OUR LIFE WAS A TRAIN WRECK.

Standing in the kitchen doorway, after persuading the younger boys to go for a kick about on the green across the road, I watched as the older members of my family ranted and roared at each other. Reminding me of a scene straight out of one of those soap dramas that Molloy roped me into watching with her, I was glad that, for once, I wasn’t the instigator of the drama. No, that title had undisputedly fallen to our mother, who had made the fatal error of accusing some rich lady’s son of statutory rape.

I mean, really?

It was fucking embarrassing.

There was only one rapist in our midst, statutory and otherwise, and it was the man she’d nestled down in bed with every night for the past twenty- four plus years.

Fucking hypocrite.

Watching Kavanagh’s mother go for mine in my front garden earlier was a foreign sight to me.

I’d never seen a mother throw down like that for her kid. But Edel Kavanagh had and somewhere, in the back of mind, I got the distinct feeling

that Molloy would do the exact same for our kid.

Jesus.

Wishing I was anywhere but back in this house, I looked on as Shannon and Mam battled it out for the title of Ballylaggin’s loudest screamer. While Darren the dildo tried to wave a white flag between them.

Fucking eejit.

Having Mam’s back in it was not going to win him any favors. He was going to bat for the wrong female. Christ, even Seany-boo, who was only three, knew that Darren was flogging a dead horse with our mother.

I might be fucked in the head, but I’d meant it when I’d said that I was done with her. I didn’t have it in me to forgive her again, not after that evening in the kitchen. Not with the memory of my sister’s almost lifeless body still haunting me.

Him or us, Mam?

“Joey was right.” Shannon cried out, dragging my scattered attention back to the argument ensuing a few feet away from me. “You’re not good for us.”

I felt like slow-clapping, grateful that someone else could see what I did.

“Come on, Shannon,” Darren, the expert at running out on him family, threw his two cents into the mix. “Screaming and name-calling isn’t helping anyone.”

“Then stop sitting there and do something,” my baby sister spat back. Fighting and willing our oldest brother to do something he would never be capable of doing for her. Helping her. “You know this is wrong. You know what she did was awful, and you’re just letting her get away with it.”

Shannon was spot on.

The shit Mam had spurted to the Kavanaghs was horrendous and he was feeding into her bullshit by pandering to her mental breakdown.

I might need locking up, but she sure as shit needed to reserve the padded cell next to mine.

“No, I’m not,” Darren tried to placate. “She knows she was wrong, don’t you, Mam?”

If he was expecting a coherent answer from the woman that birthed us, then he was about to be sorely disappointed. She didn’t have it in her. She was incapable of thinking beyond the fourteen-year-old version of herself that had been thrust into motherhood. Her brain had stopped growing at that age.

The woman was broken in the head.

Same as me.

“Mam, tell Shannon that you know you were wrong.” If I was a better person, I would have felt sympathy for the man. He still thought the mother he left behind more than half a decade ago was still inside the shell sitting at the kitchen table. “Mam. Answer us.”

Looking weary, Shannon shook her head and turned away from Mam. Darren, though, he continued to watch our mother like he was waiting for some divine intervention.

“Don’t bother,” I heard myself tell her golden boy. “Because she’s broken.

You’ll figure that out soon enough.”

“Joe.” Bolting towards me like a wobbly foal, our sister threw her arms around my neck and clung to me. “Make this stop.”

I wanted to.

There was a still a part of me alive inside that wanted to fix this for my sister.

For the boys.

But I was so fucking worn out.

My head didn’t seem to be working right anymore. Whatever the old man had done to me in the kitchen that evening had broken me. The cord that attached my heart to my head had been severed.

It had been beaten out of me.

“This is what you wanted, Darren. You wanted her home with us,” I told our brother. “One big happy family.” Hooking an arm around the trembling girl in my arms, I glared at the man who considered himself to be wiser than us. “I hope we’ve met your expectations.”

He didn’t respond. Instead, he pushed his chair back and stood. Taking one final look at our mother, he turned on his heels and walked away.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised anymore,” Shannon mumbled.

The sound of the front door closing behind him was the only confirmation I needed to that I was right.

His return was temporary. He wouldn’t stick this out. He couldn’t the first time.

This time would be no different.

With the mother of all headaches, and my body in withdrawal, I stepped around Shannon and moved for the cooker. Mam could check out and Darren could run, but there were still four mouths to feed in the house.

Battling the tremors in my hands, I prepped a saucepan of pasta and set it on the hob to boil, before turning my attention to the woman in the corner. “Get up and take a shower. I need to feed the boys and they don’t need to see you like this.”

She didn’t budge.

It didn’t surprise me.

It didn’t do anything to me.

I felt completely dead inside as I walked over to where she was sitting and snatched the cigarette out of her lips and stubbed it out in the already overflowing ashtray. “Get up. You stink of smoke and booze.”

Nothing.

Setting the ashtray and her stained coffee cup on the draining board, I returned to her side. “Get up.”

I didn’t need this shit.

I had enough on my plate. I had Molloy, dammit.

“Joey.” It was the first sign of life in her, and it caused something to die

inside of me. “Joey.” Reaching up, she snatched up my hand in both of hers and sobbed. “Joey.”

I could smell the drink wafting off her in waves. Whiskey.

I would know that smell anywhere.

Repressing a shudder, I reached for my mother and helped her to stand. I needed to get her out of sight before the boys came back in from playing and

she fucked up their heads even more.

“Keep an eye on the dinner, Shan,” I called over my shoulder, as I helped Mam up out of the kitchen and up the staircase to her bedroom.

The more she sobbed and leaned against me, the more I felt suffocated.

The urge to break through the walls of this house and escape was so strong, I could practically taste it.

I would never have it, though.

I couldn’t physically break the chains that shackled me to this house. To these children.

To this woman.

The only reprieve would get was the one I took for myself.

“Come on, Mam,” I mumbled, feeling the weight of her body against me, as I tried to get her upstairs. “You need to help me out here.”

She didn’t.

She couldn’t.

Because my mother was as dead on the inside as I was.

Beyond exhausted, when we reached the top of the landing, I swooped her into my arms and carried her the rest of the way to her bedroom.

Their bedroom.

It’s his room, too, remember? Dick.

Ignoring every muscle in my body as it screamed in protest, I managed to make it to her bed without collapsing in a heap. Setting her down on the

mattress, I knelt at her bedside and pulled off her slippers before rolling her onto her side to face the window.

“I’m sorry, Joey,” she sobbed, resting her small hands under her cheek. “So sorry.”

I heard the word, had a feeling she might mean it this time, but I felt nothing.

“You need to keep your shit together,” I replied in a flat tone, as I sank down on the edge of the bed beside her and rummaged around in her nightstand drawer. “You might be all fucked up in the head, but those boys don’t need to see it.”

“Darren,” she wailed softly, clutching my forearm. “I want Darren.”

“Yeah, well, Darren bailed,” I muttered, focusing on the countless blister packs of pills, while tossing empty pill bottles out of the way.

“Fuck, Mam, what have you been taking?”

“Like you can judge me,” she sobbed, burying her head in her pillow. “I’m in pain.”

Me too. “Here,” I said, finally settling on a pill bottle containing a few valium pills. “Take a couple of these. It’ll take the edge off.”

“What if he comes back?”

“Who?” I asked, only half-listening to her, as I continued to search for what I wanted. I knew they were in here. I fucking knew it. “Darren?”

“No,” she mumbled, choking back the tablets I’d given her. “Your father.”

“You know what’ll happen, Mam,” I muttered, mentally sagging in relief when I found a full bottle of Clonazepam. “You’ll take him back,” I added,

slipping the bottle into my pocket. “And all will be well in the world of Marie Lynch again.”

“I’m your mother,” she sobbed, voice slurring. “Why do you hate me so much?”

“I’m your son,” I replied, giving her back her words. “Why do you hate

me so much?”

“Because you’re him,” she slurred, twisting away from me.

“Yeah,” I deadpanned, standing up, feeling nothing. “I’m him, and you’re worse.”

“Joey, wait,” she cried out as I moved for the door. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, baby… Please don’t leave me.”

“Sleep it off, Mam,” I deadpanned, unwilling to stick around to be her personal punching bag until she passed out. “I’ve got shit to clean up and your kids to feed.”