‘Is that real?’ asks Matilda, aged 8, whose sister, Róisín – aged five and three-quarters, or perhaps five and five quarters, Matilda isn’t sure – is currently doing back somersaults hanging onto the struts of the upper bunk bed.
‘Is what real?’ I reply.
She fingers my hair. I look at her and grin. ‘Why did you think it wasn’t real?’
‘Because I thought I saw a net.’
I crack up laughing and return to the bedtime book I am reading. It is a crumbling, ragged book of world stories. 1960s at a guess. I suspect that it has been translated by someone whose mother tongue is not English, as some of the sentences fail when has before sense to them. I plough on regardless, it doesn’t seem to worry the girls unduly, it’s a very strange story anyway.
Róisín turns a particularly deft, backwards flip and lands somewhat too close to my armpit.
‘You need a shower,’ she kindly informs me.
They are so delicious I could eat them up.
Salatheel 