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those things about me any more, and would let me belong there with the rest of them. But although I played along, I couldn’t stop the defensive feelings that flared up inside me when the others laughed about her. And I couldn’t stop thinking about her in secret even though it felt like I was being disloyal to Mummy.
    It was when I saw Mummy getting hit and shouted at for defending her sister that it was easiest to hate Kathy. And when I listened to Mummy sobbing later, after the arguments, looking pale and tired and suddenly very small, slumped on her corner of the sofa with her purple dressing gown zipped up to the chin and the cushions wedged around her like sandbags, I hated her most. I would watch helplessly as Mummy tore off sheets of toilet paper from a roll and cried into them, blaming her sister for dumping her problems on her, and for the easy life she had ‘swanning about the place’, living ‘a life of luxury’, while Mummy was left looking after us lot with no time even to look at her nails, ‘let alone paint them’.
    ‘Doing her dirty work for her,’ was my uncle’s term for looking after me, and Mummy sometimes used the same words herself when she’d drunk too much. That was when I was most determined not to like Kathy, no matter how soft and gentle she was, or how nice she was to me. I’d sit next to Mummy, frowning it all into place, my heart being squeezed tight, hate for Kathy rushing down to my toes.
    They were not feelings that simply disappeared when Kathy came over, and I never understood how Mummy could forget it all and be best friends with her on her next visit. Despite my feelings, and Daddy’s threats the night before, I would get carried along in all the excitement before she arrived, and would run down to the square in front of our block with the others to carry up her bags and suitcases from the black taxi. We would all struggle like little Sherpas up the steps to the second floor, wondering how much of the weight was presents and sweets and which bags they were in, huffing and puffing along the landing, wondering what lotions and creams were in the blue, leather vanity case that Stella always carried up. But I was still upset for Mummy.
    Later, after some of the bags were opened and presents unwrapped, Mummy and Kathy would go out together to the shops or just for a stroll. I would crouch down to watch through the small iron grille in the red brick wall of the landing as Mummy linked her arm through Kathy’s fur-covered one and walked her the long way around the estate to the shops, showing her sister off, holding on to her as if she were some lucky charm, our family shamrock.
    Kathy often had tears in her eyes before they went out for those strolls, or when she first got out of the taxi and saw us all standing there in our best clothes smiling up at her, her big, navy-blue eyes welling up with tears. Her tears fascinated me but I never trusted them; they seemed too gentle, too delicate. She didn’t sob and howl like Mummy did; she didn’t rip your heart out.

Chapter 8
    M y older sisters, Marie and Sandra, were almost a different generation to us five younger ones. They were teenagers when we were still very little.
    Of us three younger girls I was the eldest. Stella was two and a half years younger than me and my uncle’s real daughter. She was born premature—sick and tiny, small as the palm of your hand, Mummy said—and at first she slept in an empty drawer at the side of their bed. My uncle adored her from the start. Even when he was drunk, she was the only one able to bring out his softer side. Mummy often shouted at him, saying he was giving her attention on purpose to try to make me feel even more left out.
    When she was born he found a use for me. I had to look after her. I was told never to let her out of my sight, and had to go with her wherever she went. As she grew older he told her that if I didn’t do everything she said, or did anything wrong, she had to