“
Nora had the look of Hilda Ogden but with the thickest Dublin accent I’d ever heard. She was the kind of person who’d seen it all. Standing with one arm folded and a cigarette held in a limp hand, she looked as though nothing would surprise her. I envied people like that. If there was a nuclear explosion right now with bricks and mortar falling around our ears, Nora would probably still be stood there with her cigarette, rollers in her hair, wondering who’d made that racket and then getting on with frying some eggs for tea.
”
”