Manu Walsh

Poverty

Manu Walsh is a mother of four who lives on welfare and wishes she didn't. She's obsessed with the weather and winter right now. 'Don't like it. Too bloody cold. It never gets warm.'

Fortunately, the woman she calls Mum has rescued them for a couple of weeks. Mum is an elderly, well-off, gratingly well-spoken, ex-teacher Walsh met more than 20 years ago in prison, when Mum was a prison teacher and Walsh was an inmate. Mum taught Walsh to read and write, and the two of them have called and written ever since. Mum says that she was worried about some of the stories that Walsh had started to tell her in the last year, so she insisted that Walsh and the four kids came and stayed in her large summer house by the coast for a couple of weeks, or until 'the heat gets to them.'

'Ha, ha,' says Walsh. She brought three of her children with her - her second-eldest daughter Sam, 15, and her sons Chris, 12, and Aaron, six. Chris is bright-eyed and thrilled to be by the sea and the beach. Aaron doesn't speak. All four of them have sprayed green glitter in their hair. Sam sits next to Walsh and bends her head so that Walsh can spray more glitter on it.

Walsh does this from a distance. Not very long ago, when they were at home, Walsh had to lock herself into her bedroom with the phone and ring the police to tell them to arrest Sam and Sam's elder sister Julie before they killed her. 'They attacked me,' Walsh whispers. 'They planned it together.' They came at her from either side of a room when she was by herself.