Aunt Phyllis was looking at me, expectantly. I stared back at her, wild-eyed. I was appalled. Every fibre of me was screaming no, no, no, this mustn’t happen. I made a flailing effort to push their fait accompli away: ‘Oh you don’t need to do that, Aunt Phyllis. I’ll be fine here, sorting things out on my own. Please don’t put yourself to that trouble, honestly the two of you have done enough already. More than enough.’

Mary struck a firmer tone, her cheeks puffing out with confident authority: ‘No, really, Jacky. We are certain it would be best.’

You big bloodhound, I thought, fuck off and sniff round someone else. It was a dirty trick, to mob someone the day after their own father’s funeral. My heart was pounding with the injustice of it.

‘I’ll be fine, honestly,’ I said.

I looked again at Phyllis, at the worn, expectant face, the tightly permed hair, the fussy wee cardigan with the careful bow tied at the front. It was a miserable enough life she had up there in Carrickfergus with Mary and her husband, and Mary queening it over her. I was her bid for independence, the last raft drifting past on an isolated river. She was clambering aboard me with a horrible tenacity: didn’t she realise she would sink us both? No, no. I struggled to fight off the pity. Pity makes weaklings of us all.

Phyllis said: ‘It would only be till you got yourself set up again, Jacky.’ No, no. Mary chipped in quickly with: ‘You can’t be expected to manage here on your own like this. Phyllis can sort things out around the house.’

A brief stab of utter hatred, followed by a little flood of guilt. They had me now. I was sliding underwater.

I looked at Phyllis, and said: ‘Just till I get myself sorted then. That would be kind of you.’

Phyllis smiled. Mary remembered there were some more of Phyllis’s things in the car, and bustled out to fetch them.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. That night Phyllis moved herself into Big Jacky’s room, so I couldn’t very well go in there and lie down, as I had planned, unless I wanted to give her a heart attack as well. I lay in my own bed, seething.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. The bathroom had quickly filled up with Phyllis’s bits and pieces, her aspirin and cuticle scrapers. Towelettes and hairnets, Q-tips and denture grip. Like the Dana song: all kinds of everything remind me of you.