I felt sick. I felt miserable. I was jetlagged, for God’s sake! And this was supposed to be a bloody holiday. I hadn’t had to get up this early when I was going to work! And I was sorry about Eamonn eating all the bread, I hadn’t realized that that was all there was, I might have tried to stop him otherwise. Everyone would hate me…

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, close to tears.

Ah never mind,’ said Don, with awkward kindness. ‘Sure the divil himself couldn’t stop him.’

‘Sorry,’ I whispered again. I looked down at Don with tear-filled eyes, batted my eyelashes just once and thus closed the deal.

‘Don’t worry at all,’ he reassured me. ‘He’s done it every morning this week already. Sure, they’re used to not having any toast.’

Then he started to break eggs into a bowl. It was too early to look at thirty-six raw eggs. My stomach heaved.

‘Are you all right?’ Stalin asked anxiously.

‘She’s not well!’ Don declared, all of a dither. ‘You big eejit. The girl’s not well. For God’s sake, let the child sit down!’

Fussing, and sending us on a detour as he skidded on a piece of rasher rind, Don led me to a chair.

‘Will I get the nurse for you? Get the nurse!’ He ordered Stalin and Eamonn. ‘Put your head between your ears!… I mean your knees.’

‘No,’ I said weakly. ‘I’m all right, it was only the eggs and I didn’t get enough sleep…’

‘You’re not up the pole, are you?’ asked Stalin.

‘What a question!’ Don was shocked. ‘Of course the child isn’t up the pole…’

He thrust his plump worried face into mine. ‘You’re not, are you?’

I shook my head.

‘You see,’ he declared triumphantly to Stalin.

I later learnt that Don was forty-seven and lived with his mother and was a ‘confirmed bachelor’. Somehow it came as no surprise.

‘Are you sure you’re not on the bubble?’ Stalin asked again. ‘My Rita couldn’t look at an egg when she was expecting the first four.’

‘I’m not.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just do.’

He could get lost for himself if he thought I was going to discuss my menstrual cycle.

So, Don, Eamonn, Stalin and a young boy called Barry that I remembered seeing all those years ago – yesterday – prepared the breakfast. I sat on a chair, sipping water, took deep breaths and tried not to puke. Barry was the one who looked about fourteen and had shouted ‘Yeah, bleedin’ useless,’ at Sadie yesterday.

Just before breakfast I realized that I would shortly see Chris and I wasn’t wearing a scrap of make-up. Through my exhaustion, nausea and misery, there broke through a faint glimmer of self-preservation. But when I tried to crawl back upstairs to throw on some blusher and mascara, my way was blocked by motherly Monica, the nurse. Breakfast was about to start and I was going nowhere until it was over.

‘But…’ I said weakly.

‘Tell me what you want from your room and I’ll get it,’ she offered with a warm, but very, very firm, smile.

But of course I couldn’t tell her. She’d think I was vain. So I had to slink back into the dining-room with my head lowered in case Chris saw me full-on without my makeup and realized what a dog I was. I managed the entire breakfast without making eye-contact with one other person.

They were all so jovial. Even about the lack of toast.

‘What, no toast? AGAIN!’ Peter laughed. But of course he would have laughed even if he heard that his house had been burnt to the ground and all his family were wiped out in a massacre.

‘No toast, again,’ said someone else.

‘No toast, again.’

‘No toast, again.’ The message passed down the table.

‘That fat fucker, Eamonn,’ mumbled someone bitterly. I was surprised to find it was Chaquie.

Between the stomach-turning eggs and the non-vegetarian sausages and rashers, I ate almost nothing. Which couldn’t be bad, I decided.

But I was so tired and weirded-out by it all that it wasn’t until late that evening that I realized that there hadn’t been one piece of fruit for breakfast. Not even a bruised apple or a black banana, let alone the mile-long buffet of fresh tropical fruits that I’d expected.

18

The day never really got on track for me. I was dizzy and queasy, and I didn’t ever manage to wake up properly.

Thoughts of Luke were with me all the time. I was too tired to have the loss centred clearly in my mind, but the pain constantly buzzed away just under the surface.

Everything was weird and peculiar, as though I’d landed on another planet.

When the revolting breakfast finished, I had to scrub several large, greasy frying-pans. Then I bolted to the room and spent twenty minutes larding on make-up. I had a difficult job on my hands.

Whenever I didn’t get enough sleep I got patches of red, flaky skin on my face. They were hard to cover because, even if I put tons of foundation on them, the flaky bits just flaked off, taking the foundation with them and leaving the red blotches centre stage again. I tried my best but even with make-up on I looked like a corpse.

I crawled back downstairs, forced a smile and bumped into Misty O’Malley. She was slouching around wearing a sour look and no make-up. With my brown sticky grinning face I instantly felt like a toffee apple and a gobshite.

Don scuttled over and grabbed me by the sleeve.

‘Have you your hands washed?’ he anxiously demanded.

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s the cookery CLASS,’ he shrieked, his eyes apop at my stupidity. ‘It’s Saturday morning, hobbies’ TIME!’

A mirage of me having my pressure points gently massaged wavered and evaporated. I wasn’t at all happy. A cookery class was only one step up from basket-weaving.

‘It’s great fun,’ someone said, eyes ashine, as we were swept along to the kitchen and handed an apron.

‘You’ll love Betty,’ someone else promised me.

Betty was the teacher. She was blonde and fragrant and popular.

Stalin grabbed her and waltzed her around the room. ‘Ah, me darlin’ girl,’ he said.

Clarence elbowed me. ‘Isn’t she lovely?’ he whispered, like the halfwit he was. ‘Hasn’t she lovely hair?’