Her mother was dressed in navy trousers and a Breton-style cotton jumper, her lips red. She pushed aside a pile of items Cushla did not recall assembling and laid the tray on Cushla’s nightstand. There was tea, toast, an egg mashed in a Pyrex cup. Cushla felt a burn of sick at the back of her throat. She rolled away from her mother and staggered to the bathroom, thanking God the toilet lid was open. She put her hands on the cistern and vomited until she was bilious. When she lifted her face to the mirror, her cheek was embossed with a moss-stitch pattern from the cardigan. She cleaned her teeth and her tongue, retching as the brush reached the back molars, and sat on the toilet seat with her head in her hands, waiting to hear Gina’s feet descending the stairs. She was still drunk. The window was north-facing, the air chilly. She stayed until she could no longer bear the cold, and went back to her room, gripping the edges of the cardigan across her stomach.

Gina was at Cushla’s dressing table, backcombing a tuft of hair. You’d better get your arse down that road to school, she said, smoothing the fuzz with a tail comb.

I’m dying, said Cushla, crawling across the mattress and under the blankets. Will you ring Bradley for me? Tell him I’ve a bug or something.

Disgraceful. Missing work because of drink, said her mother, her eyebrows and shoulders rising in a pretence of suppressing a giggle. When they got home the previous evening Gina had produced a bottle of Teacher’s from her handbag that she had clearly stolen from the bar. They had sat at the kitchen table, guzzling, her mother telling stories about Michael. The time he and her uncle were lifted on an early civil rights march and Michael ridiculed the arresting officer so much he had the man in tears. The night his son was born, when he bought a drink for every single customer in the bar. It had made Cushla feel close to him. This morning it seemed mawkish. Indecent.