Lifesaving for Beginners

there been any contact with your daughter?’
    ‘Does your daughter know that you’re Killian Kobain?’
    ‘Who is your daughter?’
    ‘What’s your daughter’s name?’
    ‘Where does your daughter live?’
    And then someone – a man with a very shiny head, like it’s been polished – says, ‘Why are you telling us this now?’
    Kat puts her two hands on the desk in front of her and studies them as if she’s trying to learn them off by heart.
    Then she looks up at the man and says, ‘I’d prefer you to hear it from me.’ She stands up then and says, ‘I have no further comment.’ And she walks away without turning back and the people in the room are on their feet now, shouting questions after her and taking pictures but they’re just pictures of the back of her, because Kat never turns round.
    Then it’s back to the newsreader woman, who says, ‘Janet Noble, Katherine Kavanagh’s mother and winner of the Man Booker Prize, was unavailable for comment.’
    Ant says, ‘Holy F—’ and Dad says, ‘Mind your language, young man,’ before Ant even has time to say the F word. He often calls him and Adrian, ‘young man’. It’s because he doesn’t always know which one is which.
    The weather report is on now. The weather lady starts with: ‘My goodness. Think I’ll have to take my poster of Killian Kobain off the wall, eh?’ before she starts on about the weather.
    There’s a weather warning, she says.
    A chance of a storm, she says.
    It’ll blow over, she says.
    Soon-ish.
    Faith snaps off the television. She sits on the couch really suddenly, like her legs stopped working.
    Ant says, ‘That’s her. Isn’t it?’ He sits beside Faith and picks up one of her hands, and instead of telling him to sod off, she lets him. She just sits there and lets him.
    Dad – who sometimes forgets he doesn’t have hair on his head anymore – brushes his fingers across his forehead like he’s taking a fringe out of his eyes. He says, ‘Do you mean . . .  Is that . . . ’
    Faith nods. ‘Yes. That’s her. That’s my . . . mother.’ Faith doesn’t sound mad. She sounds like Damo’s mam when Sully is getting ready to go to the war.
    Dad says, ‘But I . . . what do you . . . how can . . . ’ I think he could do with a lie-down. He really could.
    Adrian says, ‘Well put, Father.’
    Faith says, ‘I don’t believe this.’ She’s gone as white as a sheet. I hope she’s not going to have a heart attack. George Pullman said his grandfather went as white as a sheet before he had his heart attack and dropped dead on the spot.
    Dad says, ‘I don’t understand this. She wouldn’t even see you. When you went to Dublin. And now she’s on the telly and . . .’
    Ant says, ‘Sky News.’
    Faith says, ‘Oh Christ.’ She looks like something terrible has happened.
    Dad says, ‘Now she’s on Sky . . . saying that she’s this big-shot writer who also happens to be your mother. It doesn’t make any sense.’
    Adrian says, ‘I wouldn’t imagine the two events are entirely unrelated.’ He rubs his chin with the tips of his fingers when he says this, like he’s a right old know-it-all.
    Faith looks at Adrian and says, ‘What do you mean?’
    Adrian says, ‘Some journo was snooping around, trying to out her. Threatening to reveal her identity. And, at the same time, this woman she’s never met rocks up, claiming to be her daughter.’
    Faith says, ‘Claiming?’
    I say, ‘Faith’s not lying, you stupid idiot. That woman really is her mother. We saw her name on the computer in the office in London. You tosser.’ I’m really mad now.
    Dad says, ‘Milo, that’s not very—’
    Adrian says, ‘I’m only trying to offer an explanation for the seemingly impromptu press conference that we have just witnessed, as I was, in fact, requested to do by your good self, Faith.’
    Faith starts to cry. I turn to Adrian and say, ‘Now look what you’ve done.’ It’s only then I realise I’m shaking. I think it’s because I’m mad and I’m not even sure why I’m mad. I think it’s to do with Christmas. And Mam. Mam loved Christmas. She should be here at Christmas time. I don’t mean here, like in Scotland. Just, here. With us. And she should be Faith’s mam. Her real mam. That’s the way everything was before. Everything was fine before.
    Adrian says, ‘Put a sock in it, Milo.’ He doesn’t even look at me when he says that and that’s when I go for him. Because I’m not the type of