Everyone was singing while my dad danced with Nana round the room. It was late and people were drinking Guinness. Gerry called it the blonde lady in the black skirts, telling the story of what happened to their uncle in New York who got taken in by the Salvation Army and ended up dying with a few pennies tucked away, only for a woman who wasn’t there when he was drinking himself to death to come and take it all. My aunts shouted him down saying he’d got it wrong, but then they were all singing her hair hung over her shoulder, tied up with a black velvet band for Nana, and it was connected but I wasn’t sure how, except they were drinking and I could see the woman standing there when they sang her eyes they shone like diamonds. Nana reached up and gave my dad a kiss on the cheek and sat down. Then it was my mum’s turn to sing with Busola sitting on her lap and everyone looking to see what would happen after she stopped trying to say she wasn’t going to. She turned and praised my dad, she said he was handsome and an education. And she thanked him for it. She hadn’t expected this in her life. She was going to hold on to it with all her strength, but would he leave off telling himself she was older than she was?

I hadn’t thought about my mum being old before. I didn’t know how old she was. She’d always been there. ‘You’re young till you aren’t,’ Tess said, ‘come on, give us a song.’

‘Will you sing it with me?’ my mum said to Busola. Only she was talking to Kat because that’s who squirmed in her lap and tried to slide off, but my mum wouldn’t let her.

‘Jaysus, will you look at that,’ Uncle Eamon said. ‘You’d think the holy water touched her.’ He shook his fist under her chin, ‘You’ll sing or I’ll murder you with this!’