I moved away and went to sit in the kitchen. Nana was at the table peeling potatoes and talking to my mum at the cooker, but they stopped when I came in.

‘Is it you, the troublemaker?’ Nana said.

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I looked at my mum but she just rattled the pots like she didn’t want me there. I sat on the edge of the chair next to Nana.

‘Well, I’m the peacemaker,’ Nana said, ‘and you’ve to answer me this. Do you believe in God?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘That God has made you and he’ll not let you go?’

I frowned at her and looked at my mum.

‘And if I give you Connor’s bag of chocolates will you answer?’ she said. I nodded. But then I thought that was like being a pig, so I shook my head. ‘There, now, Bridie. That’s what I call a normal little boy with no more self-control than he should have. And putting them on the spot doesn’t help.’

‘Kat!’ my mum called out. ‘Come and show Nana your gloves!’

I wasn’t sure how it happened but it put Nana on my side. She gave me a knife and let me cut the potatoes into chunks. Busola came in with her white gloves and showed them to Nana with my mum looking on. Her hands and the gloves were covered in chocolate. She threw them down on top of the potato peelings and walked out.

The bacon bubbled away and Nana and my mum looked at each other.

‘That’ll wash off,’ Nana said.

The wrestling was on again, Connor was out but Manus was back and watching it with a bag of chocolates on his lap. I was feeling a bit sick and the thump of the wrestlers’ bodies banging into each other was making me queasy. I went out the room past the kitchen where my dad was at the table talking to Nana. They had bottles of Guinness on the go, but my mum wasn’t drinking, she was crying.

‘Look at their children, and look what he’s doing for yours,’ Nana was saying. ‘They’re only jealous. There’s no nun in this house, and there doesn’t need to be. He’s getting them an education.’

I stuck my head round the door to see my mum standing by the cooker. Her eyes were rimmed with red and she was blowing her nose with a tissue. Nana and my dad were at the table, and she was taking his side. I didn’t know how to take my mum’s. She wasn’t talking to me.

My dad waved me away, ‘Go and play.’ I looked back at my mum and she nodded, raising her eyebrows at me, ‘Go on,’ she said.