‘Who has been accepted to the best college in this country.’ Lucy turns the gun to the front row, directly at the acting troupe. ‘So you’re going to need to put the money in the bag. We can’t have her mucking around up there like a child from an uncultured and ugly hick town. Take a look around you, she’s a long way from home. So let’s get on with it.’ She fires the gun two more times and, as she does so, Natasha and her separate. Natasha pulls the string and the screen fills the background once more. She puts a phone on the desk. She takes off her wet jumper and sits down. She wipes her face. She puts on Lucy’s abandoned spectacles. Lucy drags in her own chair and sits opposite Natasha.

‘It’s so great to have you at this college,’ Natasha says, ‘and, as you know, we like to mind our students. So, Lucy, we’re going to help you find your parents.’ Natasha leans over and grabs Lucy’s arm. ‘We do this because we care. Lucy, are these your parents?’

Onscreen appears a picture of an elderly man and woman standing in a field of corn.

‘No,’ Lucy says.

Natasha nods in deep consideration. ‘Lucy,’ she says, seriously, ‘are these your parents?’

A still from the film Man of Aran pops up. A black-and-white man and a woman standing in front of a sunken ship.

‘No,’ Lucy says, baffled.

The phone rings. ‘Excuse me. I have to answer this but so help me God we’re going to do everything in our power to find your parents, Lucy.’ Into the phone, Natasha shouts: ‘I don’t care, get her down off that building. That would be the fourth this year. Get her down.’ She slams the phone down. ‘Hahahahah,’ she laughs falsely, ‘just a bit of business there. So where was the last place you saw your parents? Was it outside your shack?’

‘My what?’

Natasha looks tortured. ‘It’s terrible. So terrible. A lot of the country girls come up here – they don’t even have running water and electricity in their homes.’

‘I don’t think that’s true,’ Lucy says.

‘We try to do what we can for them. We give them these little boxes at Christmas, it’s just a little something, a token, but it helps.’ The phone rings again. ‘Excuse me,’ Natasha says, and answers. ‘She did WHAT? Why would she do that? That’s dreadful. That’s just dreadful. Clean it up.’ Natasha hangs up. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘we’ve lost another potential alumna. So, Lucy, tell me more about you. How did you find out about this college? You and your eighteen siblings were gathered around the television set and you saw a picture of it onscreen. Your heart was set on it.’

‘That wasn’t it.’