The dining table wobbles. My father keeps saying he’ll take a look at it. He says he’ll do a lot of things. I shake some Alpen into a bowl.‘Where’s the milk?’ I ask her.‘I forgot to get any,’ she says. I sigh and she bristles. ‘That’s neither here nor there. You’re an hour late for school.’‘I’m not going.’ I walk into the kitchen and rummage through the bread bin. I find the heel end of the sliced pan, and put it in the toaster, filling up a pint glass with water and gulping it down.‘Emma, you’re going to have to start going in. You’re in sixth year, remember?’Exams. Points. Books. Studying. I remember when it all seemed to matter.‘Why didn’t you wake me then?’‘I . . . I, well, I . . .’ She’s flustered. ‘. . . well, that’s not really the issue, is it? Ms McCarthy rang again this morning, wanting to know where you were.’Ms McCarthy came to the house a lot at the start. The doorbell would ring, and the three of us would tense. There had been problems.
