down home with me!’ Rory said. ‘We’ll be there in forty minutes. Mammy Kinsella will feed us and praise us.’
‘She’s had no notice.’ Johnny was thinking about how his mum Rose would react to unexpected visitors.
‘And we’ve no things,’ Jessie said.
‘What do you need? Pyjamas? Face-cream? My sisters will sort you out. And Ellen Kinsella doesn’t need any notice. She’d love the challenge.’
‘Seriously?’ Johnny was tempted.
‘Course! C’mon, the lurcher had pups last night – you can’t miss that.’
‘We’d have to bring something,’ Jessie said urgently. ‘A tin of biscuits, a bottle of Baileys.’
‘We can get them in the Spar on the way to Busáras.’
Jessie and Johnny looked at each other. ‘Will we?’ she asked.
‘Feck it, why not?’
‘Hurry it up, so,’ Rory said. ‘We’ll get the eighteen ten bus.’
Errislannan was a hamlet a few miles outside Celbridge, where the Kinsellas’ low bungalow, a jumble of small, cosy rooms, was attached to three acres of land. The senior Kinsellas were both schoolteachers. As a sideline, Michael bred lurchers and Ellen kept hens.
From the word go, for Johnny, it was like stepping into a fairy-tale family.
Ellen, short and bright-eyed, welcomed them with energetic warmth. ‘Johnny Casey, we’ve heard so much about you.’
‘Sorry for arriving in on top of you with such short notice.’
‘Haven’t you lovely manners?’ Ellen said admiringly. ‘And Jessie! Cailín áileann! Tar isteach. Michael Kinsella, come out here.’
Michael, an older but otherwise identical version of Rory, came from the kitchen. With a gentle smile, he pressed hands. His kindness triggered quiet panic in Johnny. Someday he might have to return the favour and invite Rory to Beltibbet, to his awful parents. They treated Johnny like a useless embarrassment and upped the ante for any of his friends.
‘Into the good room with you,’ Ellen said. ‘I’ll shout when the dinner is up.’
Michael opened the door into a well-preserved-looking sitting room, with brown velvet couches and a smoked-glass coffee table. A heavy crystal tumbler was placed in Johnny’s hand, then Michael was pouring hefty measures of Johnnie Walker for the four of them.
‘Sláinte.’ He took a sip. ‘Ah, here’s Izzy.’
‘Hi!’ Izzy, tall and lanky, with a thin, mobile face and dark curly hair, stuck her head around the door. She focused on Johnny. ‘Hel-lo, you’re a bit of a lash. But mind you don’t get lumbago from that couch.’ Then, turning to them all, ‘They could slap a protection order on this place. It’s a museum piece.’ She stuck out her hand. ‘You must be Jessie?’
Jessie took the offered hand, her face glowing. She looked like she’d just fallen in love.
‘Come on for the dinner,’ Ellen called.
In the small, steamy kitchen, mismatched chairs were clustered tightly around the table. Ellen was flinging thick slices of roast lamb onto plates.
‘Milk, MiWadi or stout?’ Michael asked Johnny.
‘Milk!’ Johnny was delighted. Rose had never countenanced milk at the dinner table: she said it was ‘a bog-trotters’ drink’.
Then Keeva showed up. She looked like her mother, short, fair-haired and gimlet-eyed. ‘I’m the eldest, a nurse and getting married next year to a fella I’ve been going with since I was eighteen. I’m the boring one.’ But she laughed when she said it. ‘Izzy here, she’s the youngest. A right bright spark, a graduate fast track.’
‘I’ve my own car,’ Izzy said. ‘I’d have driven the three of you down if I’d known.’ She gave Johnny a long, hard look. ‘Especially you.’
‘She has no confidence, though,’ Michael said sadly.
Everyone laughed.
Ellen, bright-eyed and interested, wanted to discuss world events. ‘That’s an awful business in Rwanda. It escalated very fast … Didn’t it?’
Johnny hadn’t much of a clue, but he nodded anyway.
‘Ah, now!’ Ellen complained, to the table. ‘What’s the point of having children educated to third level, if they won’t talk about important matters of the day?’
After Ellen had eventually stopped pressing lamb and roast potatoes on them, she produced a rhubarb tart from the Aga, with custard made on the hob by Michael.
Then came tea and biscuits.
When the conveyor-belt of food finally came to a halt, Johnny said, ‘I’ll do the washing up.’ Right then he’d have walked through fire for this family.
‘We’ve a dishwasher, you eejit,’ Izzy said.
More laughter.
They played rummy and beggar-my-neighbour in the back living room (the ‘not good one’, Izzy said), until nine o’clock, when the evening news was put on and it was time for more tea and biscuits.
Jessie slept in Izzy’s bed, and Izzy and Keeva shared Keeva’s.
Rory slept on the divan in the back living room. Johnny got Rory’s bed. He slept