Colm Tóibín

you know, my aunt, my mother's sister, she was very nice and it wasn't as though anyone did anything to us.

But I mean, for her point, if you're having these two very entitled boys foisted on her when she had her own children who were younger, so she didn't know what to do with the two of us because we ran our own lives by that.

You know, we were the youngest and so we were so used to deciding our own bedtime and deciding what clothes we wore and deciding to do what we wanted.

Did she not?

Yeah, it's so accusatory, you know, and so why didn't you?

And there's no answer to that.

My mother's two, especially Harriet, the youngest, really cared about clothes.

She was very good looking.

And she really, really watched what she wore.

It was always beautiful.

And she went to sales.

And the other sister went to sales.

And they loved sales.

But she told a wonderful story, Harriet.

There's a shop in Wexford Town, still there, called Shaw's.

And one day she had an hour or two to kill.

So she went into Shaw's and pretended she was going to a wedding.

and got the woman to show her entire rig out and all the accessories and what exactly she should be wearing with them.

She had no intention of buying anything.

She said the woman followed her out.