“I think I thought she was my cousin, until Patsy’s screaming fights with Pops told me a different tale.

“Money was the cause of Patsy’s screaming arguments with Pops because Pops never wanted to give her any, and of course I know now that there was plenty of money, always plenty plenty of money. But Pops made Patsy fight over every nickel; Pops wouldn’t invest in Patsy, I see it now, and sometimes their quarreling made me cry.

“One time, when I was at my little table in the kitchen with Goblin, and one of these fights had broken out between Patsy and Pops, Goblin took my hand and guided my crayon to write the word ‘bad.’ I was happy when he did this, because it was right what he wrote, and then he sat real close to me and tried to put his arm around me, but his body was very stiff in those days. I knew that he didn’t want me to cry. He tried so hard to comfort me that he became invisible, but I could feel him clinging to my left side.

“At other times when Patsy was battling for money, Goblin would pull me away, and he didn’t have to try very hard. He and I ran up to my room where we couldn’t hear them.

“Sweetheart was far too submissive to oppose Pops at the time of the kitchen quarrels, but Sweetheart did slip money to her daughter. I saw that, and Patsy would cover Sweetheart with kisses and say, ‘Mamma, I don’t know what I’d do if it weren’t for you.’ Then she’d ride off into town on the back of somebody’s motorcycle, or in her own van, her much excoriated van which had ‘Patsy Blackwood’ written in spray paint on both sides of it beneath the windows, and we wouldn’t see Patsy or hear any music from the studio for three days.

“The first time I realized that Patsy was intimately connected to me was a terrible night when she and Pops got to screaming at each other and he said, ‘You don’t love Quinn,’ plain and simple, and ‘You don’t love your own little boy. There wouldn’t be any Goblin in this house, he wouldn’t need Goblin, if you’d be the mother you’re supposed to be.’

“At that moment, I knew it was true, these words; she was my mother. They had an echo for me somewhere, and I felt a potent curiosity about Patsy, and I wanted to ask Pops what he meant. I also felt a hurt, a pain in my chest and stomach at the thought that Patsy didn’t love me, whereas before I don’t think that I had cared.