Right Now

47. There's something about your laugh

"We can't have any Liam Neeson movie marathons," I warned her.

"We'll save them for another time," she said. "Let me know when you want to come and I'll pick you up from the bus station. As long as it is not Monday night. That's my hip hop dance class and we're doing krumping  – I don't want to miss it if I can help it."

"There's a bus that gets in at 5.30pm on Tuesday," I said, checking the timetable on my laptop. "Is that okay?"

"That's grand," she said. "See you then."

I told Harry I'd be at Gran's for a few days but still able to Skype him.

"You'll have to put her on so I can talk to her," he said. "She sounds very cool."

During one of our long chats I'd told him all about my gran, Peggy Tremaine, and her incredible life. I adore my gran, and it was lovely when Harry listened attentively as I talked about her.

My gran is Irish, from a small village near Cork, and grew up as the eldest in a very poor family of six kids. She had to leave school at 15 to look after her family when her mum, who worked in a hospital cafeteria, suffered terrible burns when a hot water urn malfunctioned and sprayed boiling water everywhere.

Gran was devastated; a good education was important to her, and she'd been determined to be the first member of her family to go to university. But family had to come first and so for the next two years she stayed home and tended to her injured mum, as well as doing all the cooking and cleaning. When her mother was fully recovered Gran got a job as a typist for a local building firm, and there she met Padraig O'Donnell and fell madly in love. Ireland was going through an economic slump and Paddy barely scraped together a living as a builder's labourer, so the plan was for him to go to England to work there, and send for Gran when he'd saved up enough money for them to get married and buy a house.

Being somewhat impatient, Gran decided after six months she'd had enough of waiting for Paddy to summon her. So off she went to England unannounced, planning on getting a job and help her husband-to-be to save for their future. However, the day after arriving in Leicester, she learned there was no future for them. While they'd been apart Paddy had got himself a "lady friend" who had just informed him she was pregnant. Paddy then got himself a black eye and some very bruised genitalia after breaking the news to Gran.

Mortified at the prospect of going home to Ireland after just a day in England, my gusty gran – who was only 18  – decided to make the best of her situation. She found a job in the office of a large haulage company, and a room in a home owned by a recently separated mother of two. She worked hard and caught the eye of a handsome accounts clerk called Ken Tremaine. He was shy and quiet, she was bubbly and loud, but they discovered a mutual love of ballroom dancing and fell for each other over the quickstep and the cha cha. Two years later they were married, and they lived happily ever after.

Only they didn't.

After 30 years and two children – my mum Krissie and her older brother Adam – life was good until my grand-dad began tripping over his feet on the dance floor. He  would also drop things for no obvious reason and struggled to open jar lids. When he started slurring his words, his boss at the logistics company where he then worked as a senior accountant called him into to office and asked if he'd been drinking. Tests showed he had motor neurone disease, an incurable and  horribly cruel disease that causes people's bodies to gradually shut down, until they die. 

I was two when my grand-dad was diagnosed, and six when he took his last breath. My Gran had given up her job as an executive assistant to be his fulltime carer, and before he lost the ability to speak, he would say to me, "I hope you grow up to be like your gran, Emma my love, because she's the very best woman in the world."