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gave birth to April around the time we discovered she’d been having an affair with one of Dad’s best friends. He was called Al, and, like Dad, he was a musician. They played in the same orchestra when we lived in California. Al played the oboe and Dad played the cello.
    I’m the one who discovered the affair, actually. I was on my way home, and I was wearing loads of mascara. I’d been playing make-up with a pal called Astrid; this involved sneaking into her parents’ room and trying on her mum’s eyeshadow and lipstick and eyeliner. I decided to walk home along a lonely dirt track, b ecause I wanted to look for raccoons. Instead, I saw a couple kissing in a parked car. I was interested in the techniques of kissing, so I had a closer look. That’s when I realised the woman was my mother.
    I just stood there, and she must have felt me watching; she looked up. I ran home, my mascara streaming in black lines down my face because of the tears, and phoned Astrid. I tried to make my voice a whisper, but I was so upset I didn’t hear Dad coming into the room. He was barefoot. I think he listened closely because I was almost whispering. He’d been sort of watchful and suspicious for months.
    When I saw him and got off the phone, he just looked at me blankly. I felt that his face should be contorted in misery, that he should cry and wail, but all he said was, ‘What’s that stuff on your face, Sally? Go and wash it off immediately.’
    There was a terrible row that night, and the night after and the one after that. They probably would have been more dramatic if Mum hadn’t been pregnant. As it was, Dad shouted for a bit and then just left the house, and Mum used to go up to her room and cry. I’d hear her sobbing as I stood outside the door. Sometimes I went in and offered to brush her hair; she always used to like that before, but now she had this distant, miserable look on her face as she said, ‘Thanks, darling,’ and patted my arm.
    April sprang into the world a week later, and we all had a good look at her as soon as she was cleaned up. Frankly, for more than a year she could have been anybody’s baby; it was only when she was going on two that her nose began to look like Dad’s, and we could see that her eyebrows had a similar configuration and her smile was almost identical. Deep down, I think it must have affected her. Few babies have been stared at quite so hard or so cautiously. She developed the technique of staring back just as intensely. ‘So what?’ her big baby eyes seemed to be saying. ‘This is your problem, not mine.’
    Somehow Mum and Dad worked it out and stayed together. Only it wasn’t like before. Sometimes you could see they really wanted to be somewhere else. They went out a lot. Dad spent hours hiking in the dry brown Californian hills. Mum went over to her friend Veronica’s a lot, with April, and sat on the wooden deck beside the wind-chimes and the hummingbird-feeders. She always came back with puffy eyes, walking slowly. I used to make them cups of tea when they got back from wherever they’d gone to. Mum liked Earl Grey, not too strong and not too weak, with a splash of milk and half a spoon of sugar. Dad liked ordinary tea with no sugar and lots of milk.
    Diarmuid takes his with half a spoon of sugar. Since then I have had a mental database about how people like their tea.
    ‘Marie’s going to have another of her big family get-togethers in September,’ I tell Aggie, mainly just for something to say. Then I wish I hadn’t mentioned it, because Aggie actually likes Marie’s gatherings and I doubt if she’ll be able to attend this one. It’s still months away – it’s only May now; Aggie mightn’t even be here. I must get off the subject.
    I’m about to mention that Diarmuid wants to take me to a Thai restaurant when Aggie says, ‘Marie who?’
    I look at her sadly. ‘Aunt Marie. She’s… she’s married to Bob.’
    ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Aggie says. ‘Poor dear