His sister would always cry and say sorry to her father for lying, but she didn’t mean it, because she would then lie again the next day, and get found out, and then there would be another row, and more yelling and weeping. After a few years of listening to these episodes, the boy decided that his sister’s distress was genuine, but had nothing to do with contrition. Rather, it was that she found it unpleasant to be shouted at for hours at a time about how she’d let herself and her family down. Her father didn’t restrict his shouting to the subject of his daughter’s lies. He also yelled at her for wearing too much makeup, not spending enough time on her homework, making too many phone calls, getting up too late at weekends, liking the wrong music, having the wrong opinion about every subject, wearing the wrong jewelry, choosing the wrong boyfriends, the wrong clothes, the wrong friends, putting the wrong posters on her walls and many other things. Every choice the daughter made was the wrong choice, and every opinion she expressed was the wrong opinion.

The boy found his father’s tirades distressing to listen to. They made him shake. Sometimes he would press himself against the far wall of his bedroom, beneath the window. Sometimes, though he was always terrified to open his door while an episode was in progress, he would force himself to do it so that he could escape downstairs. His father’s shouting and his sister’s crying could still be heard clearly from downstairs, but it wasn’t quite as deafening. However, downstairs there was other crying to contend with: the boy’s mother’s crying, which usually took place in the kitchen.

The boy couldn’t understand why his mother always stayed as far away from the trouble as possible. Surely as a grown-up she could do something to make the noise stop? Yet she never did. As soon as the shouting started, she behaved as if her husband and daughter were members of a different family. She wouldn’t even go upstairs if she needed something from her bedroom, not until the yelling had stopped and her husband had finally accepted her daughter’s ninety-seventh apology. Then and only then would she wash her face at the kitchen sink, dry it with a tea towel, put on a bright smile and wade back into family life as if nothing had happened.