Ross O'Carroll-Kelly

‘It’s so much easier than facing up to the fact that her grandmother was kicked out of Knock for being mullered’

I’VE HONESTLY NEVER seen Sorcha so upset. Except for the time I rang her cracking on to be Aung San Suu Kyi, thanking her for her poem, Oh, Wingless Bird of Paradise.

And possibly the time I slept with her sister.

She barely said a word during the four-hour drive to Mayo, just sat there, crying occasionally, but mostly just trying to get her breathing under control, a trick she learned on that Smurfit Business School presentation skills course she did a couple of years ago.

The call came at, like, half-six this morning. All we were told was that her granny had taken some kind of I don’t know turn on the parish trip to Knock. Sorcha’s old pair are in Portugal, trying to offload an aportment they bought as a supposed investment property but Father Perry said that someone needed to come and get her.

I was like, “If she’s had a so-called turn, why isn’t she in hospital?” And Sorcha went, “I know as little as you do, Ross! Just drive, will you?”

I did what I was told. Floored it, in fact. I had to with the mood she was in? We pull up outside the guesthouse and she has the car door open – I swear to fock – before the thing has even stopped. She races inside while I pork the beast. And when I finally follow her in, I find her sitting in the living room, with her orm around her granny, who’s shouting at the top of her voice: “It’s rubbish! The whole thing is rubbish! The resurrection! Salvation! Life ever after! It’s all lies! It’s all bullshit!”

Sorcha mouths the word, “Sorry!” to Father Perry, except he holds his hands up as if to say, “Hey, don’t worry about it. I’ve heard worse,” and I’m sure he has. I think his previous parish was Orklow.

I’ve honestly never heard a bad word slip from Sorcha’s granny’s lips before. Even the time when she saw me out and about with a bird who wasn’t her granddaughter and I persuaded Sorcha and her entire family that there was something wrong with her eyes. She ended up in Specsavers in Dundrum getting fitted for a pair of Coca Cola bottle lenses and she didn’t swear once.

Now, she can’t stop.

“Look at that asshole,” she goes. “He’s evil to the core.” She’s referring to me, by the way, rather than Father Perry. He’s actually pretty sound.

She’s like, “Why did you take him back? He’ll destroy your life and you’ll be left a lonely old lady – like me.” I go, with a big smirk on my face, “Hey – that all remains to be seen,” trying to turn the whole thing into a bit of a joke, except she practically roars at me then. “You’re a liar!” and then she turns to Father Perry and goes, “And you’re a liar, too. Selling hope to people! Based on what? Based on what?”

Now Sorcha’s big into the whole God thing. I mean, you’d see her going out to Mass six or seven times a year. And obviously she’s not ready to hear her grandmother diss – I don’t know – the Lord? “It must be the whole digital switchover,” she tries to go.