My mother-in-law kept showing up with her whole family for free BBQ at our house — when they came empty-handed again on the 4th, I served them a lesson instead.

And at the end she said, “Now — we’ll all be down for the fourth. Friday to Monday. There’ll be twelve of us. Nessa’s Fionn’s bringing a friend so thirteen. You’ll do that lovely marinade you do.”

Not a word about the email.

I said, “Right.”

And then I sat at my desk for about twenty minutes and I did not cry and I did not ring Dermot, and I opened a browser.

Now I have to tell you about the house, because otherwise the rest of it is just a woman being petty about sausages.

Tullamane was Solange’s.

She and Dermot’s father Fintan farmed it from 1986. Solange lived in this kitchen for thirty years. She had all three of her children in the front bedroom, which is now Etta’s.

Fintan died in March of 2016.

She could not run eleven acres on her own at fifty-seven and there was a debt on it, and by the spring of 2018 it had to be sold.