Ted arrived back to oversee the final preparations. He was keen that Marcus and Ashling hit it off so that he could advance his stand-up career through close contact with Marcus. ‘Look sexy,’ he urged, slouched on Ashling’s bed, watching her apply her third and final layer of mascara.

‘I’m TRYING!’ she heard herself shout. Clearly she was more nervous than she’d realized. Look at what hope did to her! Sending all her longing for love and stability on the rampage, and turning her into a nervous wreck. Sometimes, like now, she thought perhaps she felt too much. Was this normal? she wondered. Probably. And if it wasn’t? Well, she’d had a deprived childhood, she thought wryly.

OK, maybe not deprived deprived. But deprived of routine, deprived of ordinariness. After her mother’s first bout of depression, normal service had never really resumed. Instead, life as they’d all known it had slipped away. For ever: though they didn’t know this at the time.

The irony of it was that initially Ashling had actually been excited when regular mealtimes began to be neglected. When she got a grass-mark on her cardigan, she was glad not to be shouted at. But as the days passed, eventually even she could see that the clothes she was putting on were filthy. Relief had given way to anxiety. This isn’t right

‘Will I wear this today?’ She presented herself to her mum in a filthy summer dress. Notice me, notice me.

Her mum’s dead eyes looked out from a face dragged down in formless grief. ‘If you want.’

Janet and Owen were kitted out no better. And neither was her mum – she’d always been so pretty and nicely dressed and now didn’t even notice that she was out in public wearing a shirt stained with egg.

That summer they went to the local park a lot. Monica used to exclaim, ‘I can’t stay in this house,’ and hustle all of them out. But even in the park she rarely stopped crying, and she never had a hanky. So Ashling, thinking it inappropriate that her mother wiped her tears with her sleeve, began to fold a tissue into her cardigan pocket every time they went out.

Once at the park Ashling would try to stage-manage things so that at least Janet and Owen had fun. When they agitated for ice-cream, Ashling was very anxious that they should get it: should they become upset, she feared it would blow the lid off everything. But her mother never remembered to bring any money, so Ashling had a pink and brown plastic purse in the shape of a dog’s face which she began to bring instead.

As the summer advanced, Monica developed a new and alarming habit. Sitting listlessly on a bench, she would pluck and tear at a cut on her arm, only satisfied when it started to bleed. It was around then that Ashling began to carry a small bundle of Band-Aids around with her.

Something had to give. Surely someone had to notice?

She began to pray that her mother would get better and that her father wouldn’t go away every Monday morning and not come back until Friday. Then, when prayers didn’t produce the desired results, she incubated a bizarre conviction that if she flushed the toilet three times whenever she used it, everything would be all right. Next she developed the notion that when she came down the stairs she had to do a twirl at the bottom. Simply had to, and if she forgot to do it she had to go back to the top of the stairs and do the whole ritual again.

Superstitions started to take on great importance. If she saw one magpie – sorrow – she anxiously scanned the sky for a second one – joy. One day she spilt salt and to avoid any more tears threw some over her left shoulder. Where it landed in the trifle. Her mother gazed gormlessly at the grains of salt dissolving into the layer of cream, then put her head on the kitchen table and wept. No change there.

Ted’s bellowing tuned her back in to the present. ‘Ashling, speak to me! What do the tarot cards say about tonight?’

She recovered quickly, very, very glad that it was now and not then. ‘Not bad. Four of Cups.’ No need to mention that she’d plucked and discarded the more ominous Ten of Swords first. ‘And my horoscope in two of the Sunday papers is good,’ she continued. And not so good in two others, but what harm? ‘And the Angel Oracle card I picked was the Miracle of Love one.’ Eventually it had been anyway, after Maturity, Health, Creativity and Wisdom.

‘Is that what you’re wearing?’ Ted nodded at her black three-quarter-length pants and waist-tied shirt.

‘Why?’ Ashling asked defensively. She’d dressed very carefully, and was especially pleased with the shirt because, due to some trick of the light, it created a false-waist syndrome.

‘Haven’t you got a short skirt?’

‘I never wear short skirts,’ she muttered, wondering anxiously if she might have overdone her blusher. ‘I hate my legs. Have I too much blusher on?’

‘Which one’s blusher? The red stuff on your cheeks? No, put on some more.’

Immediately Ashling wiped some off. Ted’s motives were suspect.

‘Where are you meeting him? Kehoe’s? I’ll walk you there.’

‘No you bloody well won’t,’ Ashling said, firmly.

‘But I only…’

‘No!’

The last thing Ashling wanted was Ted hanging around, pestering Marcus adoringly, asking if he could be his new best friend.

‘Well, good luck then,’ Ted said plaintively, as Ashling flung her lucky pebble into her new embroidered handbag, thrust her feet into wedge sandals and prepared to leave. ‘I hope this is a romance made in heaven.’

‘So do I,’ Ashling admitted, then paid hasty lip-service to God or whoever was Celestial Minister for Romance, ‘if it’s meant to be.’

‘Bollocks to that,’ Ted scorned.

A brief orgy of Buddha rubbing, and Ashling was gone.

I will like Marcus Valentine and he will like me, I will like Marcus Valentine and he will like me… As she affirmationed her way along Grafton Street in her mince-inducing sandals, her Louise L. Hay-type chant was interrupted by a wolf-whistle. Marcus Valentine already?. God, that Louise L. Hay was good gear!

But it wasn’t Marcus Valentine. On the other side of the road, minus his orange blanket, was Boo. He was with two other men whose unshaven faces and funny clothes – the type that you couldn’t purchase were you to try – identified them as men without homes also. They were eating sandwiches.

Some impulse of politeness forced her to cross over.

‘So Ashling,’ Boo flashed his gappy grin, ‘you didn’t go away for the bank holiday?’