If, one day in the future, someone makes the big mistake of coming up to me and saying “hey, today’s your wedding day, happy anniversary” here’s what will spring into my mind, just before I smack them:

Pascalle screaming – but not in a good way.

Gunshots – from outside.

There’s an image of me, running out of the house, looking over the balcony. I see Pascalle, and for some unknown reason she’s lying in the garden – and I’m thinking WTF? And then I see there’s blood on her.

And I see Mum – she’s kinda fallen back on the stairs, and she’s sort of holding her ear – I guess because one of the gunshots had just whistled past it. And she’s looking – confused, is the best word. And she looks up at me, for just a second, before these cops appear from nowhere and just, sort of, engulf her.

And I have no idea what the fuck just happened, until I step right up to the handrail, and I look down and there’s Gerard, lying on his back, there’s a gun on the ground beside him and there’s blood just pissing out his neck. And suddenly there are people all over him too, trying to stop the blood.

I guess the reason some things become clichés is because they are such a common experience, shared by so many people, and when people are asked to describe the event they all end up saying the same thing – and thus the cliché is born. But maybe sometimes the cliché is actually the truth because that’s the way it does happen. The cliché in this case is that everything starts playing out in slo-motion. And that’s the sure way it was for me. It’s like your brain is struggling to cope with so many messages that it has to slow everything down, just to take them all in.

Then reality comes rushing back in and everything is just screaming and shouting and shit all over the show.

And the upshot of all this is one dead cop and, now, Mum pleading guilty to murder – unheard of, in this family. Okay, sure, this is our first actual murder charge, but the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty and even then there’s always the appeal’ that has served this family so well through the generations should still apply here, right?

But not any more, apparently; and certainly not to my mother, Cheryl West, the patron saint of falling on her own sword.

Good one, Mum.