Rap music blared as Lottie opened her front door. Why did she let her kids listen to this trash? Because they’d listen to it somewhere else if she tried to stop them. Anyway, she couldn’t monitor the hundreds of songs on their iPods and phones and online. Live and let live.

‘I’m home,’ she called over the din.

No reply.

The kitchen displayed the remnants of a teenage cook-in. Empty Pot Noodles, sticky forks on the table and an open, half-full bottle of Coca-Cola. More than likely there since they had their breakfast – at lunchtime. Boots, shoes and trainers were thrown inside the back door. Unopened Christmas cards stacked on the table and the few she had opened were wilting with condensation in the kitchen window. The tree was in the sitting room, out of her sight. She hadn’t wanted to put it up. Sean had insisted and now he’d have the job of dismantling the raggedy assemblage of tinsel and balls. Tough.

Lottie was glad all the false décor would soon be consigned to the attic. She hated – no, despised – Christmas since Adam died. Over three years ago. Christmas was family time but now her family was decimated.

But still, she had great memories of the good Christmases. Adam and herself trying to construct a toy kitchen at three in the morning after demolishing a bottle of Baileys. Or waiting for him to come off duty from the army barracks on Christmas morning, Adam sneaking in before the children woke up and she ticking off a list to make sure nothing was left in her mother’s attic. One time they’d left an Action Man there and Adam had to rush over and rouse her mother at two a.m. He’d called Lottie a coward. She smiled now at that memory. Adam wasn’t afraid of her mother. Lottie wasn’t either, but her mother had enough ammunition for rows without Lottie arming her with more. That’s what she’d told Adam anyway. She sometimes thought that he had loved her mother more than she did. His parents had died within a year of each other when he was just eighteen, so maybe he’d appreciated all that Rose did for Lottie and the children. But Lottie knew there was an old guilt lurking in Rose’s actions and, no matter how hard she tried, she could never rid herself of that feeling. Every interaction she’d had with her mother since Adam died had resulted in a disagreement. Harsh words, old accusations and banging doors. Because of their last altercation, Lottie hadn’t seen her mother in months – though she knew Rose called to see the children when she wasn’t around.

She tried her best for the children but it was hard keeping her heart in it. It wasn’t in a lot of things. When Adam had died a part of her had died with him. Cliché or not, it was the truth. If it were not for their children . . . well, she had the three of them. Life goes on. There were other long absences in her life to cope with also – the mystery of her father’s death and consequent saga surrounding her brother. She’d played the blame game all her life but her grief for Adam overshadowed the decaying memory of the others. For now.

Sean sauntered into the kitchen tipping a ball on the end of a hurley stick. The boy loved hurling, one of the most vigorous national sports, though she worried about how dangerous it was for her son. At thirteen and a half years old he was already as tall as Adam had been. His unruly fair hair masked long eyelashes. Lottie loved her son so much, sometimes it made her want to cry. With Adam gone, she had to protect him, protect all of them, and the weight of that responsibility was sometimes an unbearable burden.

‘What’s for dinner, Mam?’ Sean asked, pocketing the ball.

‘Jesus, Sean, I’m only in the door. It’s seven o’clock. For once in your lives couldn’t one of you have cooked dinner?’ Her love quickly turned to frustration.

‘I was studying.’

‘You were not. You didn’t even open your bag, never mind a book.’

‘But we’re still on holidays,’ said her sulky son.

Lottie had forgotten, just for a minute. They’d been off school for the last week and would be for another long few days. What did they do all day? No, strike that, she really didn’t want to know.

Unsuspecting Chloe walked into the kitchen.

‘Hi, Mother, what’s for dinner?’

Chloe always called her ‘Mother’. Adam had called her ‘Mother’ in front of their children. She supposed her daughter was trying to keep him alive with these little things.

Sean escaped back up the stairs, thumping his hurley on each step. The rap music restarted, louder this time.

Chloe was dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a tiny strap top straining over her expanding (at last! according to Chloe) chest. Did she not realise it was sub-zero outside? Her long, bottle-dyed, blonde hair, scrunched on top of her head, was held in place with a butterfly bobbin. Her bright blue eyes were an exact replica of her father’s. The eyes Lottie had fallen in love with lived on, immortalised in her beautiful daughter. The ‘middle child’, Chloe often threw at her when she felt the other two were being favoured.

‘You’re sixteen years of age, Chloe. You’re doing Home Economics in school. Would it never enter your head to put on some dinner?’

‘No, why should I? You’d come home and say I was doing it all wrong.’

Point taken.

‘Where’s Katie?’

‘Out. As usual.’ Chloe opened a cupboard, looking for anything edible.

Lottie went to the fridge. No wine. Shit. She didn’t drink any more; at least not as much as she used to, she reminded herself. Times like these, she missed alcohol most. It helped relieve the stress of the day. She didn’t even smoke any more. Well, maybe sometimes, when she had a drink. God, but she was a contradiction. She should’ve taken a few Xanax from Susan Sullivan’s medicine cabinet. But she would never do that. She didn’t think she would anyway. She kept a small supply in her bedside locker and had an emergency pill Sellotaped to the bottom of her drawer in the office. Just in case, she told herself. And the stash was fast disappearing.

‘Put the kettle on, hon, I’ve had a bitch of a day,’ Lottie said.

Chloe crunched a biscuit in her mouth and flicked the switch. The kettle hissed. Empty.

‘For God’s sake,’ Lottie said.

Chloe was gone, the door swinging shut behind her.

After pouring water into the kettle, Lottie snapped on the electric fire and sat into her chair, reclining it as far as it would go. Snuggled up in her jacket, she closed her eyes and eased the buzzing in her brain by breathing deeply.