‘She’d fit right in.’

‘Do they play bridge in the Circle?’ he asked.

‘Eternally.’

‘You don’t owe your mother anything, don’t throw away your future for hers,’ Davey said, and tears stung Marjorie’s eyes because as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t just throw her mother away. This must be what you felt about me, Mam, she thought, and for the first time in her life she had insight into her own mother’s twisted thoughts. She didn’t want to talk anymore.

Months passed, and mostly she was kept busy tending to her mother’s needs. Four months on, Vera was stronger and slowly getting back on her feet. Marjorie called to her mother’s house most days; becoming a slave to the woman just crept up on her. She’d organised a bed downstairs and some home care, but her mother didn’t like any of the ‘foreigners’ that walked through her door. So once or sometimes twice a day Marjorie received a call from her mother demanding her presence with the words, ‘I’m an invalid, you know.’ Marjorie the sucker hated her for it, and hated herself more for always eventually turning up. She’d arrive to be confronted by her angry mother humiliating a perfectly nice care assistant.

‘I can’t even understand her,’ she said of a Croatian lady who spoke perfect English but mumbled the word kuja every now and then when Vera Shaw was particularly offensive. She didn’t like a Thai lady because she was too small and Vera maintained she didn’t feel safe, and when she spoke it was in a whisper. ‘If I have to say “what” one more bloody time,’ she complained. ‘Speak up!’ she roared into the ether. Neither woman was fired. They both left of their own accord. A Serbian woman lasted a day because she didn’t come to Ireland ‘to work for a dictator’.

Where had all the Irish gone? Vera lamented.

‘Do you think any of them would put up with your bullshit?’ Marjorie asked after a particularly stressful day.

‘Of course they would, the Irish will put up with anything. That’s what makes us special,’ she said, and she believed it. The lunatic.

Marjorie missed Rabbit. She missed picking up the phone and hearing her voice. She missed her advice and her chuckle, the way she could turn everything around with a funny line or a piece of good advice. Marjorie really needed her friend’s advice now. Her mother was running roughshod over her. Deep down she knew what Rabbit would say. Don’t let her get away with it, Marj, you’re not a kid anymore. Call her on her shit and don’t take any.

Easy for you to say, dead woman.