'Jesus,' he said. There was a silence, and I waited. 'Did you tell anybody?'

'I'm telling you.'

'I mean, why didn't you tell someone? They'd have thrown him straight out.'

'Would they? I don't know. He might have denied it. He might have said I'd misheard. He'd have thought of something. In any case, I couldn't think clearly. I felt like I'd been punched in the face and the stomach simultaneously. So was that worse than anything you'd imagined?'

'I don't know,' he said, and then we didn't speak. I didn't fall asleep straight away, though, and I'm not sure if he did. I murmured something to him, but he didn't reply and there was just the sound of regular breathing. So I just lay there beside him looking at the lights outside, the car headlights sweeping across the ceiling.

When my mother walked into the bar, I suddenly realized that it wasn't just Kerry who had changed. She looked lovely and somehow younger than I was used to thinking of her. Her hair was brushed up on to the top of her head and she was wearing a belted mac that swished as she walked, dangling earrings, dark red lipstick. She smiled, raised a gloved hand as she crossed the room. When she bent to kiss me, I smelt perfume, face powder. Out of the blue, I remembered an episode from my childhood. We had gone for a bike ride and I had struggled along way behind the others. I had tried as hard as I possibly could, but they drew further and further away from me. They would wait and I would catch up slowly, and then they would leave me behind again as I pedalled stolidly through tears of rage and exhaustion. At the end of the ride, my father finally took a look at my bike and saw that there was a problem with the brake and it had been jammed down against one of the wheels for the entire journey. Maybe it's too convenient a metaphor for times when things just seem too hard: pedalling 'with the brake on. Now I wondered if my mother had spent years with the brakes on and that now, with Kerry in love, she was released and pedalling free.

'I've got a bottle of white for us,' I said.

'I really shouldn't,' she said, which in mother-speak meant thank you very much.

'Don't worry,' I said. 'There's a special deal here. You order two glasses and they give you the bottle. You know that I can never resist a bargain like that.'

I filled her glass and she clinked it against mine, inevitably toasting Kerry and Brendan. I tried not to mind; tried to banish inside me the five-year-old Miranda who wanted to be toasted and made a fuss of.

'Kerry's told me about your help with the flat-hunting and letting them stay and everything,' she said. 'I know she's not good at expressing her gratitude. She's probably embarrassed. But it means so much to her. And to me as well.'

'It was really nothing,' I said.

'I feel so happy about Kerry that I can hardly bear it. I keep my fingers crossed all the time. And I wake at night and just pray and pray that it will be all right.'

'Why shouldn't it?' I asked.

'It seems too good to be true,' my mother said. 'As if someone's waved a wand over her life.'

'It's not a fairy tale. He's not a knight in shining armour,' I said.

'I know, I know. But I have always thought with Kerry that all she needed was self-confidence and then she could do whatever she wanted. That's what Brendan's given her.'

'It's scary, isn't it,' I said, swirling my amber wine around in its glass. 'All the different things happiness depends on. You want it to be less fragile than that.'

'Well, I never thought that way about you,' said my mother. 'Whatever the ups and downs, I knew you'd be all right.'

'Oh,' I said dully. Somehow that didn't make me feel cheerful.

'It's just Troy now,' said my mother. 'But I can't help feeling it's going to be OK now. Like we're getting into a virtuous circle.' She tipped the last of her wine down her throat and I poured her another glass. She waited until I was done, then took a breath and said: 'Talking of Kerry and Troy, it seemed like a good moment to talk about things that your father and I have never discussed properly with you.'

'What things?' I asked as I was suddenly filled with a creepy, ominous feeling.

She took one of the little paper napkins that came with the wine and started twisting it and folding it as if she were going to make a paper aeroplane.

'Obviously, we all know that Troy is wonderful, but he's always going to need financial help. You know that we have been paying money into a trust fund for him.'

'He may get a job,' I said dubiously. 'It's a matter of finding the right area.'

'I hope so, Miranda, I hope so. But that's not our immediate problem. Now Kerry and Brendan will be getting married in two months' time, and it's going to be a very modest ceremony. But the two of them will be as poor as church mice for a while. Derek has talked with Brendan and he's very impressed with him. He has a large number of plans. All sorts of plans. But for the moment they will need help with their flat and other things. We have our own property problems, as you know, but still, we want to help them as much as we can. We are going to help them with buying the flat, in a small way.'

'I'm glad,' I said. 'But why are you telling me?'

'You're doing so well,' said my mother, squeezing my hand. 'You always have done. I sometimes think it's hard for you to realize how difficult it has been for Troy and Kerry.'

'I'm a jobbing decorator,' I said. 'I'm not a stockbroker.'

My mother shook her head.

'You're doing wonderfully. I've been talking with Bill. He thinks the world of you.'

'I wish he'd pay me more, then.'

'That will come, Miranda. The sky's the limit for you.'

'So what are you saying?'

'You're so generous, Miranda, and I know you won't give this a second thought, the way some people would. It just seems clear to your father and me that Troy and Kerry need, will always need, help in a way that you won't.'

'So what are you saying?' I repeated. I knew what she was saying.

'All I'm saying is that we're allocating special resources to Troy and Kerry, and I hope that you agree with us about the need for that.'

What she meant – of course – is that she was taking money from the slice of the family pie that was notionally in some sort of way allocated to me and giving it to Troy and Kerry. What could I say? No? Don't help my brother and sister? There was a little dormouse-sized Miranda in a corner of my brain giving a howl of rage and misery, but I put a metaphorical gag in her mouth.

I wanted to cry. It wasn't the money, or I don't think it was. It was the emotions behind the money. We never grow up enough not to need our parents looking after us, taking care of us. I smiled broadly. 'Sure,' I said.

'I knew you would,' my mother said fervently.

'I guess I'll need to find a rich husband,' I said, still smiling.

'You'll find whatever you want,' said my mother.