“Anyway, how was your day?” she had finally asked him, almost as an afterthought, having thoroughly exhausted her list of complaints. “My father died,” he’d told her. Grace and I nearly died ourselves when she told us, from vicarious mortification. There, but for the grace of God … Ever since, before one of us is about to throw ourselves into a long-winded but not life-or-death story, we check that this isn’t an “Alice O’Donoghue situation,” before safely proceeding. “All is well here,” Grace assures me. “Please go on.”
