When Rory burst into our lives, he was an angry pink and already knew how to complain. I should have smothered him right there, taken a pillow from behind Mum’s matted wet hair, saving us all. And I would have, had she ever left his side. Instead I was forced to endure him, to direct my hatred instead toward the blowflies buzzing inside the window ledge, while she repeated over and over, ‘Isn’t he the most beautiful thing you have ever seen?’

How I made my mother so incomplete that she would need a second child, I would never understand. The sleepless nights, the clotheslines full of tiny socks and singlets, were forms of torture. I overheard her confess to Dad one night, as she sat on the porch fanning herself with some junk-mail while trying to get a grip on the breeze, that our lives had been ruined by another baby. But I never felt vindicated. By then it was too late. Rory had enmeshed himself into the fabric of our family, his image dominating our walls as well as all forms of thought and conversation. Yet still, no amount of attention would be enough for my little brother.