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The little bird seems uneasy – as though she can scent the cat, who sometimes sits there. Kinsella’s eyes are not quite still in his head. It’s as though there’s a big piece of trouble stretching itself out in the back of his mind. He toes the leg of a chair and looks over at me.

‘You should wash your hands and face before you go to town,’ he says. ‘Didn’t your father even bother to teach you that much?’

I freeze in the chair, waiting for something much worse to happen, but Kinsella does nothing more; he just stands there, locked in the wash of his own speech.

As soon as he turns, I race for the stairs but when I reach the bathroom, the door won’t open.

‘It’s alright,’ the woman says, after a while, from inside and then, shortly afterwards, opens it. ‘Sorry for keeping you.’ She has been crying but she isn’t ashamed. ‘It’ll be nice for you to have some clothes of your own,’ she says then, wiping her eyes. ‘And Gorey is a nice town. I don’t know why I didn’t think of taking you there before now.

’

Town is a crowded place with a wide main street. Outside the shops, so many different things are hanging in the sun. There are plastic nets full of beach balls, blow-up toys. A see-through dolphin looks as though he is shivering in a cold breeze. There are plastic spades and matching buckets, moulds for sand castles, grown men digging ice cream out of tubs with little plastic spoons, potted plants that feel hairy to the touch, a man in a van selling dead fish.

Kinsella reaches into his pocket and hands me something.

‘You’ll get a Choc-ice out of that.’

I open my hand and stare at the pound note.

‘Couldn’t she buy half a dozen Choc-ices out of that,’ the woman says.

‘Ah, what is she for, only for spoiling?’ Kinsella says.

‘What do you say?’ the woman says.

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’

‘Well, stretch it out and spend it well,’ Kinsella laughs."

"The woman takes me to the draper’s where she buys a packet of darning needles at a counter and four yards of oilcloth printed with yellow pears.

Then we go upstairs where the clothing is kept. She picks out cotton dresses and some pants and trousers and a few tops and we go in behind a curtain so I can try them on.

‘Isn’t she tall?’ says the assistant.

‘We’re all tall,’ says the woman.

‘She’s the spit and image of her mammy. I can see it now,’ the assistant says, and then says the lilac dress is the best fit and the most flattering, and the woman agrees.