What could she have said to him? What possible provocation could she have afforded him-this sweet woman? And Ernest then, or Mossie, one of the enforcers, wrestling him out through the back door and on to the grass for a kicking. We laughed at that too. And my lost brother, Liam, laughed: the knife thrower, the one who was being kicked, he laughed too, and he grabbed his older brother’s ankle to topple him into the grass. Also me-I was also laughing, as I recall. My mother clucking a little, at the sight of it, and going about her business again. My sister Midge picking up the knife and waggling it out the window at the fighting boys, before slinging it into the sink full of washing-up. If nothing else, our family had fun.

My mother puts the lid on the teapot and looks at me.

I am a trembling mess from hip to knee. There is a terrible heat, a looseness in my innards that makes me want to dig my fists between my thighs. It is a confusing feeling-somewhere between diarrhoea and sex-this grief that is almost genital.

It must have been over some boyfriend, the last time I cried here. Ordinary, family tears meant nothing in this kitchen; they were just part of the general noise. The only thing that mattered was, He rang or, He didn’t ring. Some catastrophe. The kind of thing that would have you scrabbling at the walls after five bottles of cider. He left me. Doubling over, clutching your midriff; howling and gagging. He didn’t even call to get his scarf back. The boy with the turquoise eyes.

Because we are also-at a guess-great lovers, the Hegartys. All eye-to-eye and sudden fucking and never, ever, letting go. Apart from the ones who couldn’t love at all. Which is most of us, too, in a way.

Which is most of us.

‘It’s about Liam,’ I say.

‘Liam?’ she says. ‘Liam?’

My mother had twelve children and-as she told me one hard day-seven miscarriages. The holes in her head are not her fault. Even so, I have never forgiven her any of it. I just can’t.