I never thought about how difficult that moment must have been for Arthur and Rosaleen. I was so busy thinking about myself and how much I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t once think about how they were opening their home to two people they had no relationship with. It must have been so unbelievably nerve-racking for them and I didn’t thank them once.

Barbara and I got out of the car. She went to the boot to sort out the bags, and I assume give us all a moment to greet. That didn’t quite happen. I stood there looking at Arthur and Rosaleen, who were still standing behind the little green swinging gate and I immediately wished I’d dropped bread-crumbs all the way from Killiney so I could find my way home.

Rosaleen looked from one of us to another like a meerkat, trying to take in the SUV, Mum, me, Barbara, all at once. She clasped her hands at her front, but kept unlocking them to smooth down her dress as though she were at a Lovely Girl competition in a country feis. Mum finally opened the door and got out of the car. She stepped onto the gravel and looked up at the house. Then her anger disappeared and she smiled, revealing puce lipstick on her front teeth.

‘Arthur.’ She held out her arms as though she had just opened the door to her home and was welcoming him to a dinner party.

He snot-snorted, inhaling the mucus-the first time I’d heard it-which made my lip curl in disgust. He stepped towards Mum and she took his hands and looked at him, her head tilted, that strange smile still pulling at her lips like a bad face-lift. In an awkward movement she leaned forward and rested her forehead against his. Arthur stayed there a millisecond longer than I thought he would, then patted the back of her neck and pulled away from her. He patted me hard on the head as if I was his faithful collie, which messed my hair even more, and then made his way to the boot to help Barbara with the bags. So that left me and Mum staring at Rosaleen, only Mum wasn’t staring at her. She was inhaling the fresh air deeply, with her eyes closed, and smiling. Despite the depressing situation, I had a good feeling then that this could be good for Mum.

I wasn’t as worried about her then as I am now. It had only been a month since Dad’s funeral and we were both feeling numb and unable really to say much to each other or to anybody else for that matter. People were so busy talking to us, saying nice things, tactless things, whatever things popped into their heads-almost looking for us to console them and not the other way around-that Mum’s behaviour wasn’t noticeable so much. She was just sighing along with everybody else every now and again, and saying little words here and there. A funeral is like a little game, really. You have to just play along and say the right thing and behave the right way until it’s over. Be pleasant but don’t smile too much; be sad but don’t overdo it or the family will feel worse than they already do. Be hopeful but don’t let your optimism be taken as a lack of empathy or an inability to deal with the reality. Because if anybody was to be truly honest there would be a lot of arguments, finger-pointing, tears, snot, and screaming.

I think there should be the Real Life Oscars. And Best Actress goes to Alison Flanagan! For walking down the main aisle of the supermarket just last Monday, face in full makeup, hair freshly blow-dried, despite feeling like wanting to die, smiling brightly to Sarah and Deirdre from the Parents’ Association and behaving as if her husband hadn’t just left her and her three children. Come up here and get your award, Alison! Best Supporting Actress goes to the woman he left her for, who was just two aisles away, and who subsequently quite hastily left the supermarket, missing two items of the makings of her new boyfriend’s favourite lasagne. Best Actor goes to Gregory Thomas for his performance at the funeral of his father, whom he hadn’t spoken to for two years. Best Supporting Actor goes to Leo Mulcahy for playing the role of Best Man at a wedding celebrating the marriage of his best friend, Simon, to the only woman Leo has ever, and will ever, truly love. Come up and get the gong, Leo!

That’s what I thought Mum was doing, just playing along, being the good widow, but then afterwards when her behaviour didn’t change, when it felt like she didn’t actually know what was going on and she was using those same little words and sighs in every conversation, I wondered then if she was bluffing. I’m still wondering how much of her is actually with us and how much she’s pretending just so she doesn’t have to deal with it. There was a crack in her, quite understandably, immediately after Dad died, but when people stopped looking at her and went back to their own lives, the crack kept growing, and it seemed like I was the only person who could see it.

It wasn’t the Bank that were being exceptionally unreasonable by turfing us out on our ear. They had already given Dad the repossession date but, along with a ‘Goodbye’, it was just another message he’d forgotten to pass on to us. So even though they’d let us all stay for much longer than they’d threatened, we had to leave at some stage. Mum and I stayed in the back of Barbara’s house, in her Filipino nanny’s mews, for a week. Eventually we had to leave there too because Barbara had to go to their house in St Tropez for the summer and was obviously afraid we’d steal the silver.

Though I said I wasn’t as worried about Mum as when we first arrived at the gatehouse, it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t concerned at all. My suggestion before we arrived here was that Mum go see a doctor, whereas now I’m thinking she should check herself into one of those places where people wear white bumless smocks all day and rock back and forth in the hallways. It was to Barbara that I suggested Mum should visit the doctor. Barbara just patronisingly sat me down in her kitchen and told me that Mum was doing what is called ‘grieving’. At sixteen years old, you can imagine how delightful it was to learn that word for the first time. And then I settled down for a conversation about heavy petting. But she didn’t go there. Instead, she asked if I minded sitting on her suitcase while she zipped it shut because Lulu, the glue that holds her life together, had taken the kids to their horse-riding lessons. As I sat on her bulging Louis Vuitton suitcase and she zipped in her zebra-print bikinis, gold thong sandals and ridiculous hats, I made a wish for it to burst open on the conveyer belt at the airport in St Tropez, and for her vibrator to fall out and buzz around for everybody to see.

So there we were, on the first day of the rest of my life, outside the gatehouse, Mum with her eyes closed, Rosaleen staring at me with excited wide green eyes and her little pink tongue licking her lips now and then, Arthur snot-snorting at Barbara, which meant he didn’t want her to carry any bags, and Barbara watching him with bewilderment and probably trying not to gag at his snot-snorting, in her loose tracksuit, flip-flops and Oompa-Loompa orange face. She’d just had a spray tan that morning.

‘Jennifer,’ Rosaleen finally broke the silence over on our side.

Mum opened her eyes and smiled brightly and it seemed to me that she recognised Rosaleen and knew exactly what she was doing. If you hadn’t spent every second of the last month with her as I had, you’d think she was okay. She was bluffing rather well.

‘Welcome,’ Rosaleen smiled.

‘Yes. Thank you.’ Mum chose a correct response from her little words file.

‘Come in, come in, and we’ll get you some tea,’ Rosaleen said with urgency in her voice, as though we were all going to die unless we had some tea.

I didn’t want to follow them. I didn’t want to go in because then that would mean that it all had to start. Reality, that is. No more in-betweenness of funeral arrangements or Barbara’s mews. This was the new arrangement and it had to begin.