Granny cursed the air blue when she found out he had left them all again. ‘I knew that good-for-nothing layabout would bring nothing but badness to this family.’ She swore if he ever darkened the door again, she would have his hide.

As the weeks turned into months, Cat came back to herself and so did her mam. She moved to a new job in the city that was better paid, but it came with longer hours. She started studying to be a psychologist. She looked after Mikey and Cat, and in return Cat did her best to look after her.

Her mam smiled when Cat handed her the steaming mug.

‘Thanks, Kitty-Cat,’ she said. ‘Come on, tell me more about your day.’

Cat sat and told her about school and about Shane Culligan being a pain and about her plan to stay over at the twins’ house the next night and watch films (she left out the part about them being horror films; she knew her mam wouldn’t approve). Then she got to the bit about Granny and the iron nails.

‘She did what?’ her mam said, sitting upright and sloshing tea onto her lap. ‘I swear, that woman … I’m sick of her filling your head with nonsense. She’s only getting worse with age.’

‘It’s not that bad,’ said Cat, feeling her face heat up, worried she had gotten Granny in trouble.

‘It is bad. You don’t think it’s a strange thing to do? Hammering nails into walls and wasting perfectly good bread?’

‘She was only trying to protect us,’ Cat mumbled.

‘That’s the thing Cat, we don’t need protecting. There’s nothing to be protected from! Just a bunch of silly made-up stories. Ever since your granddad died, she seems to be getting worse. Maybe I should call Eileen …’

She reached for her mobile phone and Cat could have kicked herself for saying anything at all. These days it seemed as though her mam and her auntie never had anything good to say about Granny at all. The last thing she wanted was to give them more things to complain about. While the phone was ringing her mam turned to Cat and said, ‘Maybe you should go and get ready for bed, love?’

Cat slunk from the room feeling terrible. She paused in the hallway for a moment and pressed her ear close to the door.

‘Hi Eileen, how are you doing? I’m grand thanks, another mad day at work, you know yourself. Listen, I wanted to talk to you about Mam. You won’t believe what she’s done now. I’m honestly getting a bit worried about the state of her mind …’

Cat had heard enough. She ran up the stairs as fast as she could and threw herself onto her bed, burying her face in the pillow to hide her tears. After a while, she heard the clatter of dishes in the sink as her mam cleared up downstairs and knew she would be heading to bed soon. Cat lay very still until she was sure her mam had finished checking on Mikey and had retreated into her own room. Then she slipped quietly from her bed and went to her desk.