‘If you torture me, I’m going home,’ Anna said.

‘Leave it so. Just bring the wine.’

‘And what did you do today?’ Mum asked me.

I’d had a funny kind of a day, assailed by all manner of nostalgia, cast back in time to when I was seventeen and first involved with Shay. So much had come back to me, remembered with bitter-sweet pain…

Mum’s voice cut across my thoughts, returning me with a jolt to present-day Los Angeles.

‘Am I talking to the wall?’ she said sharply. ‘What did you do today?’

‘Oh, sorry. I washed clothes. Went to the supermarket.’ Got shouted at again by the raggedy man, something about a car chase with ‘Lala’ getting a bullet in the thigh. This time I didn’t take it personally. Bought loads of lovely food, then wondered why it is, no matter whether it’s in a supermarket in Ireland or one six thousand miles away in Los Angeles, that I always end up standing behind the Person Who Gets a Big Surprise When They Realise They Have to Pay. Their stuff is all packed in bags, which are sitting in their trolley to be pushed to the car, then when they get told the amount they act amazed, and only then do they begin patting their pockets or opening their handbag, looking for their wallet. Eventually paying either with a credit card whose swipe doesn’t work or counting out the exact amount in small change.

Then I went next door to the drugstore, bought a tongue-scraper and waited hopefully for my life to change.

‘And when I got home I helped Emily.’ Well, I’d made her a blueberry smoothie, given her another word for ‘growled’, and answered the phone to Larry Savage and told him that Emily was at her colonic irrigation person when she was just lying on the couch smoking and crying.

‘Last night was marvellous,’ Mum said. ‘Apart from the film. Shay Delaney hasn’t changed a bit, it did me the power of good to see him. And he’s going to come out with us all for dinner tomorrow night, Dad says.’

‘He won’t come,’ I said. ‘He was only being polite.’

‘He will come,’ Mum insisted. ‘He said he would.’

Dad had practically held a knife to his throat, of course he’d said he’d come.

‘I think he’s a bit creepy,’ Helen said. ‘He was looking at you, Maggie.’

‘He was looking at all of us,’ Mum said smartly.

‘No, I mean he was looking at her. Looking. With his eyes.’

‘What else would he be looking at her with?’ Mum snapped. ‘His feet?’

Before I could separate and label the clump of feelings this engendered, Anna said something surprising. ‘He wants every-one to like him.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Mum asked. ‘Anyway, everyone does like him.’

‘I don’t,’ Helen said.

‘You’re just contrary.’

‘Go home, old woman, I’m tired and you’re annoying me.’

‘I’m going, but only because I want to. C’mon, you!’ Mum summoned Dad as though he was an obedient dog. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

‘Where are you off to?’

‘In next door to their fable-telling evening.’

When we’d all finished laughing, I said, ‘Why are you going if you don’t want to?’

‘Sure, what could I say?’ Mum said indignantly. ‘That Mike put me right on the spot the other night.’

‘Just don’t go,’ Helen suggested. ‘Let him fuck off.’

‘No.’ Suddenly Mum was all hauteur. ‘If I say I’ll do something, I’ll do it. I’m not the kind of woman who goes back on her word. We’ll go for an hour to be polite, then we’ll say we’ve another engagement.’

‘Say you’re going to the Viper Room,’ Helen suggested. ‘It’s oldies’ night.’

‘The Viper Room,’ Mum repeated. ‘Right you are. And if we’re not out in an hour and a half, come and get us.’

As soon as they’d gone, Helen said, all business-like, ‘Now, the bloke with the big schnozz? Troy? I find him strangely attractive.’

‘Take a number and get in line,’ Emily said, just like she’d once said to me. ‘Don’t fall in love with me baby ‘cos I’ll only break your heart.’

‘Fall in love,’ Helen scoffed, highly amused. ‘That’s a good one. So who’s slept with him?’ She looked eagerly at Emily. ‘Surely you have?’

‘Ask Maggie.’

‘OK. Who’s slept with him?’ I shrugged and Helen gave me a gimlet look. ‘You?’

‘Yes, me.’

‘But… you’re a lickarse, a good girl.’

‘Is that right?’

She gave me a mistrustful look, then pressed on, ‘But you and this Troy, you’re not an item?’

‘No.’

‘Well, do you mind if I have a go of him?’

‘Nothing to do with me.’

‘You might want to run it by his girlfriend.’ Emily sounded unexpectedly sharp.

‘Who? That ringlety one?’ Helen laughed softly. ‘I don’t anticipate any problems with her. Now tell me all about Lara. The lads were saying she’s a lesbo. I wonder what it’s like to have sex with a girl,’ she said dreamily – only because she wanted to cause a bit of a furore. ‘I wonder what they get up to in bed.’

‘Ask Maggie,’ Emily said.

‘HAHAHAHA!’ went Helen. Then stopped as if she’d just driven into a granite wall. The colour vanished from her face. ‘I don’t believe you.’

I shrugged again. ‘Up to you.’ I was enjoying this.

‘When?’

‘Last week.’

‘I don’t believe you. I’m going to ask Lara.’

‘Ask away,’ I said equably.

Helen spent the next hour staring at me as though she’d never seen me before, then shaking her head and murmuring faintly, ‘Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ…’ She only stopped when Emily looked at her watch and exclaimed, ‘What about your Mum and Dad? It’s been nearly an hour and a half. Should we go and rescue them?’

‘Right, come on.’

We filed out, stood on the street and looked through the window into Mike and Charmaine’s front room. Mum was sitting majestically on a chair, while all the others were clustered at her feet. She was talking and smiling. Dad was propped on the couch, his head in his neckbrace, unnaturally still. He was smiling too.