An evening from her childhood: this time of year, these lingering days and pale, light skies. Their dad has asked their mum to call in on their grandma the odd time during the week and one night after swimming they do. They scramble out of the car and race across the green then stop, for reasons they can’t put into words, and wait. A chill wind is coming from the lough, cutting straight through their uniforms, green pinafores and blue summer blouses. Their hair scorched dry on top but still damp at the nape of their necks, the sharp, clean smell of chlorine on their skin. Their mum reaches them, takes her youngest sister’s hand. The pebble-dashed terrace of houses, each with its doll’s-house gate, impeccable roses or trimmed box-hedge borders. Beyond them the garages, beyond that the forest. It’s not really a forest, though they call it that, just a close-growing cluster of larch trees at the back of the estate. The fallen needles make the ground feel soft and springy and not like ground at all. They absorb all 17sound too, the road on one side, the estate on the other, so that as soon as you’re through the first row of trees you could be miles or years from anywhere. But now their grandma’s face is looming pinkly in the bubbled glass beside the door, and the door opens inwards, not enough to let them in. Their grandma touching her hair: What’s this, now, is something the matter?

Her minister is there; he’s stopped by after the Mothers’ Union. There are slices of buttered fruit loaf on the table nest as well as a plate of oatmeal biscuits. The electric heater is pulled out to the centre of the room, its face aglow with all three bars. The minister stands, greets their mum, then all of them by name. The Reverend knows you from the photographs, their grandma says, and touches her hair again, straightens her blouse. Her youngest sister steps forward, pirouettes. Do you like our new hair? They’ve all had it cut for the summer term, from almost waist-length to bobs, because of nits – but he doesn’t need to know that, they see the warning in their mum’s eye. They all shake their heads to show how it swishes. The Reverend says, Vanity, vanity, and their grandma laughs, but his face is serious. Vanity, vanity! he says again. Vanity in young ladies is a terrible thing to behold, for it takes deep root, and what grows crooked cannot be straightened. Their grandma looks at him and stops smiling, and after that she won’t admire their haircuts or even meet their eyes, and they are confused and when they leave their mum is furious.