The doorbell rang and that simple thing spooked me.

Rosaleen opened the door and before she even spoke I could tell from the atmosphere it was Sister Ignatius at the door.

‘Sister, morning to you.’

I peeked round the corner and saw Rosaleen’s back and backside only. Today’s tea dress was sponsored by Fyffes. Clumps of bananas decorated her dress. The rest of her was squeezed out of the small slit she’d made in the opened door, almost as if she didn’t want Sister Ignatius to see past her. And had it not started to rain at that very moment I don’t think Sister would have found herself any closer to me than on the porch. They both stood in the hallway then and Sister Ignatius looked around. We caught eyes, I smiled and then hid again.

‘Come in, come in to the kitchen,’ Rosaleen said with urgency as though the hallway ceiling was about to cave in.

‘No, I’m fine here. I won’t stay too long.’ Sister Ignatius stayed where she was. ‘I just wanted to come over and see how you are. I haven’t seen sight nor heard from you for the past few weeks.’

‘Oh, yes, well, I’m sorry about that. Arthur’s been terribly busy working on the lake and I’ve been…keeping things together here. You’ll come to the kitchen won’t you?’ She kept her voice down as though a baby was sleeping.

You’ve been hiding a mother and her child, Rosaleen, cough it up now.

From Mum’s bedroom, I heard her chair drag across the floor.

Sister Ignatius looked up. ‘What’s that?’

‘Nothing. You must be getting ready for honey season now, I suppose. Come to the kitchen, come, come.’

She tried to take Sister Ignatius by the arm and lead her away from the hallway.

‘I’ll be extracting the honey on Wednesday if the weather holds up.’

‘Please God, it does.’

‘How many jars would you like me to drop by?’

Something dropped in Mum’s room.

Sister Ignatius stopped walking. Rosaleen pulled her along and kept talking, boring small talk. Natter natter natter. So and so died. So and so was taken ill. Mavis from down the town was hit by a car in Dublin after being out to buy a top for her nephew John’s thirtieth. She died. She bought the top and all. Very sad as her brother had died the previous year of bowel cancer, now there’s no one left in the family. Her father is alone and had to move to a nursing home. He’s taken ill over the past few weeks. Eyesight is in great decline and didn’t he used to be an excellent darts player. And the thirtieth party was a very sad one as they were all devastated about Mavis. Blather blather blather about crap. Not once were Mum and I discussed. The elephant in the room again.

After Sister Ignatius had left, Rosaleen momentarily leaned her forehead against the door and sighed. Then she straightened up and twirled around to look up on the landing. I moved quickly. When I ducked my head round the corner I saw that Rosaleen’s bedroom was ajar. A shadow flickered by.

I couldn’t stand to sit with Rosaleen and Arthur for breakfast. I’d have rather been anywhere but in that kitchen with the smell of a fry making me feel sick. But of course I knew what I’d do next. I went to Mum’s room.

‘Mum, come outside with me, please.’ I picked up her hand and gently tugged her.

She was still as a rock.

‘Mum, please. Come out to the fresh air. We can walk around the trees and the lakes, we can see the swans. I bet you’ve never even walked around these grounds before. Come on. There’s a beautiful castle and lots of lovely walks. There’s even a walled garden.’

She looked right at me then. I could see her pupils dilate as she focused on me. She said, ‘Secret garden,’ and she smiled.

‘Yes, Mum. Have you been there?’

‘Roses.’

‘Yes, there’s lots of roses.’

‘Mmm. Pretty,’ she said softly, then as though she’d suddenly become from the North of England and dropped a few words, she said, ‘Prettier than rose.’ She said this looking out the window and then she looked at me and used her forefinger to trace the outline of my face. ‘Prettier than rose.’

I smiled. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

‘She’s walked around here before, hasn’t she?’ I exploded into the kitchen, full of energy, which startled Rosaleen.

She raised her finger to her lips. Arthur was on the phone, an old-fashioned thing that was stuck to the wall.

‘Rosaleen,’ I whispered, ‘she talked.’

She stopped rolling out dough and turned to me. ‘What did she say?’

‘She said that the walled garden was a secret garden and that I was as pretty as a rose,’ I beamed. ‘Or prettier, actually.’

Rosaleen’s face hardened. ‘That’s nice, dear.’

‘That’s nice? That’s fucking nice?’ I exploded.

Rosaleen and Arthur both shushed me.

‘Yes. That’s Tamara,’ Arthur said.

‘Who’s on the phone?’

‘Barbara,’ Rosaleen said, strands coming loose around the front of her pinned-back hair and really starting to sweat as she now put some elbow grease into rolling the dough.

‘Can I talk to her?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘All right. All right. We’ll come to some sort of arrangement. Yes. All right. Indeed. All right. Bye.’

He hung up.

‘I said I wanted to talk to her.’

‘Oh, well, she said she had to go.’

‘She’s probably sleeping with the pool boy. Busy, busy,’ I said cattily. I’ve no idea where that came from. ‘So what did she call about?’

Arthur looked at Rosaleen. ‘Well, unfortunately they’re having to sell the place where all your things were being stored and so they can’t keep them any more.’

‘Well, there’s no space here,’ Rosaleen said immediately, turning back to the counter and tossing flour on the worktop.

This was familiar to me.

‘What about the garage?’ I asked, the diary now making sense.

‘There’s no space.’

‘We’ll find space,’ Arthur said to me, pleasantly.

‘We won’t because there is none.’ Rosaleen picked up the next dough ball and threw it down on the counter, and started pushing her hands into it, squeezing it, punching it, making some sort of shape.

‘There’s room in the garage,’ Arthur said.

Rosaleen stalled but didn’t turn around. ‘There’s not.’

I looked from one to the other, initially intrigued by this, for once, public disagreement.

‘Why, what’s in there?’ I asked.

Rosaleen kept rolling.

‘We’ll have to make room, Rosaleen,’ Arthur was saying, really firmly now, and just as she was about to interject he raised his voice: ‘There’s nowhere else.’

That was final.

I had a horrible feeling then that the conversation about me and Mum moving in with them wouldn’t have gone too differently.

They didn’t object when I brought the blanket outside to the garden with a plate of fruit and sat under the tree. The sun shower had left the grass wet but I wasn’t planning on moving. The air was fresh and the sun was fighting its way back out again. From my place on the grass I could see Mum sitting at the window gazing outside. I willed her to come out, for the sake of my own sanity as well as hers. Not surprisingly, she didn’t join me.

Rosaleen busied herself about the kitchen. Arthur was sitting at the table listening to the radio at full blast and flicking through the paper. I watched Rosaleen leave the kitchen with the tray and a minute later she appeared in Mum’s bedroom. I watched her do her usual fussing about. Window, table, linen, cutlery.

After Rosaleen had placed the tray down on the table she stood straight and looked at Mum. I sat up. It was unusual, whatever she was doing. Then her mouth opened and closed, as she said something.

Mum looked up at her, said something, then looked away.

I stood up automatically, watching them both.

I ran inside, almost knocking Arthur over, and charged up the stairs. I pushed open Mum’s door and I heard a yelp and a smash as it smacked against Rosaleen and her tray. Everything dropped to the floor.