I thought I was too old to be embarrassed by my mother. Well, there’s a turn-up for the books.

‘It seems no length of time since you were teenagers,’ Mum said wistfully. ‘Where do the years go?’

Silently, Shay and I looked at each other and suddenly I was right back there, remembering one particular afternoon. Him lowering me into a patch of sunlight on his bedroom carpet. The heat, the light, the rare touch of his naked skin against mine. I’d been almost unable to bear the pleasure.

He remembered too, or something very similar, because the atmosphere thickened almost visibly.

I’d tried to keep my teenage romances secret from my parents. Naturally, they’d suspected when I first went out with Garv when I was seventeen. But at the time I never confirmed it – or that we’d split up. Nor did they ever know for sure that I went out with Shay, either. Not that I ever went out with Shay – all we did was have sex. What I remember of that time was the constant waiting and yearning for his mother to go out so I could slip into his house and out of my clothes. I was in a state of constant arousal and even when his mother and younger sisters were home, all we did was have sex, although a little more surreptitiously – we pretended to watch television while I had one hand in his jeans, one eye on the door handle and my pants under a cushion. Sometimes his nervy, beleaguered mother cracked under the constant badgering and let us go to his room to ‘listen to music’, where we had sex with most of our clothes still on: my skirt pulled up, his jeans pulled down, dreading the footfall on the stairs that had us leaping to our feet and hastily covering up our flushed skin. Even when we went to parties, it was just an excuse for him to lock me in a bedroom and screw my brains out on the pile of coats.

‘I’ll leave you two to catch up,’ Mum said with a warm smile, and promptly turned on her heel, pushing through the crowds. I hadn’t ever thought I’d see the day when my mother was pimping for me.

‘When did she get so liberal about divorce?’ Shay asked.

‘In the last ten minutes.’

I hated the pause that followed. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I was stripped of all conversational skills, which was a shame because there was so much I wanted to talk to him about.

‘Right,’ he said, and I knew what was coming next.

‘Time up, is it?’

‘What?’

‘You’ve talked to me on my own for more than five seconds, so it’s time you stuck out your hand and said, “Well, great to see you again.” Isn’t it?’

He didn’t like that. He seemed startled – because he’d been caught out not being perfect? I was rather startled myself; I’m not normally so forthright. But we’d once been so close that maybe I still felt I had the right to say anything I wanted to him.

‘It’s not like that.’ He stumbled over the words. ‘It’s… I mean… ‘He looked anxious, as if he was pleading to be understood.

But before we got any further, Dad spotted Shay and came running joyously. ‘Shay Delaney, as I live and breathe! It’s great to see someone from home!’

I swallowed another sigh. Dad had been away from Ireland less than two days. What is it with Irish people? Rachel, my sister, says we can’t even go on a daytrip to Holyhead without singing maudlin songs about how we were forced to leave the Emerald Isle and how much we wish we were back there. Do we share some sort of inherited memory, so that whenever we leave the country it triggers recollections of being deported to Van Diemen s Land for stealing a sheep?

‘We’re all heading back to the hotel now on account of the jet lag, but I’m taking everyone out for their dinner on Friday night,’ Dad told Shay, ‘and I’ll take it as a personal insult if you won’t join us.’

39

On Thursday evening, Mum, Dad, Helen and Anna arrived unexpectedly at Emily’s. They’d gone to Disneyland for the day and I hadn’t thought they’d be home till midnight. Right away, I knew it wasn’t just a casual call because Mum had on her best cardigan and her ‘going-out’ lipstick, i.e. a ring of lipstick that was wider than her lips. She looked like a respectable clown.

‘Come in, come in,’ I said. ‘How was Disneyland?’

Mum silently stood aside to reveal Dad. Wearing a neckbrace.

‘Oh.’

‘That’s how Disneyland was,’ Mum said. ‘He stood up on that log thing again. He wouldn’t listen. He never listens. He has to know it all.’

‘It was worth it,’ Dad said, having to turn his entire body to glare at her.

‘Dad, when you came here with the other accountants, did you wear your suits?’

‘Suits?’ He sounded shocked. ‘We were ambassadors for our country. Of course we did.’

‘Did you have a good time at Disneyland?’ I asked Helen.

‘Yeah, because we didn’t go. We went to Malibu looking for surf gods.’

‘You’ve no car,’ Emily said to Anna. ‘How did you and Helen get to Malibu? Surely to God you didn’t… get the bus?’

But Anna shook her head. ‘No. Ethan and the other lads from next door drove us in their Dukes of Hazzardmobile.’

‘But you only met them last night.’

‘Tempus fugit,’ Anna said knowingly. ‘No time like the present.’

The whole room fell silent and stared, because Anna was the girl whose motto had always been, ‘Don’t do today what you can put off till tomorrow. Or preferably some time next year.’

‘Anna fancies Ethan,’ Helen said.

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘Do you really?’ Emily asked, agog.

‘No!’

‘She does,’ Helen insisted. ‘We’ll just have to torture her to get her to admit it. Emily, have you anything we can give her an electric shock with?’

‘Look in the kitchen. While you’re at it, bring out some wine and glasses as well, would you?’

‘Could you not just tell us, pet?’ Mum asked. ‘Electric shocks can really sting.’

‘I don’t fancy him!’

From the kitchen came the sound of rattling and rummaging in drawers. ‘Emily, all I can find is an electric carving knife,’ Helen called. ‘We could cut off bits of her.’