MARJORIE LOVED HER NEW job. It was everything she had dreamed it would be. Friendly, fun, engaged staff and an easygoing atmosphere oftentimes tinged with excitement and adrenaline. Supporting new ideas, new ventures and new businesses gave her a buzz and she was good at it. She knew the banking business inside and out, she understood finance, she was good with people, she was energised and filled with a new hope: it wasn’t all doom and gloom out there, people were finding their way through the fog of uncertainty and calamity. Some of the ideas were inspired and inspiring; it made her feel like anything was possible. That was a feeling she’d never really had before and she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Client meetings were a daily occurrence and she fed off young minds and their energy and their possibility. Drinks happened every Thursday and Friday nights in hip bars by the glistening canal, or maybe the canal just glistened in her mind. Life had taken a turn for the better.

Her mother was doing better, too, and their relationship improved with every put-down and snide comment. There was an odd mother-daughter dynamic, but since she’d stopped being polite and internalising all her anguish and anger they’d really turned a corner. She celebrated a successful first month of her new job by taking her mother out to a posh restaurant for dinner. Vera was pretty handy on the stick at this point, so much so she deftly used it as a weapon in crowds.

‘Please don’t hit that child, Mam,’ she said.

‘It was a tap, not a hit, and he was clearly trying to trip me,’ Vera said about the toddler in her way.

Once she tried to shove it into the spokes of a wheelchair when a disabled man bumped her elbow.

‘God Almighty, I’m going to take it off you if you don’t stop it,’ Marjorie warned. Vera didn’t really need the stick anymore; it was more of a mental crutch than a physical one, and it also served to remind her daughter she was an invalid now and not to be ignored. The restaurant was lovely and the food was divine, though naturally Vera had a problem with her main course, despite the fact that she practically licked the plate. When the waiter asked her if she’d enjoyed her meal she said, ‘I’d have preferred if there was a little less garlic and a lot more spuds.’

They both ate ice cream for dessert.

‘It’s not like you to eat dessert,’ Vera said.

‘Well, I’m hungry.’

‘You should watch your figure, it’s around this time of life that women put on weight around the tummy.’

‘This time of life?’

‘Menopause.’

‘I’m forty-two.’

‘I was forty.’

‘Ah fuck off, Ma.’

‘Do not call me Ma. I am Mammy.’