He was a good man, a better man than I had had my sights set on as a sixteen-year-old. To think, I’d always hated him for having no wings, no desire to be up and away from this patch of ground, when he’d been standing over her like a guardian angel since she was born. What would I have done without him? I resolved to be kinder.

The daisies were there, stuck to the side of the mossy riverbank. Serena leaned down and picked a few for Bridie while I held on to her spindly legs. She checked that Bridie was still her granny and I told her, of course, Bridie came as part of the package with Dada. Serena was accepting, a child so full of confidence and so empty of fear, that she had already rooted herself in a new version of the truth. I just had to tell John and hope he didn’t blow a gasket that anyone had upset his girl.

As we got to the bottom of the street, the little bit of growing up I just did was replaced with a sudden desire to be pressed against Auntie Eileen’s middle with only a choice between which boiled sweets to eat. John Johns had my bed from the Lower Room on a trailer and a newly-bought pink wooden bed frame standing on the street. Serena spotted it straight away and made for it at speed. I could hear John Johns telling her that, of course, it was for her. A big girl who was old enough to stay away from home should have her own nice bed. It was going into her new bedroom right this minute.

–  But where will Mammy sleep now?

I’d reached them by then. Bridie couldn’t look at me. John Johns picked up the little bed with its wooden love heart carved into the headboard with one arm and manoeuvred it into the house. He never even looked in my direction when he came out, just started up the tractor and set off. I watched my old bed disappearing up the hill, quelling the desire to run after it, shouting and swearing, but then the trailer rounded the bend at the top and it was gone forever, leaving one tiny echo.

–  But where will Mammy sleep now?