IT WAS ONLY MUCH LATER than evening as he heard the key in the door and knew that his sister, Frank and Gemma had returned, that he realised coming up with a believable excuse for the funeral pyre he had made of Frank’s best shirt was beyond him. It would be better for his brother-in-law to think the shirt had made one of those mysterious bids for freedom to which laundry was prone, he thought, as he stuffed it to the bottom of the carrier bag beneath his New Man baby-sitting book of wisdom.
Gemma, all starry-eyed and even more in love with the lead singer of the boy band suffered a rush back to reality when Rafferty told her the baby was sound asleep in the kitchen.
‘Oh, Uncle Joe,’ she complained, as Rafferty’s acrobatically gained and heroic burns stung afresh and unsung. ‘Why didn’t
