Epilogue: Don’t Forget to Hit the Subscribe Button!

So he’s done it. I hoped he wouldn’t – and I didn’t think he would – but the evidence is there, right in front of my eyes. And this is how I find out. A photograph on WhatsApp. Ronan and Shadden and little Rihanna-Brogan, all in their finest, standing outside the Happy Ever After Chapel in Hooters Casino in Vegas.

I just shake my head. I’m like, ‘You must be focking mad, Ro.’

And Brian pipes up then. He’s like, ‘Must be focking mad, Ro. Focking prickfock.’

And I go, ‘Remember, Brian, we don’t use bad language, okay? And your daddy’s going to try his best to stop as well, even though your big brother has decided to piss his focking life away.’

We’re sitting in the living room, watching a DVD of – I can barely believe it myself – the 2011 Heineken Cup final between Leinster and the Northampton Saints. The famous Miracle Match that I dreamt of one day watching with my kids. And they’re loving every minute of it. We’re into, like, the final seconds and Leo is shouting, ‘Johnny Sexton!’ at the screen just like I do when I watch it.

I go, ‘Johnny Sexton!’

And then Brian and Johnny get in on the act as well. They’re like, ‘Johnny Sexton!’

It’s a lovely, lovely moment.

The match ends and Leo shouts, ‘Again! Again!’

But I’m like, ‘No, Leo. You can’t keep watching the same match over and over again. It’s important for you to get a broad education. I want to show you them beating Ulster the following year.’

God, they’re going to love me out in Bray.

I press Stop on the disc and the TV comes on. The old man is on the RTÉ lunchtime news, saying that the Irish people have spoken and they have said loudly and clearly that they wish to take back control of their country.

‘Granddad!’ Johnny shouts.

And I’m like, ‘It’s not your granddad, Johnny, it’s just someone who looks and sounds a little bit like him.’

The old man goes, ‘What we have seen this week is a rejection of the same old careerist politicians who have served this country badly since Independence! I intend to make good on my promise to renege on our – inverted commas – debt obligations and follow Britain out of the European Union and towards a bright tomorrow!’

I mute the TV while I look for the DVD of the 2012 final.

There’s a pretty much gale blowing outside. I look out the window. Sorcha is helping her old pair move all of their shit out of the Shomera and into the removal van that her old man rented for the day.

I bang on the window and her old man – who’s carrying a morble-based arc lamp that he got in IKEA – looks at me through the glass.

I’m like, ‘Did you get my goodbye-and-good-riddance gift?’

He did. The Vampire Bed arrived this morning. I saw it being delivered. He wouldn’t give me the pleasure of acknowledging it, of course. I doubt if they’ll even bring it with them. I don’t mind either way. It served my purpose of giving me a good focking laugh as I watched him sign for it, only to then realize what it actually was.

He’s absolutely fuming with me. He looks at me – he’s practically being blown away in the wind – and he goes, ‘I have better things to do than engage with the likes of you!’

Which is poor from him. I give him the wanker sign and he walks around the side of the house with the lamp. I feel like calling Honor. She should be here to witness this, except she’s upstairs, preparing a video for her YouTube channel called Five Items in Your Wardrobe that You Think You Need But Don’t.

I’m kind of hoping that she asks me to appear in it.

I find the DVD I’m looking for, except it’s the wrong disc in the case. Instead of the Leinster versus Ulster match, it’s the Davina McCall Extreme Abs Boxercise DVD that I used to watch practically five times a week when Sorcha was pregnant with the boys and had lost her sexual appetite. I stort looking through all the other cases for the right disc when all of a sudden I hear the most unbelievable crash outside. I’m not exaggerating – the entire house shakes – and the boys all scream with the fright.

And so do I when I look up and see what caused the actual noise. A humungous branch – we’re talking thirty feet long – has snapped off a tree in the high wind and come crashing down on the roof of the Shomera, flattening the focking thing.

It says a lot that my first reaction is that it’s a pity Sorcha’s old pair weren’t in there, because I just watched her old dear walk past the window carrying a Brabantia pedal bin.

But then all of a sudden I hear all this screaming and shouting and Sorcha’s old pair come chorging around the side of the house into the back gorden, going, ‘Sorcha! Sorcha!’ and that’s when I realize that my wife must have been inside the Shomera when the – practically – tree fell on top of it.

I race out into the hall, then outside, screaming her name. I’m going, ‘Sorcha! Sorcha!’ except there ends up being no answer.

I’m standing over this flattened mess of wood and steel and glass, screaming her name over and over again, listening out for a noise, for any sign of life and it’s like time has suddenly stopped.

I’m going, ‘Sorcha, can you hear me? Sorcha, answer me if you can hear me?’

And her old pair are shouting basically the same thing while running circles around what’s left of what was their home until sixty seconds ago.

I’m like, ‘Sorcha? Sorcha, can you hear me?’

And that’s when I hear her voice – tiny and frightened – coming from deep inside the basically rubble of the Shomera.

She’s there, ‘Ross? Ross?’ and – I swear to fock – I have never loved my wife the way I love her at that moment in time.

Her old man goes, ‘Dorling? Dorling, are you hurt?’ but I shoulder him out of the way like Rory Best clearing out a ruck.

I’m there, ‘Sorcha, are you hurt?’

And she’s like, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘No broken bones?’ I go, looking for a way to get into what’s left of the thing.

She’s there, ‘No, I think I’m okay. Just a bit in shock. What happened?’

Sorcha’s old dear goes, ‘A branch fell onto the Shomera, Dorling!’

I climb up onto the wreckage and I find a big hole where the window used to be. I stick my head into it and I look inside. It’s pitch dork in there. But I whip out my phone and I switch on the torch and I can suddenly make out a hand.

I’m like, ‘Sorcha? I’m over here! Follow the light!’

I reach out my hand towards her. Ten seconds later, she grabs it and I pull her slowly out through the window towards safety. She was lucky and she knows it. She’s suffering from nothing worse than a few cuts and bruises and – like she said – a little bit of shock.

Sorcha’s old pair are all over her, hugging her and telling her how much they love her and how grateful they are that she’s alive. There’s not a word of thanks for me, of course.

Her old man goes, ‘You’ve been saved for a purpose, Dorling! Oh, I’m fully convinced of that! It’s to be a thorn in the side of Charles O’Carroll-Kelly and his efforts to take Ireland out of Europe!’

Meanwhile, her old dear is going, ‘It was that tree! Do you remember the one I said had lost all of its leaves?’

I’m sort of, like, doubled over, trying to regain my breath. And that’s when something all of a sudden hits me. You could call it a realization.

I look up at Honor’s bedroom window and I see her standing there, just staring out, a blank expression on her face.

Into the house I go, then up the stairs, along the landing and into Honor’s room. She doesn’t even turn around when I push the actual door.

I’m like, ‘You killed the tree, didn’t you? That’s why you were looking up poisons on the internet.’

She’s there, ‘Why did you have to tell them to move out? They’d probably be dead if you didn’t.’

‘Jesus Christ, Honor, you could have killed your mother.’

She sort of, like, laughs. She’s goes, ‘Oh my God, she’s being such a drama queen about it. Loves the attention, of course.’

I walk over to her and I spin her around. I’m like, ‘Honor, I thought you and Sorcha had agreed to let bygones be bygones.’

But she just smiles, then she does an impression of Sorcha. She’s like, ‘You’ll be doing all the things I did, Honor. The St Madeleine Sophie Barat Prayer Circle. The Model United Nations. We can be, like, best, best friends.’

It’s a pretty good impression, it has to be said.

‘She was happy to send me away,’ she goes. ‘Her own daughter.’

I’m there, ‘She seems to have genuinely learned her lesson, though, Honor. Why don’t we just agree that it ends there?’

But she just laughs. She’s like, ‘I haven’t even storted on her yet. She has no idea of the shit I’ve got planned for her.’