The Marble Collector: The life-affirming, gripping and emotional bestseller about a father’s secrets. Cecelia Ahern

      I’m home from school, a fever, the first and only day of school I’ve ever missed. I hate school; I would have wanted this any day at all in the whole entire year. Any day but today. The funeral was yesterday – well, it wasn’t a proper one with a priest, but Mattie’s pal is an undertaker and he found out where they were burying our baby sister, in the same coffin as an old woman who had just died in the hospital. When we got to the graveyard, the old woman’s family were finishing up their funeral so we had to wait around. Ma was happy it was an old woman she was being buried with and not an old man, or any man. The old woman was a mother, and a grandmother. Mammy spoke to one of her daughters who said that her ma would look after the baby. Uncle Joseph and Aunty Sheila said all the prayers at our ceremony. Mattie doesn’t say prayers, I don’t think he knows any, and Mammy couldn’t speak.

      The priest called round to the house beforehand and tried to talk Mammy out of making a show of herself by going to the grave. Mammy had a shouting match with him and Mattie grabbed the brandy from the priest’s hand and told him to get the fuck out of his house. Hamish helped Mattie get rid of him, the only time I’ve seen them on the same side. I saw the way everyone looked at Mammy as we walked down the street to the graveyard, all dressed in black. They looked at her like she was crazy, like our baby sister was never really a baby at all, just because she didn’t take a breath when she came out. Even though they’re not supposed to, the midwife had let Mammy hold her baby after she was born. She held her for an hour, then when the midwife started to get a bit angry and tried to take her from Mammy, Hamish stepped in. Mattie wasn’t there and he took over, he lifted the baby out of Mammy’s arms and carried her down the stairs. He kissed her before he gave her back to the midwife, who took her away forever.

      ‘She was alive inside of me,’ I heard Mammy say to the priest, but I don’t think he liked hearing her say that. He looked like it was a bit disgusting for him to think of things living inside of her. But she did it anyway, made up her own funeral at the graveyard, and it was cold and grey and it rained the whole time. My shoes got so wet, my socks and feet were soaking and numb. I sneezed all day, couldn’t breathe out of my nose last night, the lads kept thumping me to stop me snoring and I spent the whole night going from hot to cold, shivering then sweating, feeling cold when I was sweating, feeling hot when I was cold. Crazy dreams: Da and Mattie fighting, and Father Murphy shouting at me about dead babies and hitting me, and my brothers stealing my marbles, and Mammy in black howling with grief. But that part was real.

      Even though I feel like my skin is on fire and everything around me is swirling, I don’t call Mammy. I stay in bed, tossing and turning, sometimes crying because I’m so confused and my skin is sore. Mammy brought me a boiled egg this morning and put a cold cloth on my head. She sat beside me, dressed in black, still with a big tummy looking like she has a baby in there, staring into space but not saying anything. It’s kind of like when Da died but this is different; she was angry at Da, this time she’s sad.

      Usually Mammy never stops moving. She’s always cleaning, cleaning Bobby’s nappies, the house, banging sheets and rugs, cooking, preparing food. She never stops, always banging around the place, us always in her way and her moving us out of the way with her legs and feet, pushing us aside like she’s in a field and we’re long grass. Now and then she stops moving to straighten her back and groan, before going back to it again. But today the house is silent and I’m not used to that. Usually we’re all shouting, fighting, laughing, talking; even at night there’s a child crying, or Mammy singing to it, or Mattie bumping into things when he comes home drunk and swearing. I hear things that I’ve never heard before like creaks and moaning pipes, but there’s no sound from Mammy. This worries me.

      I get out of bed, my legs shaking and feeling weak like I have never walked before, and I hang on tight to the bannister as I go downstairs, every floorboard creaking beneath my bare feet. I go into the living room, joined on to the kitchen, tiny at the back of the house like they forgot it and added it on, and it’s empty. She’s not here. Not in the kitchen, not in the garden, not in the living room. I’m about to leave when I suddenly see her in black sitting in an armchair in the corner of the living room that only Mattie ever sits in; so still I nearly missed her. She’s staring into space, her eyes red like she hasn’t stopped crying since yesterday. I’ve never seen her so still. I don’t remember it ever being just me and her before, just the two of us. I’ve never had Mammy to myself. Thinking about it makes me nervous: what do I say to Mammy when there’s nobody around to hear me, to see me, to react, to tease, to goad, to impress? What do I say to Mammy when I’m not using her to get a rise out of someone else, to tell on someone, or know if what I’m saying is right or wrong because of their reactions?

      I’m about to leave the room when I think of something, something I want to ask, that I would only ask if it was just me and her, with no one else around.

      ‘Hi,’ I say.

      She looks over at me,