Read an exclusive extract from Liz Nugent's
The Truth About Ruby Cooper

Mom had come over to America for the summer when she was a teenager and was working as a nanny in a house close to where Dad grew up in Worcester, west of Boston. I think it was a love story. He was her knight in shining armour, and he rescued her from having to go back to Ireland. That’s the way he told it. Mom would say it wasn’t quite like that. They got married young and started a family straight away. Boy, was she homesick, though. By 1999, Erin and I hadn’t been back to Ireland in four years, but Mom visited every year and spoke to Grandma once a week on a Saturday at 6.30 p.m.

Much as I loved Grandma and a trip to Ireland, as we got older we chose to go to Bible Camp, which was way more fun than it sounded. We learned to cook and swim, and we did first aid, knitting circles, book club and singing. Not all the songs were hymns, though we weren’t allowed to sing Britney Spears – not in front of the camp leaders anyway.

Erin’s boyfriend was wicked smart. Milo had been in Altman High with us until he graduated the previous summer. Everyone wanted to be his girlfriend, but my big sister, Erin, took his attention. Slim and sandy-haired, he looked like a pale version of Bailey from Party of Five, and he was fun too. He was from Southie. His clothing was a little shabbier than most students, but apart from that and the accent, you would never know his background. His manners were impeccable, though they didn’t come naturally. The first time he came to dinner, when Mom called out ‘Dinner’s ready’ and bid us all to sit at the table, Milo politely began to offer the bread basket around, but Dad coughed and said, ‘Let’s say grace first, yes? Maureen, will you lead us in prayer?’ Milo turned beetroot red. ‘Yes, sir, ma’am, I’m sorry, sir.’ Dad smiled reassuringly at him. Everyone closed their eyes as Dad intoned the holy words, but I sneaked a peek at Milo, and he was looking at each of us in turn. He caught me looking, jammed his eyes shut tight and then opened them again and winked at me with a grin. It was my turn to blush. He watched carefully how we used our knives and forks. Mom could have been more subtle about that. She narrated the whole table etiquette thing – ‘and now we put our serviettes on our laps’ – and I knew she had learned table manners from Dad’s family, because Grandma sometimes ate with her mouth open, or ate peas from her knife, and Mom didn’t learn manners from her.

My parents grew to trust Milo, especially Mom, because he was Irish from a few generations back. Despite his good looks and physical presence, he was bookish like Erin. He adored her, and Dad even let him sleep over in the downstairs spare room at weekends or sometimes if they were studying late during the week. He was not allowed to go upstairs where Erin’s room was, next to mine. They pretended that they stayed in their respective rooms, but I knew better.

My room was in the middle of the house upstairs and separated Erin’s room at the top of the back stairs from Mom and Dad’s room at the other end of the house beside the main staircase that led down into the hall. There was a full-length mirror on the wall in my room and I spent a lot of time in front of it, waiting for my teeth to straighten with the retainer and the pointy chin to change as I got older, for the curves that Erin had. Like Snow White’s wicked stepmother, I checked the mirror impatiently several times a day, hoping for this miraculous change. One day, I got so frustrated that I banged my fist on the mirror, and it fell off the wall. The nail and the plastic thing that held the nail in place fell out too. There was now a hole in the wall. If it was a bit deeper, it would come out on Erin’s side, and I’d be able to see into her room.