"I’m not used to feeling like Madonna. I feel emotional"

2 pm. I am with my five siblings, walking round a lake amid the sights and sounds of our childhood. 

“We all used to swim from over that side,” my oldest sister says, pointing at distant inky waters and blonde lakeside rushes.

“No we didn’t,” my middle sister says, “it was always from the other end. Remember, Dad warned us about the long reeds on that side, dragging people down to the bottom? I never left the shallows after that.”

“You never left the shallows anyway,” my brother says.

While my siblings walk round the lake, patchworking their memories together into some overall pattern that everyone might recognise, I remain quiet; my brothers and sisters all travelled long distances to be with me on my birthday yesterday and made me feel famously adored.

Like Madonna. I’m not used to feeling like Madonna. For this reason, I’m feeling quite emotional.

Plus, I’m hungover.

I’m thinking, as I’m walking, that if life is a jug standing on a table — a big jug you fill and fill and fill with memories — then the table is your siblings; they are your life’s base.

There always. Solid and firm. To love you forever. Because it’s in their blood, so they can’t help it, it’s not their fault.

“I remember having to walk back from that lake with a poo halfway down my tights,” my middle sister says. “I must have been about three at the time.”

“Three’s a bit optimistic,” my brother says, “I was walking back from school with you when you were five and you had poo halfway down your tights even then.”

“It was very traumatising,” my middle sister says, “I think Mum was a bit slack in training me. Maybe because I was the fifth and she just ran out of steam?”

“Gessy was the sixth and didn’t poo in her tights,” my oldest sister says.

“I had the opposite problem,” my brother says. “I could never poo at school. There was never any toilet paper. I always remember having to race home desperate. I spent my entire childhood constipated.”

“Or if there was toilet paper, it was that awful tracing paper stuff,” my middle sister says.

“What would you know about toilet paper?” my brother says, “you just went ahead. In your tights.”

I am still quiet, thinking about tables and jugs, as we all turn right round the lake.

“Oh god,” my brother says suddenly, “I remember having to sing “Georgy Best, Superstar,” in that place over there, when it used to be a shop.”

We all stop in our tracks.

“I remember that,” we all scream in unison.

He sings:

“Georgy best, superstar,

Looks like a lady

And he wears a bra.

The bra’s too big,

He wears a wig

And that’s why we call him a sexy pig.”

“I remember you singing that all the time,” I say, “but why did you have to sing it and why always in the shop?”

“To get apple drops,” he says, “remember that big jar behind the counter? I went in, asked for apple drops and the shopkeeper said, “give us a song first,” so I sang Georgy Best. Then I always had to sing it to get apple drops after that.”

“Talk about trauma,” he continues,“I had to throw my chest out and squash my pectoral muscles together like this. As if they were breasts.”

He demonstrates.

“What do you mean as if they were breasts?” my middle sister says, “have you forgotten how fat you were as a child?”

“You call that trauma?” I say, “I bought my first tampons in that shop, a fact you announced the same night at dinner. I think you sang Georgy Best just for the attention, never mind the apple drops.”

“Oh you reckon so, Mrs Primadonna? Mrs Drama Queen? Mrs Diva Extraordinaire?” my brother says.

We walk down to the lakeshore. Over to my right are the long reeds. Up there is the shop and everywhere are the blackberry bushes we used to plunder together with buckets and colanders.

And down here by the lakeshore, amid the sights and sounds of our childhood, are my mad, f*****g siblings; my life’s base.