It was folded over, with her name scribbled in big letters on the front and held onto the fridge by a magnet with the picture of a sheep and the words, thinking of ewe on it. She pulled it and the magnet dropped to the floor. She stooped painfully to pick it up. As she rose, slowly, into standing, she glimpsed those first few words.

I’m sorry, Caroline.

What the . . . ?

She dropped the magnet, her full attention now focused on the note.

I can’t do this anymore.

I love you but we’re done.

Dave xxx

Catherine

Justin O’Halleron Knows My Name

I was born in 1959, and Ireland was a very different place when I was growing up. I came from a small rural town, a pig farmer’s daughter. We weren’t rich but we weren’t poor either. I knew what it was to work and I never wanted for food in my belly or clothes on my back. There was five of us, four boys and me.

The oldest, Charles, I barely remember. He was born with mental and physical problems so severe that my parents were encouraged to place him in a home. There was one photograph of him, a baby in my mother’s arms, over the fireplace in the sitting room of our home.

I came after Charles, then Mickey who was big and strong and nearly six foot aged fourteen. Next came Ronan – there wasn’t a year between them, but they were very different. He wasn’t as big or strong as Mickey, which was unlucky for him because they fought all the time. My father didn’t stop them. He liked a fight. He used to say, ‘If you don’t want to get beat, get better.’ A year after Ronan came Tim.

My mother’s womb came out after Tim. It had been battered to bits by then. We were hard babies to carry; the doctor said it was a miracle she survived us. Physically, she did. I’m not sure about mentally. She wasn’t the warmest woman in the world but she could be kind when she put her mind to it, and my dad – well, when I remember him, mostly I just remember him working on the farm.