I Confess. Alex Barclay

your shoulders at me!’ She shook the picture again. ‘And a big red tick beside it and a “VG, Patrick!” I’ll VG her when I see her.’

      ‘Don’t, Mammy! She’s so nice.’

      ‘Nice!’ said his mother. ‘Nice?’

      ‘What’s wrong with it?’ said Patrick, brave, tentative.

      His mother looked at him, her face pinched, lines like arrows piercing the tight circle of her mouth.

      ‘What’s wrong with it?’ she mimicked.

      ‘Why don’t you like it?’ said Patrick.

      ‘Like it?’ she said. ‘This?’ She rattled the page again.

      Patrick shook his head. ‘No.’ His eyes darted everywhere before they tried to settle on hers, but he couldn’t even manage that. ‘Why don’t you like it when things are nice?’

      His mother stared at him. ‘Get up on that chair now this minute.’

      Patrick walked towards the sink behind her, his heart hammering, his eyes never leaving the picture. She was holding it between her thumb and index finger like it was dirty. He just wanted it back. It was his favourite picture and it was his favourite imaginary day. He knelt up on the chair. She lowered her left hand into the sink, and he watched the page disappear after it.

      Patrick let out a moan. ‘No, Mammy. Mammy, no!’

      Mrs Lynch lifted her hand slowly from the water, and tossed the picture to one side, where it clung, briefly, to a bucket of potato skins.

      The same hand went into the sink again, and she rattled the dishes around to make space. Patrick jumped at the speed her right hand came down on the back of his neck. She plunged his head under the water, and his forehead struck the edge of a thick glass tankard. His scream, reflexive, and submerged, sent a rush of bubbles from his nose and mouth.

      ‘Jesus Christ Almighty!’ said Mrs Lynch, yanking him up. ‘You could have split your head open on that!’

      When she was angry, her sentences came in a low snarl with highs like sparks from embers. She plunged him under again.

      He had time to taste the water, and it tasted of cabbage and fish and bleach. She pulled him out again, and he hung from her grip, gasping, and red-eyed. Then she gave him three hard shakes – his prompt.

      ‘Sorry, Mammy,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’

      She held him there, spluttering, his head bowed, a string of saliva hanging from his lip, until, eventually, her body relaxed.

      Sorry was his mother’s drug. She needed to hear it for every transgression, real or concocted. She had never heard it from the husband she had kicked out. Not even on the last day she had seen him, when he left her to her insanity, and her fury, and their seven-year-old son, whose blond hair glowed red under the flickering bulb of a Sacred Heart light.