Foster

She buys me a printed blouse, too, with short sleeves much like the one she wore the day I came, dark blue trousers, and a pair of black leather shoes with a little strap and a buckle on the front, some panties and white ankle socks. The girl hands her the docket, and she takes out her purse and pays for it all.

‘Well may you wear,’ the assistant says. ‘Isn’t your mammy good to you?’

Out in the street, the sun feels strong again, blinding. Some part of me wishes it would go away, that it would cloud over so I could see properly.

‘He’s making strange,’ the mother says. ‘Pay no heed.’

We meet another woman with eyes like picks, who asks whose child I am, who I am belonging to? When she is told, she says, ‘Ah, isn’t she company for you all the same, God help you.’

Mrs Kinsella stiffens. ‘You must excuse me,’ she says, ‘but this man of mine is waiting and you know what these men are like.

‘Like fecking bulls, they are,’ the woman says. ‘Haven’t an ounce of patience.’

‘God forgive me but if I ever run into that woman again it will be too soon,’ says Mrs Kinsella, when we have turned the corner.

We go to the butchers for rashers and sausages and a horseshoe of black pudding, to the chemist where she asks for Aunt Acid, and then on down to a little shop she calls the gift gallery where they sell cards and notepaper and pretty pieces of jewellery from a case of revolving shelves.

‘Isn’t your mammy’s birthday coming up shortly?’

‘Yes,’ I say, without being sure.

‘We’ll get a card for her, so.’

She tells me to choose, and I pick a card with a frightened-looking cat sitting in front of a bed of yellow dahlias.

‘Not long now till they’ll be back to school,’ says the woman behind the counter. ‘Isn’t it a great relief to have them off your back?’

‘This one is no trouble,’ Mrs Kinsella says, and pays for the card along with some sheets of notepaper and a packet of envelopes.

‘Humph,’ the woman says.

Before we go back to the car she lets me loose in a sweet shop. I take my time choosing, hand over the pound note and take back the change.

‘Didn’t you stretch it well,’ she says, when I come out.

Kinsella is parked in the shade, with the windows open, reading the newspaper.

‘Well?’ he says.