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worked and my father in from the fields and that there would be other people to protect me. Sort of, anyway.
       I was both proud and ashamed when I was a schoolgirl. Proud that I was able to stay out of my uncle's messy clutches. And ashamed because I came from a family that wouldn't look after me but left me to fight my own battles against things I didn't understand.
       And I suppose it did make me grow up quickly. And then, when I passed my exams, I announced firmly that I was going to university miles away.
       There was a bit of grumbling about this. Where would they get the money to pay for all this? my father wondered. He had worried about money all his life, it was his greatest curse.
       Why couldn't I stay at home and do a secretarial course and mind my sister? my mother said, as well she might.
       My sister, Geraldine, did need to be minded, and I would warn her well before I left. Maybe I'd go to the bad in a big city? Uncle Niall said that, even though he knew and I knew and my parents knew, I'd go to the bad much quicker here had I not got a lock on my bedroom door.
    But I was much tougher than they all thought.
    I was really quite grown up for my years.
       I'd survive, I told them, I'd get a job to pay for a flat and my fees. I was a gold-star girl. An all-rounder. I could turn my hand to anything.
       And I did. I went to Dublin two weeks before term started and I fixed myself up in a flat with three other girls, and got a job in an early-morning breakfast place, which was terrific because I had nearly a day's work done and a huge breakfast eaten by the time I went to my 10 a.m. lectures, and then I worked a shift in a pub from six to ten every night, which kept me out of the way of spending money and I had the whole day to myself.
       And because of Uncle Niall and all that sort of thing I wasn't all that keen on fellows, like my flatmates were, so I could put my mind to my studies as well. And at the end of the first year I was in the top five of the whole group, which was an achievement.
       I never told them any of this when I went back home to Rossmore. Except for my sister, Geraldine, because I wanted her to know we could do anything, anything, if we wanted to.
       Geraldine thought I was wonderful and she told me too that she was well able to deal with Uncle Niall now by shouting aloud, "Oh, there you are, Uncle Niall, what can I do for you?" at the top of her voice, alerting the whole house, and he would slink away. And she had announced one day in front of everyone that she was putting a giant padlock on her door.
       And then in the middle of my second year at university a lot of things went wrong. My mother got cancer and they said they couldn't operate. My father coped with it all by drinking himself senseless every night.
       My sister went to stay with my friend Harriet Lynch's younger sister in order to study and to get away from Uncle Niall since there was no one to protect her.
       Back in Dublin they put up the rent on our flat. Seriously high. And just then I met Keno, who ran a nightclub down a little cobbled street in Dublin and asked me to dance there. I said, nonsense, I couldn't dance, and he said there was nothing to it. And I said it would be dangerous, wouldn't it be sort of flaunting yourself at people and then not letting them touch you?
       But Keno had bouncers who looked after all that sort of thing.
       And then my mother died.
       Yes, it was awful, and I tried to mourn her properly but I could never forget that she had turned aside and left Geraldine and me to our fate. And shortly after the funeral Uncle Niall sold the farm over my father's head and Geraldine hadn't done any work at school because she was so upset about everything and if I did do the bloody dancing it meant I could have my own flat in Dublin, finish my university degree, put Geraldine into school and keep an eye on her. So I said okay to Keno and wore this