘Or if yar a fat cunt like him.’ They laughed again, everyone except Margaret Rose.

‘Don’t speak like that ’bout your father,’ she scolded, ‘yar upsetting me.’

‘Sorry … well, what is it that ya have then, like? Everywan’s asking about ya.’

‘Ah now, they’re sure I had a bad stroke, far wan minute I was sitting at the sink in the kitchen about to get up and make Nora a pot of tea, and we was chatting about your father and getting him to come home to get fitted far the wedding.’

And suddenly everyone became serious and quieter.

‘A stroke. Jaysus.’

‘Was Niquita there?’

‘No,’ Margaret Rose said. ‘See, I just dropped off the side of the couch.’

‘Jaysus.’

‘You were lucky.’

‘Did you go cold, with a bang like?’

‘Will yar face stay like that far Niquita’s wedding?’

Margaret Rose moved her hands up to her cheek with a CGI definition, certain of her actions, unlike Jane who was giddy and moved her hands all day long, even in her sleep, tugging at her hair, brushing her teeth, applying lipstick and forever fixing part of herself back into its original place, even if she couldn’t quite remember where the original place was.