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“Women, eh? I’m sure you’d have some sage advice, Mr…” Alice glanced up at the whiteboard above the bed.Patient Xhad been scrawled in black marker in the box in place of the man’s name.

“Patient X? It doesn’t really suit you.” Alice tilted her head and narrowed her eyes, scanning the man’s face. “You know, you look a little like Hugh Laurie... when he’d grown a beard for that role. Quite dapper, in a rugged sort of way.”

The man did nothing to receive the compliment.

Alice yawned and slouched into the chair. “Perhaps the X is short for something? How about Xavier?… Xavier, like saviour, although it probably doesn’t mean that and actually, I saved you.” Alice laughed. “I’ve never saved anyone before, so thank you for the opportunity to do something useful for once. I mean, apart from causing you a head injury, of course.”

An enormous sigh heaved from the man’s chest and Alice sat forward so fast her empty cup dropped and rolled across the floor. The man mumbled a string of words, of which Alice could only make out one:pig.

1963

COWARDLY SWINE

My grandmother’s acidic voice hissed through the gap in the doorway like a gas leak and I pressed my ear between the banisters.

“I don’t know what you were thinking bringing that… that thing into my home. It’ll be full of fleas or mange. Probably both. Get rid of it, or I will.”

Mum laughed, and I scrunched my eyes shut, waiting for the sound of the slap of my grandmother’s hand across her face. But it didn’t come.

And that was a bad thing as it meant worse was brewing.

“That thingis no concern of yours. Pyg doesn’t have fleas, and she doesn’t have mange. The boys will look after her, so you need not worry.”

“Those boys are?—”

“Don’t.”

“I know exactly what you’re doing, Eleanor. You think you’re so clever, pecking away at me. You think it’ll finish me, don’t you? Peck, peck, peck until I’m gone and then you and those little swines will have all this.”

Mum scoffed. “All this? Have you opened your eyes in the last twenty years? This place is in ruins because you’re too tight to?—”

“How dare you! I give you and those little runts a roof over your head. From my own coffers, I fund your life of privilege and comfort.”

“A life of shabby-genteel poverty more like. I’m only here until?—”

“Until what? Until that dirty lump of a man comes to whisk you into the sunset?” She expelled a wicked laugh, and I could picture the sneer of her lips as they twisted around her spiteful words. “Well, he hasn’t come for you yet, has he? You just lay back and let him have his filthy way, you silly little whore.”

I didn’t know what awhorewas, but coming from my grandmother, it wouldn’t be a compliment.

“Mother, Mother. For the last time, whores get paid. I did it for free and I enjoyed every glorious minute.” She laughed, clearly pleased with whatever reaction her words had provoked on my grandmother’s face. I could almost see my grandmother’s mouth puckering in disgust like she’d bitten into a lemon.

“Imagine, my daughter rolling around with that bit of rough. Could you have sunk any lower? I shouldn’t have listened to Father Higgins.” Her shrill voice drifted back and forth as she paced. “When you got pregnant, I should’ve sent you off to Ireland to one of those laundry places for disgusting girls who can’t keep their legs shut?—”

“Oh, shut up, Sylvia.”

My grandmother sharply inhaled. “If your father were still here?—”

“What? You wouldn’t be such a twisted old recluse?”

My body clenched at the sound of the slap. It must have been a hard one, as Mum gasped. Anxiety twisted in my gut, but then she laughed again; my mother really didn’t know what was good for her sometimes.

The stairs behind me creaked, and I spun around. My little brother stood frozen, his eyes wide with horror. I raised a finger to my lips, then patted the threadbare carpet next to me. Bernard tiptoed down and squeezed up close.

“Are they fighting?” he whispered.

I nodded. “Where’s Pyg?”

“I shut her in the bedroom like you said to.”