‘Vera, I might get my mother up,’ she said, and Vera, who knew it all, nodded wisely.
‘Me?’ Her mother looked shocked at this offer.
‘Yes, Mother, come on.’
It was time to let the past be in the past, Sam had decided. If Callie Reynolds could move on from what had happened to her, then she could move on too.
In the bedroom, Jean said: ‘Are you sure?’
Sam had never heard her mother so tentative.
‘We’ll feed her, change her and then lay her down for a nap. Once she goes to sleep, I’ll leave you for an hour, and if she wakes up and you can’t settle her, call me.’
It was, Sam thought, something she would never have been able to do even a few months ago. The very idea of leaving her mother alone with India was unthinkable then. But Jean had changed. The admission of her failures had oddly strengthened her relationship with Sam.
Sam was different too.
‘Mother is just Mother,’ she said to Joanne one day. ‘We can’t change her any more than she can change us. We just have to figure out how to live with her.’
‘I thought I was supposed to be the younger one who knew nothing,’ teased Joanne, then hugged her sister.
‘If India wakes and cries when she sees me, what then?’ said Jean, still clearly very anxious.
Sam patted her mother’s back gently.
‘Babies are a steep learning curve. Just soothe her, sing her a little song, hold her close. Stay calm.’
‘I can do calm,’ agreed Jean. ‘But singing?’
‘You were in a choir for years. Murmur something gently. A lullaby.’
‘OK, a lullaby.’
Half an hour later, when India was settled in her cot, the lights were low and Jean was settled in a chair with a magazine, Sam let herself out.
She stood outside the door, thinking that she’d never imagined this day would come. But it had. Another steep learning curve. But then, love and learning – that seemed to be what life was all about.
Ginger
The trees were sprouting the first buds in Grace’s garden as Ginger parked outside Grace and Esmerelda’s.
‘Dogs rolled in mud. Pooey,’ announced Esmerelda, opening the door and almost running away. ‘Me busy. We going to your father’s to spend night. No time to clean stinky dogs.’
Ginger was wearing her walking gear because she planned to go walking in the countryside later and she backed off as the two dogs leapt delightedly at her.
‘Down,’ she yelled at Cloud and Pepperpot, who looked more like chimney sweeps than cockapoos. The stink was incredible.
‘Blasted dog walker,’ said Aunt Grace, standing in the hallway with a barrage of boxes in front of her to keep her safe. ‘I don’t suppose you could wash them? They’ll stink out the car ...’
‘Can you fire that dog walker and hire one who stops them rolling in crap?’ said Ginger, groaning.
‘He’s cute and I think you might like him,’ said Grace irrepressibly.
‘I already hate him,’ said Ginger.
Trying to keep the dogs at bay, she got dog treats from the kitchen, then coaxed the two dogs upstairs and locked them in the bathroom. The special doggy shampoo sat where it was last time she’d had to do this.
She stripped off her sweatshirt and her T-shirt until she was down to her sports bra, then hoisted Cloud in.
