‘Yeah, I do, but if I buggered off for three weeks at such short notice, Mum would kill me,’ Emerald sighed resignedly, pushing the ticket back across the table.

Amber’s eyes flared. ‘Once again, not the most sensitive analogy.’

‘Then just don’t tell Mum,’ I argued. ‘Negotiating with terrorists is pointless. Everybody knows that.’

‘But I can’t leave her. I’m her main carer.’

‘Clearly, where there’s a will, you’d really like to be in it,’ Amber said, coldly.

‘I resent that! I take care of Mum because somebody has to, and you’re too busy being mother of the bloody year.’

My stomach knotted. The will was a contentious point within our family as there was quite a bit of money involved. Our father was basically a tradie who made good thanks to the mining boom. He’d started out as a boilermaker but then began building those big metallic parts for diggers way out west. Although whenever he got into trouble with the cops, for speeding or drink driving, he’d give a twinkly wink and revert, saying ‘But I’m just a tradie, mate!’

‘Come on, girls,’ I placated, ‘we all do our share. But since giving up the booze, Mum’s never looked better. Surely she can take care of herself for three weeks?’

I pictured our matriarch. Aged eighty, she was so much more glamorous than any of her daughters. She sported better clothes, better hair – she’d been with her hairdresser for longer than she’d been married. Ruth’s social life had also always put her daughters’ to shame. The woman would only babysit if you booked her a millennia in advance, and even then nearly always cancelled because something faaabulous had come up.

‘Ignore the thought of what she will say. Our mother is good at emotional blackmail in the same way that a tornado is good at uprooting trees and hurling vehicles,’ I pointed out.

‘And, by the way, Emerald, you are not her main carer,’ Amber chipped in.

‘Then why am I top of her speed dial?’

‘Mum told me I’m at the top, actually.’

‘Stop it, both of you. Competing for our mother’s affections is pointless. She dislikes all three of us equally. We’re a huge disappointment. Look, I know Mum’s not all bad . . .’

Emerald stared at me incredulously. ‘That implies either short-term memory loss or a brain tumour,’ she surmised.

‘Once more, medical analogies? Really!’ Amber chided our older sister in a brittle voice. ‘But, Ruby, there’s no doubt that our mother is a gargoyle.’

‘It’s true, Rubes. She’d look perfectly at home perched on a flying buttress guarding a Gothic monastery . . . Which is exactly why I can’t spring this cruise idea on her. She’ll just morph into the Goddess of Wrath.’ Big, tough, capable Emerald quaked at the thought.