Lifesaving for Beginners

your filing cabinet? Did someone leave them there, as well?’
    This strikes us as funny, probably because Mum rarely says anything that you could brand ‘humorous’. She is as serious as Tolstoy’s War and Peace . It’s just the way she is, I suppose.
    Minnie looks at me. ‘Kat, listen, you can’t go in there. You’ll be mobbed. We’ll have to go to your parents’ house.’
    Dad says, ‘What if they follow us?’ His hands grip the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles are white. He would be hopeless as a getaway driver.
    Minnie says, ‘Kat, duck down. So they don’t spot you.’
    But I don’t duck down because this doesn’t seem real. None of it. Even though I can see them. The hundred-strong army of the type of media that you would be well within your rights to call paparazzi. On my doorstep. Waiting for me. I can see them. But I don’t quite believe it. Not yet.
    The line of traffic is static. Dad’s car is stuck, right outside the apartment block. It feels like we’re in the eye of a storm. Outside, the activity is frantic; inside, it’s the type of quiet that seems too quiet. Just as I’m about to take Minnie’s advice and duck down, someone shouts, ‘Oi!’ When I turn to look, there’s a man in a truck and he’s pointing at Dad’s car. He’s pointing at me. And suddenly my heart is hurling itself against my chest, like a battering ram. I yell, ‘DRIVE!’ and Dad – who is notable as a driver only because most people can jog alongside the car when he’s at full tilt – rams the gearstick into first and swings out into oncoming traffic, narrowly missing the bumper of a mustard-coloured Ford Focus being driven by a man with a poodle on his knee. The man and the dog are in matching yellow jackets. It’s funny the things you notice when you’re being chased by a television truck. Dad guns the car and it roars up Bath Lane, which is a narrow little one-way with a nasty bend. There’s a dodgy-as-hell bit when Dad’s car mounts the kerb, but apart from breaking some lower branches off a tree, there’s no real harm done.
    I keep my eyes on the rear window. The television truck is behind us and gaining. The driver shouts into a mobile phone.
    Minnie yells, ‘Take a right at the end of this road.’
    Dad says, ‘There’s a STOP sign!’
    ‘Well, stop first. Then take the right.’
    Dad stops. Mum roars, ‘CLEAR LEFT,’ and Dad smiles at her before he shoots out onto the road, his tyres making a satisfying screeching noise against the tarmac.
    Minnie shouts, ‘Take that little left at Vinny Vannuchi’s.’
    I have to pitch in there. ‘It’s not called Vinny Vannuchi’s anymore. It’s the Scotch Bonnet. It’s been the Scotch Bonnet for ages.’
    Ed says, ‘Is that the restaurant that has the spicy chicken wings I like, Kat?’
    Dad yells, ‘Am I turning left here or not?’
    Minnie and I yell, ‘YES!’ at the same time and then Minnie looks over the top of Ed’s head towards me and says, ‘This is like Cagney and Lacey , isn’t it? Except we’re in the back seat.’
    Cagney and Lacey was our favourite programme when we were kids. When we weren’t watching it, we were playing it. We both wanted to be Cagney. We had to take it in turns to be Lacey. Neither of us wanted to be married to Harv.
    Minnie shouts, ‘Turn left here. Up into St Margaret’s Park.’
    Dad turns left so quickly I get thrown against the window and, for a moment, it really is like an episode of Cagney and Lacey .
    Behind us, we can hear the roar of the truck.
    Minnie says, ‘Pull into someone’s driveway. Look, down that road there. It’s a cul-de-sac. They won’t find us down there.’
    Dad does as he’s told. He pulls into an empty driveway and performs a pretty dramatic emergency stop. We wait. Nobody says a word. Minnie hisses, ‘Get down, everyone,’ and this time I do as I’m told and so does everyone else. It doesn’t take long to become ‘media savvy’, it seems.
    After a while, Mum says, ‘This is ridiculous.’
    I say, ‘I couldn’t agree more.’
    Ed says, ‘How come the television trucks don’t chase you, Mum?’
    Once we start laughing, we can’t stop. If someone passes by, they would see an ancient green Lexus shaking, with what looks like nobody inside.
    Dad waits a full twenty minutes before he drives away. He takes the back roads to Raheny, through Donaghmede and Kilbarrack. The rest of the journey passes without incident. It’s only when we turn onto the