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presume upon her changing her mind at the last minute and leaving me her worldly goods. I don’t know if she had savings, or anything of worth beyond the house. A couple of years ago and it would have sold for a couple of million. Obscene, the amounts paid for houses. And now look at it all.
    It’s unfathomable how little I knew of her, how far she kept herself from me. I, in turn, learned to keep myself from her, to turn away from questions, avert my face when doors were opened. I liked windows, because my mother’s face wasn’t at them.
    If I hadn’t been so terrified of her, I could have learned to hate her.

    Maude is nervous about the meeting. Her arthritis is acting up again so the solicitor has agreed to make a house call.
    ‘This is highly irregular, you know,’ his desiccated secretary advised coldly over the phone when I rang her. ‘Mr Bergin is a very busy man, not a family doctor.’ I imagine her, all rules and rigidity, upright and uptight at her keyboard.
    My mother would not have allowed such an attitude. I, on the other hand, meekly accepted the dictum of the frosty female, unwilling to enter into an argument with a woman so much older and more experienced in life than me.
    No wonder my mother walked all over me. I allowed myself to be the mat upon which she wiped the feet of her disdain. I was too afraid not to.
    My brother never understood what it was like for me with her. He tried, but he couldn’t have known how I shrank from our mother and her loathing. She loved him, Andrew, her beautiful son. Maybe love is too strong a word for what my mother was capable of feeling, but in her own isolated way she was obsessed with my brother. The crumbs of affection I sought never fell my way.
    Mr Bergin is due to arrive this morning. Maude came upstairs an hour ago to ‘tidy up’. I watch her push the sweeping brush over the wooden floorboards, run a duster over the visible surfaces.
    Her arm is warm, soft under my hand. ‘Maudie, sit down. I’ll do this.’
    She shakes her head. No.
    ‘At least let me help.’
    ‘I’m quicker on my own,’ she insists, pausing to wipe her forehead with the back of her hand. Her fingertips tremble. It’s another scorcher of a day, more like New York in September than dreary old Dublin. The hall door is wide open, but no air stirs and the heat hangs heavily around us. Outside, the day is yellow, stagnant with humidity. My linen shirt sticks to my back and I tug at it. I need more clothes. In my rush I only packed enough for a couple of weeks.
    ‘Maybe we should hire someone,’ I suggest.
    Maude’s face is a still life of disbelief. ‘Do you mean pay someone to clean the house?’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Esther would never have allowed it.’ Maude starts sweeping again, her vigour pointed, exaggerated. ‘Never. We do our own housework.’
    ‘But you’re 89, Maude.’ And Esther is no longer here to decide things.
    ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ She glares at me.
    I shrug. ‘Nothing. It doesn’t mean a thing. But maybe you should think about paying someone to come in and do your housework. That’s all.’
    ‘I suppose that’s the way they do it in New York.’ She almost sniffs with disapproval.
    It is, actually. My apartment is a shoebox, but I have Isabel, a Dominican girl who comes in once a week to clean. I felt slightly guilty the first time she arrived, five years ago, but I got over it quickly. Isabel earns her money, and I am happy to pay her. She used to clean for Isaac. He gave me her number.
    It’s funny, but I still pick up the phone when it rings, thinking it will be him. Which is crazy, of course, because Isaac has no idea where I live in Dublin, or even that I’m here. I was vague in my request for a sabbatical, and he was in no position to argue or to question what I would do with the time. Of course, he bent rules to allow my late application, probably had to justify it to someone above him, but it’s not my worry. Our correspondence