The MacTavish family photo albums take up an entire bookshelf.
Photos of Mrs and Mr when they were the ages of their kids. A book for each wain. The albums with little to no sense of order, anywhere from a photo at the caravan to a photo in A&E after wrestling in the living room, resulted in a broken nose.
It's easy to identify the MacTavish kids; they all share that same straight nose and piercing blue eyes. Even through various stages of dyed hair and heavy makeup, nothing can disguise their mother's cheekbones or their father's shoulders.
Only one of the kids' albums remains unfinished.
It starts with a photo of a red-faced, chubby screaming bairn held by a woman in a hospital bed.
Then, pictures of a toddler with dark hair, with the worst cow lick that Mary's ever tried to tame, she eventually admitted defeat.
A boy with skinned knees, missing a front tooth and covered in a Tunnock's Teacake that his eldest sister smashed across his face.
A pre-teen pinned to the couch by four girls of varying ages, Tinkerbell clips in his hair as they smear something glittery across his cheeks, and he roars like a bull.
A teenage boy ducking away from his Mammy's hands as she tries to sort his hair, face scarlet and posture sulky. The effect is ruined by the little girl clasping his hand, who's just above hip height.
A young man with far more scars than he left home with, shirtless and passed out on the couch after trying to outdrink his Da. On the back, in poorly scribbled handwriting, it says "blootered."
A man with a terrible haircut, arm wrapped around a bulky blonde who's built like a brick shithouse, as they sit among a crowd of nieces and nephews watching Home Alone on Christmas Day.
The blonde appears in multiple photos towards the end of the album; he never looks at the camera, he either ducks away from it or he's too busy staring at the other man to notice the photo being taken.
The last photo was taken on the birthday of John MacTavish Sr., the sequel stands next to him, his father's draun spit. Their noses scrunched, flashing their canines as they laugh at the words of someone off camera.
Mary marks the last photo with her son's rosary, lest she flip past to the empty pages. John MacTavish Jr. is dead, and she cannot bear to fill them with photos of anyone who isn't her boy.
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