WHEN I published my first short story collection, Close Call: Short and Bittersweet, five years ago, I dedicated it to ‘the two Gerries, without the shadow of whose memory this my first book would never have seen the light of day’. My brother asked me who the other Gerry was and I told him it was a veiled reference to our late mother’s schizophrenia (she was a Gerry too). Well, that was only partly true. My choice of words was designed to be ambiguous. So in effect, I lied … the other Gerry was Gerry Butler.

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