Between Us

by Mhairi McFarlane

Her gut told her things were about to happen. Perhaps that was the magic of any holiday: it lifted you out of the familiar and gave you a brief aerial view of your life in progress. It made you confront your world’s smallness in a vastness of opportunity.

Maybe she had been playing it partly for laughs on the first telling. That was drunken youthful dates, trying to be fascinating and bold and own your family’s dysfunction as part of your fabulous rainbow, for you. Things said between two people newly sleeping together were not to be held up for daylight inspection.

Roisin sounded like a chippily defiant teenager. In fact, she was waterlogged with guilt, as was the way of familial bonds.

Roisin was sorry if she’d soured the easy rapport he had with Lorraine. Equally, she was tired of sharing her mother’s burdens.

if you grew up in a normal, happy family, you just can’t fully imagine the mad ones. They’re like trying to stay upright on a trampoline everyone else is bouncing up and down on, as hard as they can.”