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badly they were doing, despite the new extension they had just built, doubling the size of their house. My father would nod and sigh and say it was hard all right, he remembered the bad times, and could he help at all? ‘No, no, Mick, not at all. Jaysus, you don’t think we’re looking for money off you? Go away out of that, not at all. Sure it’s just lovely to see you and hear you’re doing so well over there,’ they would say
    ‘Well, I’d like to help. After all, family is family,’ my poor, generous fool of a father would say.
    ‘Not at all, Mick. Sure it’s a bit of a struggle all right but we’re managing to keep our heads above water. We couldn’t take anything from you. I see things are going well for you, though, with the big new car you’ve outside. Well, sure isn’t it great that one of us is doing so well anyway?’
    ‘Things are good all right and sure isn’t that why I want to help? How much would tide you over?’ my father would say, opening his wallet, while my mother sat rigid with a fake smile plastered on her face.
    Ten minutes later, after many ‘No, no, Mick, not at all’s and ‘Oh, go on, now, let me help,’s the relation would mention a large figure and my father would dutifully fork out the money. Whereupon another ten minutes of ‘Oh, now, aren’t you very good to us, Mick? When we get sorted out we’ll pay you back’ and ‘Not at all don’t mention it again’ would ensue.
    Then my mother would nudge me, I’d yawn (as previously arranged) and she’d say we had to go because the children were tired and we’d pile into the car with the relations thumping the roof and sticking their heads in the windows, blessing us, wishing us a safe journey and thanking my father again as they planned how to spend their winnings.
    Afterwards in the car my mother would give out yards to my father for being so generous to his sponging relations. ‘They’ll bleed you dry, Mick.’
    ‘Ah, come on, now. If you can’t help your family when things are going well what type of a person are you?’
    ‘Are you blind? Did you not see the extension they’ve had done? You’re a fool, Mick, they know you’re a soft touch. We needed that money to put towards getting a new cooker,’ my mother fumed.
    ‘They’d do the same for me if I was stuck.’
    My mother rolled her eyes. ‘They’d do no such thing. You’re too kind.’
    ‘Better than being mean,’ said my father, smiling at her. ‘Sure isn’t that one of the things you love about me.’
    She sighed and smiled.
    The best part of the holiday was going to visit Granny and Granddad Byrne in Dublin. My mother’s parents were great. They were the type of grandparents you wished for, like Charlie’s sweet old granddad in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They didn’t have much but what they had they were happy to share.
    My mother was an only child – unheard of in Ireland in the 1950s when a pill was something you took to cure a disease, not prevent childbirth – and was doted on by her parents. They also thought their grandchildren were wonderful. We could do no wrong. But the best thing was that they seemed to like me best!
    It’s not that I ever thought my parents didn’t love me, it’s just that I was third in line when the love was being dished out. Siobhan, as the eldest and most perfect child – Irish-dancing champion, fluent in Gaelic (or so they thought), going out with a boy from an Irish family (both sets of grandparents had emigrated to London, no half-measures there) – was my father’s pet. My brother Finn, being the youngest and a boy, had my mother’s love pretty much sewn up. That left me with slim pickings.
    I knew I was a disappointment to my father because I was a terrible Irish dancer, spoke no Gaelic and, truth be told, I wasn’t the most attractive child you ever saw. I had wiry brown hair while Siobhan had sleek auburn locks (except when they weren’t sleek because they were soft bouncy ringlets in