‘Do you want to be sick like your auntie Rabbit?’ she’d asked when he refused to eat his lettuce.

‘She has cancer, Ma.’

‘Diabetes is worse.’

‘What? No way. Nothing’s worse than cancer.’

‘Tell me that when you’re walking around on two stumps.’

Jeffrey whinged about his new diet regime but he was both terrified and committed. Four pounds down, Rabbit.

Grace was always and ever a wild beauty, voluptuous and pretty as a picture, but she had a propensity towards putting on weight and had been watching her waistline since she could remember. Rabbit had been so tall and slim. She could eat anything. Grace used to say she was the lucky one, but that was before the cancer. She sat on the stairs hugging her youngest son. Ryan tried to push past them.

‘Out of the way, fatso.’

Grace stood up to let him pass. ‘Just stop, Ryan, please.’

As soon as she turned her back Ryan gave Jeffrey the finger.

‘Don’t give your brother the finger,’ Lenny said, emerging from the kitchen.

Grace helped her youngest son to his feet. ‘Anything else on your mind, love?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What?’

‘I’m frigging starving.’

‘Eggs for breakfast,’ Lenny said.

‘I’m going to have a lie-down,’ she said.

‘Yeah, you go to bed, love. I’ll wake you in a couple of hours.’ Lenny kissed her cheek. She looked into his kind eyes and brushed a hair from his handsome face before he whispered ‘I love you’ and turned to follow his hungry son.

‘Eggs are gross,’ Jeffrey shouted as he made his way to the kitchen.

‘Eggs are protein,’ she responded.