‘Let the lad do his chow mein,’ Mike protested.

Then Chaquie arrived, complaining loudly about something she’d read in the papers about unmarried mothers being given free condoms to stop them expanding their families.

‘It’s disgraceful,’ she fumed. ‘Why should the taxpayers’ money be spent giving them free french letters? They shouldn’t need anything at all.’

‘Do you know what the best contraceptive is?’ she demanded.

Barry screwed up his forehead in thought. ‘Your face?’

Chaquie ignored him. ‘The word “no”! It’s as simple as that, just two little letters, n and o. No. If they had any morals at all they wouldn’t need…’

‘AH, SHUT UP!’ Everyone roared as one.

Things quietened down briefly until John Joe asked Barry to demonstrate the rudiments of Tai Chi to him, and Barry, sweet child that he was, obliged.

‘See, you slide your leg along the floor here. No, slide.’

Instead of sliding gracefully, John Joe simply picked up a heavy-booted foot and planted it clumsily on another part of the floor.

‘Slide, see, like this.’

‘Show me again,’ John Joe asked, moving closer to Barry.

All of us who were in John Joe’s group stiffened, thinking the same thing. ‘He fancies Barry. Oh God, he fancies Barry!’

‘And gently raise your arm.’ Barry lifted his arm as gracefully as a ballerina. John Joe thrust his out, as if he was punching someone.

‘Now kind of tilt your hips.’

John Joe complied with enthusiasm.

Another babel of voices broke out because Stalin knew the capital of Papua New Guinea.’How did you know it?’ Vincent demanded. ‘How would a gobshite like you know something like that?’

‘Because I’m not a thick eejit, like some I could mention,’ Stalin insisted.

‘Not at all.’ Vincent laughed darkly. ‘Not. At. All. It’s because you’ve been swotting up on them answers, that’s why. Capital of Papua New Guinea, me arse, sure you hardly know the capital of Ireland, even though you live in it. If you weren’t an alcoholic you’d never have been out of Clanbrassil Street, you’re hardly what you might call well-travelled…’

‘Shush, would you, I’m trying to write my life story,’ I said good-naturedly.

‘Why don’t you go to the Reading Room?’ Chris said. ‘You’ll get more peace there.’

I was torn between wanting to be able to sit and admire him, and wanting to show gratitude for his suggestion.

‘Go on,’ he urged with a smile. ‘You’ll get lots done there.’

No more needed to be said.

But as soon as I tried to write my life story, I mean really write it, as opposed to just sitting with it in front of me, I suddenly understood why, the first night I’d been there, everyone in the Reading Room had been slapping the desks with the palms of their hands, crumpling up balls of paper, throwing them at the wall in despair and shouting ‘I can’t do this!’

Faced with the questions, I found I deeply didn’t want to answer them.

37

What was my earliest memory? I wondered, looking at the empty page in front of me. Any one of many. The time that Margaret and Claire put me in the crolly doll’s pram and pushed me round in it at high speed. I still remembered being squashed into the too-small pram, blinded by the summer sun and Margaret’s and Claire’s laughing faces beneath the brown, pudding-bowl haircuts we all had. I remembered how much I hated my hair and wished fiercely for long, golden ringlets like Angela Kilfeather’s.

Or running after Margaret and Claire on my chunky, little legs, trying to keep up. Only to be told ‘Go home, you can’t come, you’re too small.’

Or coveting Claire’s powder-blue patent sandals, which had a strap across the toe and another around the ankle and – the best part of all – a white, patent flower on the bit across the toe.

My earliest memory could have been of the time I ate Margaret’s Easter egg and we all got locked out.

Instantly, it was as if the lights in the Reading Room had dimmed. Oh dear, I still felt peculiar even twenty-three years later, as I recalled that day. It certainly didn’t feel like twenty-three years, it felt like yesterday.

It was a Beano Easter egg, I remembered clearly. I don’t think they make Beanos anymore, I thought, trying to distract myself from the painful memory. As I recalled, Beanos became extinct some time in the seventies. I supposed I could always check with Eamonn. They were lovely, like Smarties, but in much brighter, groovier colours.

Margaret had saved the Easter egg from April and it was then about September. That was the kind of sister Margaret was. I was tormented by her ability to hoard.

I was the total opposite. When we got our Sunday packet of Cadbury’s éclairs, I could hardly wait to get the paper off before shoving them into my mouth. And when I’d finished, hers were still untouched. Then, of course, I was sorry I hadn’t saved mine and I wanted hers.

For months, the Easter egg stood on top of our wardrobe, winking and dazzling me with its glittery red paper. I coveted it incessantly with every inch of my plump little body. I was obsessed with it.

‘When do you think you’ll eat it?’ I’d ask, trying to pretend that I didn’t care. Trying to pretend I didn’t feel I would die if it wasn’t in the next five minutes.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said airily, control-freak that she was.

‘Really?’ I said, with grim nonchalance. It was vitally important never to let anyone know what it was that you really wanted. Because if they knew, they deliberately wouldn’t give it to you. If you ask, you don’t get, was my experience.

‘I might never eat it,’ she mused. ‘I might just throw it out.’

‘Well,’ I said carefully, holding my breath at the thought of clinching the deal and getting what I wanted, ‘there’s no need to throw it out, I’ll eat it for you.’

‘Do you want to eat it?’

‘Yes,’ I said, forgetting to dissemble.

Aha! So you want to eat it.’

‘No! I…’

‘You do, it’s obvious. And Holy God says that, because you’ve asked, it makes you unworthy. You weren’t humble, see?’

At the age of five and a quarter, Margaret was an authority on God.