Summary

The next chapter is told from the perspective of Nell’s mother, Carmel. Carmel’s father Phil had left her mother Terry after Terry was diagnosed with breast cancer, leaving 12-year-old Carmel and her 17-year-old elder sister Imelda to take care of her. In the past, when Phil still lived with them, he was very forgetful an always losing things. He relied on Terry to tell him where things were when he lost them. One day after he had abandoned the family, he returned to the house trying to find his watch. Terry remained silent while he frantically searched for it. Carmel remembered that he came into the bedroom, where Terry was bedridden after mastectomy surgery, and pulled the bedding off the bed, before replacing it. Looking back, neither Carmel nor Imelda were ever sure whether he had been adjusting the sheets to make...