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Her mother gave her two seconds before she started up again. ‘With your degree, you’ll find something better in no time. I don’t know why you were even doing that job at all. It sounded rather basic.’

‘Because it’s what I could get, and it allowed me to pick up and drop off Freddie,’ Norah explained with dwindling patience.

‘Well, I can do that now,’ her mother said.

Norah looked at her mother in astonishment. Not because it was a generous offer but because there was no way she meant it. Ordinarily, Norah let something like that go. But she was in no mood. She was calling the woman’s bluff.

‘Oh, you could?’ Norah asked. ‘Great. I’ll look for a nine-to-five, then.’

She watched her mother squirm. ‘Well, I mean, I don’t think I could do iteveryday,’ her mother said.

‘No,’ Norah said. ‘I don’t suppose you could. Which is why that was a good job for me at this very moment.’

‘There’ll be others,’ her mother said easily. ‘You’ll have something else by the end of the week.’

‘It’s not that easy,’ Norah began.

‘You haven’t even tried yet,’ her mother scolded.

‘Youget one, then!’ Norah exclaimed.

‘What? I’m retired,’ her mother said, confused.

‘You don’t have todothe job. Just get one. Hell, just secure an interview. To show me how easy it all is,’ Norah said, aware they were getting into a really dangerous situation.

‘What’s up your arse?’ her mother snapped.

‘Well, for a start,youwere the one that distracted me into making the mistake that got me fired,’ Norah said.

‘Wha—’ her mother began.

Norah interrupted the protest before it could get started. ‘The other thing that is “up my arse”, mother, is that I’msickof you telling me how simple everything is when you don’t know what the world is now. It’s changed. Things are harder. Sparser.’

‘But you have a business degree!’ her mother cried.

‘Which are ten a bloody penny,’ Norah told her. ‘So thanks for pushing that onto me. It’s barely been any use; it was expensive,andI hated getting it. Brilliant work, Mum. Top-notch.’

‘How dare you! You don’t know the sacrifices I made for you!’ her mother spluttered.

‘Idobecause I make them now. For Freddie. So you can put that card away,’ Norah said with satisfaction.

‘I was a single mother!’ she screeched.

‘That happened when I was eighteen years old, which is an adult, so it doesn’t even really qualify. AndI’ma single mother to a five-year-old. So what else have you got?’ Norah dared her.

She loved having her mother on the ropes like this. She hadn’t ever managed it before. But now they were both mothers. The playing field was levelled. Norah had seen behind the curtain. Her mother couldn’t keep telling her she didn’t know what was what whenshewas the one in the dark about the realities of Norah’s life.

But as her mother gasped for her next gambit, it occurred to Norah that if they kept going at it like this, her mother might have a heart attack. Norah should stop now.

‘Mum...’ she began, taking her tone down several notches.

‘You don’t know!’ her mother screamed.

Norah could see that it was too late for cool heads. Her mother was in the zone. She wasn’t coming down until she’d tired herself out.

‘Mum, let’s just calm down,’ Norah tried, knowing the futility of it.

‘You think you get it because you’ve got a child. But he’s five. It’s not complicated yet. But you wait. You wait ‘till you have to protect him from himself!’