Under the kitchen table was another world when we were kids. The solid wood legs we hung onto like our father’s. Nothing like the spindly metal legs of the turquoise Formica table I’m sitting at and can’t put a cup of tea on without it shaking. You could lay a body out on our old kitchen table. When our father’s was, to remain in the room Ma said we had to stay under there, on the rungs, on two cushions Ma made from our baby clothes, watching as they carried him in on the shed door, feet first, to swing him onto the table, as if shed doors and fathers belonged on kitchen tables.

We both look up, feeling the weight of our father over us. Only we are left. Da and Ma and us. Ma warns us not to come out until she is done. So we play snakes and ladders with the board between us, careful not to knock it over or let the dice fall on the floor. I let my little brother win. He can’t count anyway, Ma says he never will.

You will, I tell him under there, and we’ll show Ma what you can do. He nods and jumps his red counter up the snake and I hear Da say again, he’ll never learn if he’s not shown the rules, that’s what big sisters are for, when Das are gone. Now Ma is gone, my brother and I sit at this other kitchen table watching the tea in our cups shiver and he asks me if I want to go under this table with him and we can play snakes and ladders and he’ll let me win.

Rosaleen Lynch, an Irish community worker and writer in the East End of London, loves stories conversational, literary and performed. Words in lots of lovely places and can be found on Twitter @quotes_52 and 52Quotes.blogspot.com