I suppose, if I’d had the language back then, I would have said that I didn’t relate to any of the teenage characters I saw on the telly.

The weird thing is, I don’t remember feeling sad about it. Or alienated. And it’s true I didn’t have many friends, mostly because I found it difficult to know what to say in most social situations.

I remember overhearing a conversation between Lisa Murphy and Siobhan McKenna on the sixth-year corridor on the way to our chemistry class. They were talking about the Debs dance. In fairness, they didn’t realize I was behind them.

“...think everyone has a date, don’t they?”

“Ah yeah, I think so. Apart from Terry, but I presume she’s not going is she?”

“Not unless they let her bring her mother with her.”

I remember the ease of their laughter so clearly. The casual cruelty of it. I slowed to allow other girls to pour into the space behind Lisa and Siobhan so they wouldn’t look behind them and suddenly realize.

I shouldn’t have minded really. It was true; my mother was my best friend.

Truth be told, she was a great best friend, my mother.

She never made me feel peculiar.

I knew at the time. That it was peculiar. A teenage girl whose best friend was her mother.

But I never felt peculiar. Apart from those few times when I’d see myself as a third party, like that day on the sixth-year corridor on the way to chemistry class.

Anyway, I didn’t bring my mother to the Debs dance. Of course I didn’t.

I didn’t go. Mam took me to Seashells in Howth for dinner that night. It’s not there anymore but, back in the day, it was quite the fancy affair. Attentive waiters in black suits and white dicky bows with linen napkins draped across their forearms. Hugh was in Boston that summer, on a J-1 visa, and Dad was in the taxi, doing the night shift. I was glad. Dad wouldn’t have approved of me not going to the Debs dance. He would have agreed with Lisa and Siobhan and—let’s face it—most of the girls in my year. That I was peculiar.

Jason Donovan strikes me as someone kind. I presume he was one of the popular guys in his class, but I also see him as someone who was kind to peculiar people. Is kind to them. Not that I’m peculiar as such. I manage to blend in now.

I can see why Iris and her dad liked Jason so much. Especially on those long afternoons when Mr. Armstrong’s memories were running out of his head faster than water out of a colander. How Jason, in all his blond-haired, blue-eyed, wide-smiled earnestness, must have seemed like a comfort, with his boy-next-door, familiar face.

I look at Iris. She looks like an ordinary person on an ordinary night out. As do I. As does Dad.

There does not appear to be anything peculiar about any of us.