‘How can they choose if they don’t know? If you won’t let them?’ she said, on the edge of tears and shaking.

They’d been drinking so it was unsteady. I didn’t want it to get out of control, but there was nothing I could do except hold on tight to the arm of the sofa.

‘I’m not stopping anyone,’ my dad said. ‘Let them think.’

He was holding on to the door handles but my mum was standing in front of us, trembling from the chin, as though it was her who was on trial and losing the struggle to speak up for God.

Manus looked at me like he wanted to gob in my face. I looked away and saw Busola standing in the corner by the window, flicking the curtain open from behind and looking down at the street. I hadn’t noticed her before. She was better at disappearing than me.

‘I think you’ve got a nerve,’ my mum said, ‘bringing your juju into the house!’

We all looked at my dad. His eyes clouded, ‘You are confusing them,’ he said.

‘God is good,’ and that was everything out in the open – they were going to fight. ‘Whose side are you on?’ she said to us.

No one answered.

Connor closed his eyes. Manus looked down again. Busola looked at my dad like it was his fault, even though I knew it was mine.

‘I turn my back in the hospital, and you’ve turned them against me,’ my mum said.

And he said, ‘You are ambushing them.’

She had a look on her face that wasn’t disappointed. It was a look of being on her own, expecting to be wounded. We were betraying her and moving away from God, and it was a way of being strong. She faced my dad, ‘You’re poisoning their minds against me.’

He flew off the handle and into the room, making the floorboards creak under his weight. Connor jumped up on his feet and got in the way. ‘Who is poisoning who?’ my dad was shouting. ‘Look at Busola!’ We all looked at her trying to disappear behind the curtain. ‘She won’t go to bed without knicker! And why?’ My dad was screwing his face into a fist, ‘She doesn’t want Jesus to see her without clothes, and he’s always looking!’ The look on his face curled up in disgust, ‘Always looking! Who are you putting with her in bed?’

‘The blaspheming ... !’ but she didn’t finish, she just took her rosary and started praying.

‘Son of God,’ he muttered. ‘God has no son to embarrass you with knicker ...’ but he didn’t finish, either, because he’d gone too far. She was glaring at him, and he left the room.