A month later they decided to tell the boys. FUCK. Stephen will be fine. He’s old enough to understand. Poor Bernard will be devastated. Jeffrey will be scared, but as long as I’m upbeat and I tell him everything will be fine, he’ll believe me. It was Ryan she worried about. How will he take it? She didn’t know. He’d been doing so well since he started attending weekend classes for bright kids. They gave him enough homework to make life interesting and the other kids in his class actually challenged him. He was busy, way too busy to engage in criminal behaviour, although he was continuing to manage the stock portfolio he’d started with the proceeds of ill-gotten gains, which was performing so well his father had him invest on his behalf. This would be a blow. He’d pretend he was fine but it could derail him. All the good work of the past five months would be undone if he acted out. Jeffrey had been doing well. He’d lost weight, he looked good, he felt even better. He might slip backwards but she could manage that. Ryan was a different matter. I’m sorry, Ryan. Please don’t do anything stupid. Please don’t hate me. Please don’t wreck your life. It’s only an operation. No big deal. I’m going to be fine. Except it was a big deal, and Grace wasn’t sure if she would ever be fine again.

Lenny made his famous vegetarian chilli, which wasn’t famous at all. Grace and the kids sat around the kitchen table and he doled it out into bowls. The steam rose into the air and the boys were armed with their spoons.

‘No meat again?’ Ryan asked. ‘You know I can pick it up cheap.’

‘This family doesn’t eat meat off the back of a truck, Ryan,’ Lenny said.

‘Are we vegetarians now?’ Stephen asked.

‘No, but it’s good to have meat-free days,’ Lenny said.

‘Since when?’ Ryan asked.

‘Since now.’

‘I like it,’ Jeffrey said, lashing into the chilli with the gusto of a man deprived.

‘So just because fatboy is a fat boy we have to live like tree huggers?’ Ryan said.

‘Don’t call your brother fatboy, Ryan,’ Grace said.

‘Anyway I’ve lost two stone,’ Jeffrey said. ‘I’m not fat anymore.’

‘Fair enough, pudge-boy,’ Ryan said, and Stephen flicked some hot chilli at him. He screamed out. ‘That hurt!’

Lenny served himself and sat. ‘The reason we’re eating less meat is for a number of reasons, one of which we want to talk about now. Mammy has the gene that gave Rabbit cancer.’ The mood instantly changed in the room. ‘It’s not cancer. She doesn’t have cancer, but her chances of getting cancer are increased.’

‘By how much?’ Ryan asked.

‘Fifty-five per cent.’