When Sheila made us baked beans on toast with cheese and brown sauce for tea – for tea – we’d break into our routine and try and get through it with straight faces. Dessie would take a big slurp of his lager, Sheila would slap him when he belched in pure badness and then he’d hold up a spoon of baked beans to begin.

–  Now, Mary, what is this?

–  Cabbage?

–  Very good. Correct.

Sheila would point at the enormous white loaf that was more air than flour when it was her go.

–  And what’s this, Mary?

–  Potatoes. Potatoes with butter and not margarine which will be the undoing of good Holy Catholic Ireland!

Afters was always a box of Quality Street. Sheila, Lizzie and me all fought over the hazelnut whirls but Dessie and Darragh would eat any of them ’til the box was empty and we all felt a bit sick.

We all understood it was a sin to encourage a child to lie to her mother but we weren’t bothered. God didn’t feature so heavily. He was there on the kitchen wall but He was sort of hidden by a big calendar from Dessie’s garage which had a picture of a shire horse pulling a cart on it. Magee’s – where your car’s the star, it said. The Angelus bell tolling on the wireless at six in the evening had no effect on Sheila; she talked louder ’til it was over, gesturing this way and that with a fag held between chipped scarlet nails.

Once, Lizzie got her mammy to scrub her back in the bath – I nearly passed out! She was naked and her mammy could see her and her father didn’t even bother to lift his face out of Jackie magazine even though he must have known. I suppose it was the only chance he had to ogle it in peace. They all behaved like it was normal. Lizzie called me Modest Mary and assured me my stupid auld hairy ha’penny was just the same as hers.

She had no shame but then this was a house where Dessie would often be seen sitting astride a chair stripped to the waist while Sheila tended to his back spots armed with a bottle of Dettol. In front of the waynes? Who didn’t bat an eye? I was so mortified the first time I stumbled upon this level of intimacy my whole face, ears, neck and innocence went up in flames. I swear, you’re more motor oil than man, Dessie Magee, she’d say and he’d nod to please her while he winked at me.