The Way We Were by Sinéad Moriarty Page A

whatever it’s called, but it’ll be fine. You always make a big deal about everything.’
    ‘Don’t speak to me –’
    Ben raised his hands. ‘Ladies, can you please not argue? I have to go and I’d like to leave a peaceful house behind.’
    ‘Fat chance,’ Jools huffed. ‘I wish I had a mother who wasn’t always on my back. Charlotte’s mum lets her have a Twitter account because she’s normal, unlike you!’
    ‘I told you, I had a young girl in my surgery who was traumatized because she was receiving such vile threats on Twitter. There are bad men out there who prey on young girls like you,’ Alice said.
    ‘What do the bad men look like?’ Holly had come into the room, eyes wide.
    ‘Well, that’s the whole point – you can’t see them. They hide behind the anonymity of the computer so you don’t know what they look like,’ Alice explained.
    ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Mum, I know how to deal with dickheads.’
    ‘Mind your language,’ Alice barked.
    ‘Fine, but I want a Twitter account. All my friends have them.’
    ‘You’re not getting one. And –’
    ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Ben shouted, to be heard. ‘I have to go now.’ He bent to kiss Jools.
    Then he gave Holly a bear hug – thankfully, she still allowed him to hug her.
    ‘If you go for five days, you’ll be gone for a hundred and twenty hours, or if it’s six days, it’ll be a hundred and forty-four hours,’ Holly announced.
    ‘You are a wonder.’ Ben smiled at her.
    ‘Daddy, I Googled Eritrea.’ Holly pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket. Reading from it, she told them, ‘The official languages are Tigrinya, English and Arabic. It has a population of six point one three million. A UN report estimated that about seventy per cent of Eritreans cannot meet their food needs on their own.’
    Ben knew he had to stop her or she’d keep reading and he’d miss his flight. ‘I’ll take that and read it on the plane. Thank you, Holly.’ He stuffed the paper into his suitcase.
    ‘You’re such a dork, seriously!’ Jools said.
    Holly shrugged. ‘I was just helping Daddy to have information.’
    ‘I really have to go. Be good for your mother.’
    ‘If she lets me on Twitter, I’ll be incredibly good.’ Jools wasn’t going to let this go. She could be exhaustingly tenacious when she wanted something, a trait she’d inherited from her mother, although Ben wasn’t about to mention that now.
    ‘Drop it, Jools, it’s not happening,’ Alice warned.
    Ben leant over to give Alice a kiss. He murmured in her ear, ‘Maybe we should let her have an account if all of her friends do. We can keep an eye on it.’
    Jools’s bionic ears picked it up. ‘Yes! You see? Even Daddy agrees with me.’
    Alice’s eyes flashed. ‘Thanks a lot, Ben. Bloody typical!
You always give in to her. You never back me up. I’m sick of it. Why don’t you just stay in bloody Eritrea?’
    Alice stormed out of the room. Ben sighed, headed for the front door and on to the airport.
    Her final words were to haunt them both.

Holly
    Daddy has been away for fifty hours. He will be back in ninety hours unless he stays for an extra day. If he does, he’ll be back in 114 hours.
    Daddy didn’t phone yesterday. He promised to phone every day. Mummy tried to phone him last night and again this morning. But he didn’t call back.
    Mummy said the Wi-Fi is obviously really bad. But how was he able to call on Wednesday? He sounded really happy when I talked to him then. He said Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, is beautiful and the people are really nice. He was being looked after very well – he and the other doctor, Declan, were taken to a nice restaurant by the minister’s friends and ate yummy food.
    He said Declan is really funny. He’s Irish, like Mummy. Daddy said he’s a bit high-spirited, but in a good way.
    Daddy told us that he and Declan were going to visit a little clinic outside Asmara on Friday because the doctors over there need help