There was absolutely nothing I could do about him. Sunday lunch in Ardee, meanwhile, was a necessary evil, since I wanted my car back. Dad drove it to collect me at the bus stop. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I got Lanigans to throw in an oil change for free, and I’ve given her a tankful of petrol.’ ‘Thanks, Dad.’ I wished he wouldn’t keep buying me petrol. It was an encroachment, a silent curtailment of my autonomy. ‘Mind you don’t let it run too low.’ Lunch followed the invariable pattern: Mum, Dad, Mícheál and me, Uncle Fintan and Auntie Rosemary, salty soup, roast lamb and three sodden veg, dessert, desultory conversation. ‘Is it George Sweeney you’re working for, now, Caitlín?’ Dad asked suddenly as we tucked into our over-sugared fruit salad. ‘It is, yeah,’ I said. ‘Why do you ask?’ ‘Piece about him in the paper.’ ‘Oh?’ ‘He’s got a new book coming out that’ll set the cat among the pigeons.’ Dad looked at me with unaccustomed eagerness. This must be the MacDevitt book.
