Then I realised that I was the god on this occasion. I had tried to help the bluebottle, but it wouldn’t let me. And then I felt sorry for God because I understood his frustration. Sometimes when people offer a helping hand, it gets pushed away. People always want to help themselves first.

I never used to think about these things before; God, bluebottles, ants. I’d rather have been caught dead than be seen sitting in an armchair with a book in my hand and staring at a dirty fly tapping against a window on a Saturday. Maybe that’s what Dad had thought in his final moments: I’d rather be caught dead here in my study than go through the humiliation of having everything taken from me.

My Saturdays used to be spent in Topshop with my friends, trying on absolutely everything and laughing nervously while Zoey stuffed as many accessories down her pants as she could manage before leaving the store. If we weren’t in Topshop we’d spend the day sitting in Starbucks having a grande gingersnap latte and banana honey muffin. I’m sure that’s what they’re all doing now.

I haven’t heard from anyone since the first week I got here, except a text from Laura before my phone was cut off, filling me on all the gossip, the biggest of all being that Zoey and Fiachrá got back together and did it in Zoey’s house when her parents were away in Monte Carlo for the weekend. Her dad has a gambling problem, which Zoey and the rest of us loved because it meant when we all stayed over at her house, her parents would come home much later than everybody else’s. Anyway, apparently Zoey said that sex with Fiachrá hurt worse than the time the lesbian from the Sutton hockey team hit her between the legs with the stick, which was really bad, believe me-I saw-and she isn’t in a rush to do it again. Meanwhile Laura told me not to tell anyone but she was meeting Fiachrá at the weekend to do it. She hopes I don’t mind and please don’t tell Zoey. As if I could tell anyone if I wanted to, where I am.

Where I am. I haven’t told you that yet, have I? I’ve mentioned my mum’s sister-in-law, Rosaleen, already. She’s the one my mum used to empty her wardrobe of all her unworn impulse buys for and send them down in black sacks with the tags still on. Rosaleen’s married to my uncle Arthur, who is my mum’s brother. They live in a gatehouse in the country in a place called Meath in the middle of nowhere with hardly anybody else around. We visited them only a few times in my life and I was always bored to death. It took us an hour and fifteen minutes to get there and the build-up was always a let down. I thought they were hicks in the middle of the sticks. I used to call them the Deliverance Duo. That’s the only time I remember Dad laughing at one of my jokes. He never came with us when we visited Rosaleen and Arthur. I don’t think they ever had an argument or anything, but like penguins and polar bears, they were just too far apart ever to be able to spend any time near one another. Anyway, that’s where we live now. In the gatehouse with the Deliverance Duo.

It’s a sweet house, a quarter the size of our old one which is no bad thing, and it reminds me of the one in ‘Hansel and Gretel’. It’s built from limestone and the wood around the windows and roof is painted olive green. There are three bedrooms upstairs and a kitchen and a living room downstairs. Mum has an en suite but Rosaleen, Arthur and I all share a bathroom on the second floor. Used to having my own bathroom, I think this is gross, particularly when I have to go in there after my uncle Arthur and his newspaper-reading session. Rosaleen is a neat freak, obsessively tidy; she never ever sits down. She’s always moving things, cleaning things, spraying chemicals in the air, and saying stuff about God and his will. I said to her once that I hoped God’s will was better than the one Dad left behind for us. She looked at me horrified and scuttled off to dust somewhere else.

Rosaleen has the depth of a shot glass. Everything she talks about is totally irrelevant, unnecessary. The weather. The sad news about a poor person on the other side of the world. Her friend down the road who has broken her arm, or who has a father with two months to live, or somebody’s daughter who married a dick who is leaving her with her second child. Everything is doom and gloom and followed by some sort of utterance about God, like, ‘God love them,’ or ‘God is gracious,’ or ‘Let God be good to them.’ Not that I talk about anything important, but if I ever try to discuss those things in more detail, like get to the root of the problem, Rosaleen is totally incapable of carrying on. She only wants to talk about the sad problem, she’s not interested in talking about why it happened, nor in the solution. She shushes me with her God phrases, makes me feel like I’m speaking out of turn or as though I’m so young I couldn’t possibly take the reality. I think it’s the other way around. I think she brings things up so that she doesn’t feel like she’s avoiding them, and once they’re out of the way, she doesn’t talk about them ever again.

I think I’ve heard my uncle Arthur speak about five words in my life. It’s as though Mum has gone through her life speaking for both of them-not that he would have shared her views on anything she said. Arthur speaks more than Mum these days. He has an entire language of his own, which I’ve slowly but surely learned to decipher. He speaks in grunts, nods and snot-snorts; a kind of mucous inhale, which is something he does when he disagrees with something. A mere, ‘Ah,’ and a throw back of the head means he’s not bothered by something. For example, here is how a typical breakfast-time would go.

Arthur and I are sitting at the kitchen table and Rosaleen as usual is buzzing about the place with crockery piled with toast, and little dishes of home-made jam, honey and marmalade. The radio, as usual, is blaring so loudly I can hear every word the presenter is saying from my bedroom; some annoying miserable man talking in monotone about the terrible things happening in the world. And so Rosaleen comes to the table with the teapot.

‘Tea, Arthur?’

Arthur throws back his head like a horse trying to rid his mane of a fly. He wants tea.

And the man on the radio talks about how another factory in Ireland has closed and one hundred people are losing their jobs.

Arthur inhales and a load of mucus is sucked up through his nose and then down his throat. He doesn’t like this.

Rosaleen appears at the table with another plate of toast piled high. ‘Oh, isn’t that terrible, God love their families. And the little ones now with their daddys out of work.’

‘Their mothers too, you know,’ I say, taking a slice of toast.

Rosaleen watches me bite into the toast and her green eyes widen as I chew. She always watches me eat and it freaks me out. It’s as though she is the witch from ‘Hansel and Gretel’, watching for me to become plump enough so that she can throw me into the Aga with my hands tied behind my back and an apple stuffed in my gob. I wouldn’t mind an apple. It would be the fewest calories she’d ever given me.

I swallow what’s in my mouth and put the rest of my toast down on my plate.

She leaves again, disappointed.

On the news they talk about some new government tax increase and Arthur inhales more mucus. If he hears any more bad news, he’ll have no room for his breakfast with all that mucus. He’s only in his forties but he looks and acts older. From the shoulders up he reminds me of a king prawn, always bent over something, whether it’s his food or his work.

Rosaleen returns with a plate of Irish breakfast enough to feed all the children of the one hundred factory workers who have just lost their jobs.

Arthur throws his head back again. He’s happy about this.

Rosaleen stands beside me and pours me tea. I’d love nothing more than a gingersnap lattÉ but I tip the milk into the strong tea and sip it all the same. Her eyes watch me and don’t look away till I swallow.