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Sport 10: Autumn 1993

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Reen has noticed, over the years, that Rose and Teresa and Vince like, jointly and separately, to get at Tommy, get him going, get his goat, Rose would say if she were admitting to it.

They throw trip-wires in the path of his stories, roguish facts which confuse him, upset his singular recall. Reen has watched them sitting dose on the couch, a subversive triumvirate, smirking, picking and pulling, unravelling the weave of Tommy's dreamy recollections.

'What you don't know,' Vince says, knocking back whisky, his smooth, pink, piggy face split with a grin, 'what you girls don't know is that there is always another side to these stories. I should know, I was there.'

'Bullshit!' says Teresa. The word explodes into the decorous living- room, causing Tommy to frown, but Teresa is bold, she widens her eyes at her brother, defiant. Rose, head down, counting stitches, smiles to herself.

'You weren't always there,' Teresa says. 'No one was always there, but I was there a lot, I know things.' United in skirmishes with Tommy, Vince and Teresa are also divided by their own simmering battles.

Vince is launched though, reckless, fuelled by glee at his own small secrets.

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'What about the Kumara races, eh? 1952, I was there, where were you?' he says, nudging Teresa heftily. He raises the whisky bottle at Tommy, questioning, and Tommy holds out his glass, it's one of those times, Reen thinks, when he's not going to put up a fight, he'll settle back into a sheepish silence (yes, his silence suggests, oddly enough, incredibly, that person may have been me).

'Pissed as a fart!' Vince finishes, snorting into his drink. 'Catatonic.'

'Well, twenty pounds, small fortune,' Teresa says. Reen watches Tommy, he's smiling faintly. He's not even protesting Vince's language.

'Mmmmm,' he says.

'Pissed. As. A. Fart.' says Vince, leering up at Tommy.

Rose stops knitting, stares straight ahead, still and hostile.