When Mammy moved down the hall pulling Mick behind her by the ear, Kathleen bolted for the bedroom. She was sitting on the bed pretending not to cry but she had got out her suitcase again. It had been packed for weeks and sat to the side of the dressing table like a bomb about to go off.

She patted the stuff with shaking hands: the towels, the washbag, the new clothes from Auntie Eileen, stuff she would need to live somewhere else, somewhere I couldn’t see her every day. I climbed on to her lap and wrapped my arms and legs around her like the stupid, petted baby that I was. She rocked me as she cried.

–  It’s not forever. One day we’ll be gone, she said.

We clung on to the magical ‘one day’ because it was the only raft we had. One day we would get married or just leave home. One day we’d be away to college in Derry or Belfast or America. Kathleen was close to escape but I still had years to go and very soon no one to take my corner. I wished Daddy would come home.

I listened on and on to Kathleen crying but my own eyes were dry; somewhere deep down inside me was a big hollow. I tried to imagine being all alone in our room but I couldn’t. Mammy ripped open the door and jerked her head in the direction of the kitchen. Kathleen walked past her without a word. The tea had to be made. You’re to stay in bed for the evening, Mammy said to me, I don’t want you appearing down those stairs, do you hear me? I heard her. Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me down there.

That night the pan hissed as usual, the salmon and brown onions were fried in butter, the boys and Daddy came in, their socks trailing the smell of the byre, cowshit mixed with Indian meal and tobacco smoke. I heard them all at their tea, knives scraping plates in the silence. By the by, Mammy brought me up a bit of cold fish and bread. She’d come to tell me why I had a sore lip. It’s because she cares, she says, cares that I grow up to know right from wrong.

She wouldn’t be doing her job, and it’s a very serious job being someone’s mammy, a calling straight from the Virgin Mother Herself, a vocation almost. If she took her eye off me for one minute I could be ruined. Children can be ruined in a minute. Look at me, I was nothing, a slug under her boot, but still she would never give up on me.