I had been designated to help the ladyfolk with the tea because Auntie Eileen only had her daughter Bernie, and Bernie was not well enough to navigate kitchens or corpses. There was no shortage of help, kettles were boiling, big steel teapots were being filled, a production line of bread butterers, fillers and slicers were arranged around the table, knives and tongues moving at speed. A lot of good, strong tea is drunk over Northern Irish remains. The mourners are sorry for your trouble while they eye up the quantity and quality of the ham sandwiches flying round on the fine-china wheels of borrowed cake stands. It was already past nine o’clock but the wake wouldn’t thin out until after midnight.

I was employed to cut up a heavily laden fruitcake that someone had baked and brought to feed the mourners. For some reason – kindness or madness – they had fashioned a fish out of candied orange peel on the top with an alarmingly large glacé-cherry eye. It looked up at me, succulent and pink, and begging questions.

–  Auntie Eileen, what happened the salmon?

–  What salmon?

–  Dead Macroom’s salmon! The one he caught?

–  For God’s sake, Mary! You wee spook! You’re worse than Granny Moo! Get that cake on to a plate and get round the wans in the front room. Tell them fresh tea’s comin’!

I’d run on, laughing at the swipe of the tea towel on my backside. Auntie Eileen had never hit me in her life; she was the reason I knew it was possible to spare the rod and not spoil the child. She was the reason I knew I wasn’t nothing though Mammy had told me I was in every way, every day.

I remember watching her as I have a hundred times since. She was a fair beauty with her wild black hair in a high knot and our famous Ban Rattigan clan ‘white’ eyes which are in fact a pale grey-green. She moved from one person to the next with a sunshine smile at every step.

She put her arms around my neck when the fortune-teller, Decker McHugh, blew in, stinking of pigs and drink. He always pitched up at a wake for the free fire and free food, and later the free whiskey. His services were in demand at the height of the Troubles when most people didn’t make it through a week without a threat to body or soul. He read the leaves, and all the tea drinkers crowded around him because he only ever allowed one lucky person the chance to know what dangers or delights lay ahead.

With a light tap of his middle finger on my forehead I was picked. I was the one! He sat back to settle himself for the task ahead. Oh, I was made up! A special girl at last.