No, Frank, says my mother. Yes, Mary, says my father. This one is serious. My mother is shouting too. We’ve already lost one daughter! I haven’t, he says. My mother’s voice goes soft: I imagine her moving through the house, picking up the heap of folded washing from the living room and carrying it into the kitchen, bumping my father’s chair as she goes past. Him sitting at the table with the Sporting Life, a Joe Coral pencil stuck in his mouth, staring at the forecast. She’s only seventeen, Frank, she pleads. It’s enough, is all my father says. He means old enough. My mother won’t argue like this for long – my father has a method for getting his own way. It goes very quiet downstairs. I lift my head off the pillow and see that Luca’s side of the bed is empty. Over in the far corner, in her own bed, Fran is hidden under a mound of blankets.
