Honor looks at me like she smells something bad and goes, “How come you’re always home these days?”
“Because,” I go, “I got sacked from my job. I wouldn’t worry about it, though. I’ve got a feeling that JP is about to come crawling back to me – literally, as it happens. Yeah, no, he fell down the stairs in the Westbury Hotel, breaking both of his orms and legs.”
I watch her face suddenly brighten. “Oh my God,” she goes. “Did you push him?”
How do you answer a question like that? Deep down, all any of us really wants is for our children to think we're great. I'm there, "Let's just say I was involved in pushing him down the stairs, yeah."
She gives me a smile that I’d usually have to spend two or three grand on her to get. It just goes to prove that money isn’t everything.
She goes, "Where's she, by the way?" meaning her old dear.
I’m there, “She’s in town. She got up this morning and storted talking about some new weight loss programme she wanted to check out.”
“Yeah, about time,” she goes. “The woman’s a heifer.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t, um, talk about your mother like that?”
“Excuse me?”
“It was just a suggestion. There’s way too much of that whole fat-shaming thing going on.”
“I’m only doing it out of concern for her health.”
“What, by saying, ‘Sit down – take the weight off the ground,’ every time she walks into the room?”
“You heard what my behavioral therapist said; I have a lot of bitterness and resentment in me. It has to come out some way. Maybe I’ll go back to slagging you about your failed rugby career.”
"No, let's keep things the way they are for the moment. Like you said, your main concern is her health. I suppose it's a good incentive for her to lose three or four pounds. You're like a young Katie Hopkins – except more, I don't know, evil?"
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It was meant as one.”
She grabs herself a Diet Coke from the fridge. “So, like, what’s brought all of this on?” she goes.
I’m there, “Long story. She tried to fit into her wedding dress on the night of our anniversary. We were going to watch the wedding on DVD. And, well, let’s just say she discovered she wasn’t quite the size she was in 2003. Jesus, it was like watching Seán Cronin putting on Ashley’s Olsen’s clothes.”
“Oh my God, you are so funny.”
“Yeah, no, banter is one of those things that I do genuinely well. Then, of course, the Women’s Mini Marathon is this weekend. That always sends her into the depths of depression. She says it’s South Dublin’s equivalent of The Twelfth – where the fit get to lord it over the unfit in the street.”
“So what’s this, like, programme she’s checking out?”
“She didn’t go into specifics.”
“Oh my God, do you remember she did the Salmonella Typhi Diet?”
I laugh.
“That’s right,” I go. “You cut everything out of your diet except unwashed vegetables, unhygienically prepared street food and water with high sewage traces. God, she must have lost three stone that time, even though she had to make a bed for herself in the bath.”
She goes, “And do you remember the Addison’s-Human Pinworm Diet, where you shut down your adrenal cortex and eat nothing but cottage cheese and intestinal parasites for a month?”
“Can I just check, Honor – we’re definitely mocking her out of concern for her well-being?”
“Definitely.”
“That’s okay then. Yeah, she’s always been a sucker for the old dieting fads.”
It’s at that exact moment that Sorcha suddenly sticks her head around the kitchen door. She’s like, “Hi, you goys!”
We're both like, "Hey, how did you get on?" at the same time trying not to laugh?
She’s like, “Really, really well. With this programme, I think I could definitely lose two stone before we go on holidays in August.”
We’re going to Toronto to visit Claire from Brayruit and that craft beer-loving tool she married. Don’t ask.
I’m there, “Fair focks, Sorcha. So what kind of programme is it?”
Honor goes, “Oh my God, do you remember the Cryptosporidiosis Diet, when you had to move to Galway and drink 12 litres of tap water per day?”
Sorcha smiles. She knows we care about her. She goes, “You’ll be happy to hear that it’s nothing so drastic this time. It’s, em, a liquid diet.”
“Liquid?” Honor goes, “So it’s, like, a juice diet?”
“It’s kind of like a juice diet, yeah.”
I’m there, “So what kind of juices are we talking? Jamie Heaslip is always on at me to try kale, pineapple and Himalayan pink salt. You know he has a NutriBullet in his Land Rover? It’s actually fitted into the dash.”
Honor goes, “You don’t know Jamie Heaslip.”
“I do know him – so get your facts right.”
“He just knows you as some loser who played rugby once and was a failure at it.”
I decide that I’m not going to cry this time.
“Yeah,” I go, “let’s just stick to the issue of your mother’s weight. What kind of juices are we talking, Sorcha?”
“Oh my God,” Sorcha goes, a touch defensively, “all these questions! If you must know, it’s just, like, multivitamins, thiamine, folic acid, magnesium sulphate and then obviously saline.”
“Jesus, that sounds disgusting.”
“You have one for breakfast and one for lunch, then you can eat literally whatever you want for dinner, as long as it’s not processed and doesn’t contain gluten, wheat, sugar, dairy, protein or carbohydrates.”
It’s Honor who cops it first. She’s like, “Saline?”
Sorcha’s there, “Yes, saline, Honor. You don’t have to make such a big deal of it.”
“Oh my God, you’re doing the Banana Bag Diet!”
I’m like, “The what?”
Honor tears across the kitchen. She grabs the door that Sorcha is peeping around and gives it a yank. And there, standing behind my wife, is a drip stand, with a bag hanging from it, connected to Sorcha’s orm by way of an IV drip. And in the bag is this, like, clear liquid – which I’m presuming is her lunch.
“Oh! My God!” Honor goes. “Hill! Air!”
ILLUSTRATION: ALAN CLARKE
