You know, I don’t mind awful well, but sometimes I think there was another mummy about the place, older than the others, but sometimes I think that was just a notion I had. But I do know there was a wee boy at one time. It must’ve been when I was very wee because I can’t mind what he looked like, just that he was small, and he didn’t be well. He stayed in bed near the whole time. Then he wasn’t there any more, and Mummy Noreen wasn’t at herself for a long time after. I mind that more than I mind him. Her staying quiet for weeks and weeks and her crying at night after the lamps went out. And there was the time Mummy Joy’s belly got big like she had a baby in her and then she got a hiding from Daddy Tam and she got awful sick and was bleeding and I had to stay downstairs while Mummy Noreen looked after her upstairs.

Things like that all run together in my head. I couldn’t tell you which was when, what came first or came last. Not really. Time doesn’t work the same way when you’re older than it did when you were a wee’un. And every day was like the other, no difference between them at all, except for Sundays, if the weather was good.

I mind this one Sunday we were out in the yard, I was maybe nine or ten at that time, I don’t know, but it was me and the Mummies, and Daddy George, and I was skipping and dancing around and the Mummies were walking in circles, their heads together, talking. I mind the sun was out, and it was warm in the yard. I could hear the birds all around us. Daddy Ivan used to put food out for the birds and I watched them whenever I could. I never learnt the names of many of them, except the crows and the magpies, and the big fat wood pigeons. Daddy Tam would go hunting the wood pigeons and bring them back for us to pluck for his tea.

But here, this one Sunday, we all heard something. Me first. An engine. Except it wasn’t all rattly like the tractor Daddy Tam drove around the farm. This was different. Not as loud, not as hard sounding. It was a nice sound, even if it wasn’t natural. I stopped skipping and froze to the spot. I saw the birds, over the roof of the house, all flutter up into the high branches of the trees. Then the Mummies heard it too, and they froze as well. Daddy George just stood there, looking at us. He hadn’t heard it, I don’t know for why.