I frown. My mother stops eating.
‘They’re not legally blind,’ he says. ‘If they were legally blind they’d be in a home with spastics and seeing-eye dogs.’
It is the afternoon, and I am with my father. I see the three women again, near the stairs outside our flat. We are painting our front door. I stand on the mat and help him by holding the tin of paint.
He stops painting and grabs my shoulder. ‘Three blind mice at twelve o’clock,’ he says.
‘What?’ I say.
‘Up ahead,’ he whispers, ‘three blind mice at the end of the hall.’
As my father whistles the tune of ‘Three Blind Mice’, the women walk towards the stairs on the other side of the tower.
‘Let’s follow them,’ I say.
One of them hears me and turns. She doesn’t look annoyed; she looks amused, and she stops walking for a moment. I look at my father. He keeps on whistling and he stares at her until she turns and walks away with the others. He watches them until they are out of sight.
Aunty Evelyn comes to visit. She brings a box of cream cakes and a poster for the hallway wall.
She takes a close look at everything in the flat and, and when she has finished, she stands by my parents’ wedding photograph, which sits on the dresser near the kitchen door.
‘I see you brought the glamour of the past with you,’ she says.
‘Don’t you keep your wedding photo out?’ asks my mother.
‘Not at all. It’s too much like seeing a pair of ghosts.’
Aunty Evelyn puts her hands on her hips. She will not leave without a fight.
‘The wallpaper’s a lovely shade of pink and with those little bits of yellow and those … those sticking-out yokes.’
‘Stamens,’ I say. ‘They’re called stamens.’
We go into the kitchen and sit at the table with a pot of tea. My father has a book on his lap, The Science of Understanding the Depressive Mind. It looks like a prop there, nothing more than a place for him to rest his hands. I haven’t seen him read anything since we arrived.
My mother yawns and Aunty Evelyn goes on talking.
‘Did you hear that Dr Behan died last week? He’s gone to God. Oh, he always respected the modesty of his patients. He never saw a female patient under the age of sixteen without the company of the mother, and the same for the little boys.’
My mother says nothing and, instead of speaking, she yawns again.
‘John, stop scratching your head,’ says my father.
The shouting from next door starts; a woman screams, and Aunty Evelyn looks at my mother.
‘When you’re used to that kind of noise, I think it’ll be nice,’ she says. ‘Maybe it’s a bit too warm with the heat coming up through the floor, but, overall, it’s really very cosy. I think you’ve made it very nice.’
I can see by my mother’s frown that she knows, as I do, that Aunty Evelyn is lying.
For the first time I wonder if I have inherited my gift from my mother, who sees what I see: Aunty Evelyn shrugs in the middle of the words, ‘It’s really very cosy’, and her body language doesn’t match what she is saying.
I have begun to sharpen my skills, master them. When I detect lies I get hot, around my ears and throat mostly, but I don’t feel sick. Eventually I will become a wizard. I have memorised more passages from books. Here is one of my favourites:
‘Most people will never recognise the signs and expressions of the liar. These facial expressions and gestures are involuntary and appear and disappear so rapidly that unless you have a very good eye — an instinct, a gift — you will never see them and you will never be able to detect lies.’
Aunty Evelyn goes on talking and seems too interested in my father’s job at the factory, where all he does is wear overalls and solder bits of metal together.
‘Just as well it’s only a temporary thing,’ says Aunty Evelyn, ‘something to tide you over.’
My father stands. ‘Nobody is going to die of a bit of manual labour,’ he says. ‘You make it sound like working in a factory was the curse of a stinking fistula.’
‘What in heaven’s name is a fistula?’ asks Aunty Evelyn.
Everybody looks at my father, but nobody speaks. I rush out and get the dictionary from the coffee table and take it back to the kitchen. ‘Wait, I’ll tell you.’
I read the meaning once, close the dictionary to my chest, and repeat it from memory. ‘A fistula is a hole in your rectum that bleeds foul-smelling pus and faeces all day long,’ I say.
My father laughs and keeps on laughing. ‘Oh, at times like this I’m so glad of you,’ he says.
Aunty Evelyn turns red. Her ears and neck are as red as cough medicine. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I said the wrong thing when I was only trying to show an interest and now I’ve been ganged-up on.’
‘I know it,’ says my mother. ‘Not to worry.’
Aunty Evelyn takes a deep breath; she will try one more time to have the fight she came for.
‘Well, Helen, it’s a blessing in disguise that you couldn’t have more. I mean, a blessing that you could only have the one, isn’t it?’
My mother frowns. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Better that you only have John, no other kiddies to worry about. I mean, in this place, and all.’
My mother gets up from the table and goes to the sink where, with her back to Aunty Evelyn, she rubs a wet cloth over the draining board. I silently count with her. She rubs the cloth back and forth exactly ten times.
My father leaves the room without excusing himself. Once again, nobody speaks. Aunty Evelyn fiddles with her teaspoon and turns her empty plate round and round. According to the clock next to the window, there is silence for only three minutes but it is as though nobody on earth will ever speak again, and my throat feels full of dry dirt.
‘Well,’ says my mother, turning to face her sister, ‘it’s time to get the tea on.’
Aunty Evelyn looks at her watch. ‘Goodness! What happened to the time?’
‘The same thing that always happens to it,’ says my mother.
‘We will see you on Sunday, then?’ asks Aunty Evelyn as my mother shows her to the kitchen door.
‘Yes. Sunday, then.’
The front door slams and I am alone with my mother. ‘Why did she say that?’ I ask. ‘Why did she say, “It’s just as well you could only have the one child”? I thought you only wanted one.’
‘She had no right to say that. She was angry with your father and she couldn’t think straight.’
‘But still she meant something terrible by saying it.’
‘I don’t care if she did.’ She holds out her arms and I walk to her body and we hug. ‘Good. Now, go and wash your hands for tea.’
There is a picture on the news of starving African children.
‘Awful,’ says my mother, ‘when those poor babies die they’ll just be carted away in wheelbarrows.’
‘Do you want me to turn the telly off?’ I ask.
‘No,’ she says. ‘Leave it.’
When the news is over we sit down to our tea at the kitchen table, and after a few minutes’ silence my father says, ‘Listen up. There go the three blind mice.’
From upstairs comes the sound of the sewing machine and, a moment later, somebody walking across the floor in heels.
‘Walking sticks,’ says my father. ‘Listen.’ He starts to whistle the tune, ‘Three blind mice, Three blind mice, See how they run …’
‘There they go again,’ he says.
‘Meeces to pieces,’ says my mother, her eyes watery.
‘What are you talking about?’ I say.
‘Ask no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,’ says my father.