A few weeks after the new sleeping arrangements were in place and my charming child hadn’t had the grace to miss me for even one night, we were all in the kitchen having breakfast. Bowls of porridge all round with extra stewed prunes for Bridie. I was minding my own business and stirring the pan so I was caught like a rabbit in the headlights by Serena whose already gold-standard confidence was growing with every day at school.

–  Mammy?

–  Yes, lovely?

–  I heard loads of noises from your room last night?

–  What?

–  Noises, like you were shouting about something?

–  Must be that imagination of yours or a dream!

–  NO! I heard you shouting! I did!

–  I know what it was! We were saying our prayers. Your mammy dropped her rosary beads, says John smiling, somewhere around the tenth decade …

–  Did you, Mammy? Did you drop your rosary beads?

–  Yes, pet, I dropped my … rosary beads.

John and Bridie had to hunch their backs over the sink to hide their hilarity and she let off a fart that set the pair of them off in total hysterics. I was hoping it was the prunes but I knew it was me, Mrs Mary Johns, figure of fun and T.R.A.M.P. extraordinaire.

21

I had just realised that I was pregnant when pictures of Reverend Ian Paisley wearing a red beret were shown on the news. He had the good sense to wear an ordinary necktie, leaving aside his dog collar. Himself, Peter Robinson and Ivan Foster, all members of the Democratic Unionist Party, had got together to set up another Loyalist paramilitary movement, Ulster Resistance, because a fresh terror group was needed to tackle the aims of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. No baby step towards peace would be taken on his watch, No Siree Bob! None of it, none of the madness, could impinge on the joy I felt that I had another glorious child on the way.

I was eight months along when Carncloon’s two bombs went off. It was twins I had on board and I swear both of them flipped around at the sound making me cry out and frightening the life out of Bridie and Serena. John was out and the three of us gals were snug and silly in front of the old range in the kitchen. With the electricity had come a television set (Sony Trinitron, nice) and a music centre and we had a few records already: Horslips, Van Morrison, the Undertones, Johnny Cash, Dusty Springfield.

We’d switched the telly off because seeing Gerry Adams being dubbed by another man with a Northern Irish accent made us all crazy. Margaret Thatcher was trying to rob terrorists of the oxygen of publicity but the message was still getting through; Sinn Féin had a voice.