She tried not to think about Rabbit a lot, what was the point? Sorry. Every now and then she opened her locker drawer and there was the metal heart-shaped box holding a sprinkling of her child’s ashes, and pain coursed through her. What in the name of God made me agree to my child’s ashes being divided into one big box and four small silver boxes? Bloody Jack and his bloody ideas. My child divided, it’s not right. She stopped trying to talk to Rabbit, except to say sorry. She had let her daughter down and the guilt was slowly breaking her. She washed the dishes. Sorry. She served soup to a stranger. Sorry. She held a banner in the sky with the word ‘Meter’ placed between a drawing of the cheeks of an arse while chanting the slogan ‘Shove your meters up your arse’. Sorry. She never used Rabbit’s name. She just said sorry and then she got on with her business. She hid when Father Frank called to the door. She didn’t want to speak to him. BR, he had a way of making her say things she didn’t want to say. Not today, Padre. AR she did miss their chats, but she couldn’t face him. Sorry.

She had a stent placed in her dodgy artery in September; she was in and out of hospital in three days. It was easy, no fuss. Jack was relieved when it was done and dusted.

‘Onwards, Molly,’ he said when she woke from the anaesthesia.

‘Hmmm,’ she said. ‘I’m still alive, then.’

‘Hurrah.’

‘Can’t kill a bad thing, Ma,’ Grace said, leaning over her and kissing her on the forehead.

‘No, love.’ She grabbed her daughter’s hand. ‘So you and me will be fine.’ She winked and Grace faltered a little. Fucking gene.

The gene was always on her mind; ever since Grace broke the news it became an obsession. She worried about Grace, Lenny and the kids, but she also worried about her granddaughter. Does she have it? Is she going to have to carve into herself, too? Will it get her before she does? She worried a lot about how Davey was choosing to raise Juliet but she tried to maintain a respectful distance. BR she wouldn’t have cared – she’d have bulldozed her way into their lives and sorted it all out, Molly-style. AR she realised she didn’t have all the answers and she was as helpless as anyone else. So she stayed out of it and hoped that she was doing the right thing, and every now and then she’d look up to the sky and whisper the word sorry.