‘Then she got tickets to go and see The Dubliners, and you still fucking blanked her. I grew up listening to you telling me how The Dubliners were the greatest Irish band of all time. You have every album they have ever made, yet you passed up the chance to see them live. I thought you would have snatched her hand off, but, oh no, you were too busy making sure she knew her place in your fucking world. The Dubliners were the soundtrack of my childhood, Mum. I know every word to “Danny Boy”, “Boolavogue”, “Four Green fucking Fields”, “Kevin Barry” and “The fucking Galway Shawl”. The one chance you had to go and see them in the flesh, and you said no because poor Josephine asked you to go with her. She is a nice girl, Mum, because anyone else would have told you to get fucked years ago. You sit round her mum and dad’s, and everyone knows you don’t really want to be there. You act like you are doing us all a favour or something. Well, don’t bother in future. If you can’t get along with my wife, then I have no option, do I? If I have to choose between you, I’ll choose my Josephine.’

Michael could see the genuine hurt on his mother’s face. He was all she had, but that had been her choice – she had never wanted anyone else. And, even though he loved her with his entire being, he knew he had to put a stop to this. She’d had it her own way for far too long. Josephine had done everything physically possible to try and find some kind of common ground, find something that might bring them closer. It was clearly never going to happen. He could see that now. His mother was just too Irish, too focused on him and too proud. If she had her way, he would still be living at home with her when he was forty-five.

Michael was a man in his own right, a man to be reckoned with. He was not a kid, and he was not going to humour her. It stopped now.

Hannah just stared at her son, unable to believe that he had said such awful things to her. She knew he had meant every word. She had asked for the majority of it – even she could see that. But he was her only child. She had reared him single-handedly, and devoted her whole life to him. What else did she have?

The doorbell rang loudly, shattering the silence that lay between them. She felt the urge to scream in anguish, to give her pain an outlet, make her son understand how much he was hurting her, see his disloyalty before it was too late.