The flat stank of spilled booze, air freshener and silver polish. The Kevin shrine was even more depressing by daylight; the flowers were half dead, the Mass cards had fallen over and the electric candles were starting to fade and flicker. Faint, satisfied snores were trickling through the bedroom door.

Ma had every bit of silver she owned spread out on the kitchen table: cutlery, brooches, photo frames, mysterious pseudo-ornamental tat that had clearly spent a long time on the regift merry-go-round before falling off here. I thought of Holly, puffy with tears and rubbing furiously away at her dollhouse furniture. “Here,” I said, picking up the polishing cloth. “I’ll give you a hand.”

“You’ll only make a bags of it. The great clumsy hands on you.”

“Let me have a go. You can tell me where I’m going wrong.”

Ma shot me a suspicious look, but that offer was too good to pass up. “Might as well make yourself useful, I suppose. You’ll have a cup of tea.”

It wasn’t a question. I pulled up a chair and got started on the cutlery, while Ma bustled in cupboards. The conversation I wanted would have worked best as a confidential mother-and-daughter chat; since I didn’t have the equipment for that, a little joint housework would at least steer us towards the right vibe. If she hadn’t been doing the silver, I would have found something else to clean.

Ma said, by way of an opening salvo, “You went off very sudden, Monday night.”

“I had to go. How’ve you been getting on?”

“How d’you expect? If you wanted to know, you’d have been here.”

“I can’t imagine what this has been like for you,” I said, which may be part of the formula but was probably true. “Is there anything I can do?”

She threw tea bags into the pot. “We’re grand, thanks very much. The neighbors’ve been great: brought us enough dinners for a fortnight, and Marie Dwyer’s letting me keep them in her chest freezer. We’ve lived without your help this long, we’ll survive a bit longer.”

“I know, Mammy. If you think of anything, though, you just let me know. OK? Anything at all.”

Ma spun round and pointed the teapot at me. “I’ll tell you what you can do. You can get a hold of your friend, him, what’s-his-name with the jaw, and you can tell him to send your brother home. I can’t get onto the funeral home about the arrangements, I can’t go to Father Vincent about the Mass, I can’t tell anyone when I’ll be burying my own son, because some young fella with a face like Popeye on him won’t tell me when he’ll be releasing the body-that’s what he called it. The brass neck of him. Like our Kevin’s his property.”

“I know,” I said. “And I promise you I’ll do my best. But he’s not trying to make your life any more difficult. He’s just doing his job, as fast as he can.”

“His job’s his problem, not mine. If he keeps us waiting any longer it’ll have to be a closed casket. Did you think of that?”

I could have told her the casket would probably have to be closed anyway, but we had already taken this line of conversation about as far as I felt like going. I said, “I hear you’ve met Holly.”

A lesser woman would have looked guilty, even just a flicker, but not my ma. Her chins shot out. “And about time! That child would’ve been married and giving me great-grandchildren before you’d have lifted a finger to bring her here. Were you hoping if you waited long enough I’d die before you had to introduce us?”

The thought had crossed my mind. “She’s pretty fond of you,” I said. “What do you think of her?”

“The image of her mammy. Lovely girls, the pair of them. Better than you deserve.”

“You’ve met Olivia?” I tipped my hat to Liv, mentally. She had skated around that one very prettily.

“Twice, only. She dropped Holly and Jackie down to us. Was a Liberties girl not good enough for you?”

“You know me, Ma. Always getting above myself.”

“And look where that got you. Are the two of yous divorced now, or are yous only separated?”

“Divorced. A couple of years back.”

“Hmf.” Ma’s mouth pursed up tight. “I never divorced your da.”

Which was unanswerable on so many levels. “True enough,” I said.

“Now you can’t take Communion.”

I knew better than to rise to that, but no one can get to you quite like family. “Ma. Even if I wanted to take Communion, and I don’t, the divorce wouldn’t be a problem. I can divorce myself into a coma for all the Church cares, as long as I don’t shag anyone who’s not Olivia. The problem would be the lovely ladies I’ve ridden since the divorce.”

“Don’t be dirty,” Ma snapped. “I’m not a smart-arse like you, I don’t know all the ins and outs, but I know this much: Father Vincent wouldn’t give you Communion. In the church where you were baptized.” She jabbed a triumphant finger at me. Apparently this counted as a win.

I reminded myself that I needed a chat more than I needed the last word. I said meekly, “You’re probably right.”

“I am, of course.”

“At least I’m not raising Holly to be a heathen too. She goes to Mass.”

I thought the mention of Holly would smooth Ma down again, but this time it just put her back up further; you never can tell. “She might as well be a heathen, for all the good it’s done me. I missed her First Communion! My first granddaughter!”

“Ma, she’s your third granddaughter. Carmel’s got two girls older than her.”

“The first one with our name. And the last, by the looks of it. I don’t know what Shay’s playing at, at all-he could have a dozen girls on the go and we’d never know, he’s never brought one to meet us in his life, I swear to God I’m ready to give up on him altogether. Your da and meself thought Kevin would be the one who…”

She bit down on her lips and upped the volume on the tea-making clatter, bashing cups onto saucers and biscuits onto a plate. After a while she said, “And now I suppose that’s the last we’ll see of Holly.”

“Here,” I said, holding up a fork. “Is that clean enough?”

Ma threw it a half glance. “It is not. Get between the prongs.” She brought the tea things over to the table, poured me a cup and pushed milk and sugar towards me. She said, “I’m after buying Holly her Christmas presents. Lovely little velvet dress, I got her.”

“That’s a couple of weeks away,” I said. “Let’s see how we go.”

Ma gave me a sideways look that told me nothing, but she left it. She found another cloth, sat down opposite me and picked up something silver that could have been a bottle stopper. “Drink that tea,” she said.

The tea was strong enough to reach out of the pot and give you a punch. Everyone was out at work and the street was very quiet, just the soft even pattering of the rain and the far-off rush of traffic. Ma worked her way through various undefined silver widgets; I finished the cutlery and moved on to a photo frame-it was covered in fancy flowers that I would never get clean to Ma’s standards, but at least I knew what it was. When the room felt like it had settled enough, I said, “Tell me something. Is it true Da was doing a line with Theresa Daly, before you came on the scene?”

Ma’s head snapped up and she stared at me. Her face didn’t change, but an awful lot of things were zipping across her eyes. “Where’d you hear that?” she demanded.

“So he was with her.”

“Your da’s a fecking eejit. You knew that already, or you’re as bad.”

“I did, yeah. I just didn’t know that was one of the specific ways he was a fecking eejit.”

“She was always trouble, that one. Always drawing attention to herself, wiggling down the road, screaming and carrying on with her friends.”

“And Da fell for it.”

“They all fell for it! The fellas are stupid; they go mad for all that. Your da, and Matt Daly, and half the fellas in the Liberties, all hanging out of Tessie O’Byrne’s arse. She lapped it up: kept three or four of them dangling at once, broke it off with them every other week when they weren’t giving her enough attention. They just came crawling back for more.”