It seems my passion for Aidan has been like a flare going off, full of colour and light, but falling from the sky and coming to nothing.

‘Evelyn wasn’t hungry,’ I reply absently, thinking hard about Aidan and how I’m only the fall-back girl. It seems I can have nothing for myself.

It’s easy to know what life is like for Daddy. Daddy is happiest when he is fixing up a place and putting it in order. Daddy smells like turpentine and he has black and white hair like a sheepdog and when he’s at home he wears white sneakers stained green from mowing the lawn.

The door of the church is always open, and we go in and gaze at holy statues, willing them to wink at us. We’re never chosen for apparitions, but it’s for the best; we might get too much of a fright, or we might be given a big job by God to carry out when all we want to do is play. Saint Jude is the saint of hopeless cases, and he stands inside the

‘I’m only saying. It’s human nature to think we’re all here for some big purpose. But most of us aren’t. Most of us are ordinary, and it’s important to accept it. A person has to be content to lead a normal life. There’s no shame in it.’ The three of us sit in terrible, awkward silence. The worst thing that could happen would be for me to fail, to

It often feels as though myself and Evelyn were born friends. We’re always on the edge of things and looking on. It’s as though we’re the only people who’re truly alive, and the people around us aren’t real at all, existing merely for our own amusement.

When we’re all together, the world revolves around Evelyn, and why wouldn’t it. Her long hair shimmers in the glare of high summer, sun-bleached at the temples. She has new things to wear: a peach sundress and sandals with leather butterflies sewn on the ankle straps. She’s full of herself in the lovely outfit, gaining great pleasure out of her own

Maeve is in the sick bed with glandular fever, and so myself and Evelyn hit off to the New Year’s disco by ourselves. We spin around with our arms in the air, dappled by coloured lights, the music sustaining us and leading us about the floor. It feels as though everyone’s watching us admiringly. I end up kissing Dylan Hartigan at midnight, and at l

‘Did you dunk your head in the dirty bathwater?’ Evelyn says, laughing, and I clasp my sides with laughing too. I haven’t always the confidence to be kind to Maeve in Evelyn’s presence. ‘And did Tom and Mary have the bath before you as well? I’d say they did.’ ‘They did not. I had a fresh bath,’ says Maeve with a shaking voice. We sit there hooting