For Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio 1, listen to Telephone, by Nicole Flattery above...
My mother has four sisters - even saying that seems wrong. I consult my own sister. How many sisters does our mother have? We estimate it's somewhere between 10 and 15.
Then we begin to list them - Rita, Mary... we pause, there must be two Mary's? No, we decide after a short discussion there's only one Mary. Betty, Anne.... we think, that's it? We've only got to four. That can't be right.
Twelve seems like a more satisfying number of sisters. We start again. There's finally, and conclusively, only four...
Nothing Special, a novel by Nicole Flattery, has recently been published by Bloomsbury. Listen to more from Sunday Miscellany here.
