Some days she’s OK, said Cushla. It must have been loyalty that was making her lie. Gina was never entirely sober. She had always been a binger, beating gin into herself for three or four days straight, emerging from the bedroom new and unsteady, as if she’d been purged of whatever tormented her. Marian had been coming to the house since she was fourteen, had seen their father hand Eamonn money for the chippy on evenings Gina was holed up in the bedroom, too drunk to cook a dinner.

Marian folded her arms across her chest. Well, she’s half-cut today, she said.

The girls were swinging from Eamonn’s neck. We should tip on, he said, and they leapt off him in relief.

In the hallway, Marian put her head into the sitting room and said, Thanks for having us, Gina.

Cushla lifted her head in time to see her mother make a reptilian movement with her neck, recoiling from the sound of her own name in Marian’s mouth. Right you be, she said. She didn’t get up.

They prepared to leave, Eamonn settling the girls in the back, fussing at toggles and buttons, squeezing a snatter from a small nose with a tissue. Marian saying something when he sat in the driver’s seat that made him lean suddenly to kiss her. Instead of driving down towards town, he pulled out and on to the hill road, the car horn sounding a cheerful toot.

Cushla closed the door quickly, thankful her mother had not seen the direction in which they had gone. But when she turned, Gina was behind her. They went to the golf club, she said. I bloody knew it.

Eamonn was no golfer, but pubs in the north were not allowed to sell alcohol on Sundays – which gave him his only day off – whereas clubs were. Every week he and Marian had Sunday lunch in the clubhouse with her family and they clearly regretted breaking the habit. Any wonder they left, said Cushla. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.

She’s so far gone she’s showing, said Gina. Her ma was probably told as soon as our Eamonn pulled out of her.

That’s disgusting. And Marian knows you hate her, said Cushla. Why did you tell them about me?

Respect, said Gina. I want to be treated with respect.

Well, try sobering up then! said Cushla, stalking to the kitchen and banging the door behind her.

She took the crumble from the table, the only pudding she had made since O-level Domestic Science, and stabbed at it with a spoon. It was shrunken and jammy, the topping an unappetising dun colour. She had fancied, when she asked her mother to host lunch, that there would be hours of good food and conversation, like at Penny’s table. Michael said there were all kinds of families. Cushla’s was an unhappy one. What was his like?