‘Tea?’ said Ted, desperately.
‘No thank you. I have a lot to do,’ said her mother, not really lowering her voice. ‘Do enjoy the savoy cabbage,’ she said, and with a frosty smile, she headed for the door.
‘I’ll drop over tomorrow,’ Sam’s father said, hugging her. ‘I’ll text first and you can tell me what would be good. You could have a sleep and I’ll be on baby duty.’
Sam leaned against her father, feeling his warmth and strength.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, ‘Thank you.’
‘Lie down, Sam,’ Ted said when they were gone.
Mutely, she did just that. But she couldn’t rest, couldn’t concentrate on the TV show.
Thoughts of her first period earlier meant she found herself remembering that very time. Not that she’d known much about periods, mind you. Her mother’s version of the mother-daughter talk was to give her a booklet on menstruation when Sam hit twelve and leave Sam to it.
‘You might find this useful,’ her mother had said with a hint of distaste as if the female body and its menstrual carry-on was not suitable for any conversation.
When the thirteen-year-old Sam had found blood in her knickers, she’d been at home, scared and with only Dad and Joanne there. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, ask her father what do to. So she’d stuffed toilet roll into her knickers and had braved her next-door neighbour’s house, where a lovely woman with grown-up kids and grandkids lived.
All her fears had come out in a flood of tears.
Mrs Maguire had provided clean knickers, sanitaryware and made it all seem entirely normal. A hot-water bottle on her belly, and a seat curled up by the fire with the family’s cat had helped too.
‘Don’t tell my mother,’ Sam had begged. ‘Please.’
‘But where does she think you are?’
‘She’s not home. She’s working late.’
‘This is important, she’d come if you phoned her,’ said Mrs Maguire, somewhat doubtfully.
Sam thought of her friends’ mothers who had jobs and how they somehow made their children come first in spite of it all. Her mother was not of that tribe.
‘She wouldn’t, Mrs Maguire,’ said Sam. ‘She’s busy.’
And Mrs Maguire had wondered again about her coldly polite neighbour who looked after other people’s daughters but had not managed to teach her own child that real mothers would walk through fire for their own daughters, job or no job.
Ginger
Ginger parked the car on Great-Aunt Grace’s drive, got out, admired the lawn which did not have a single daisy on it, and then rang the doorbell.
As usual, nobody replied. Being increasingly deaf, Grace tended to have the TV volume turned up to an eardrum-splitting level which only other deaf people could stand.
‘I don’t know how the dogs stick it,’ Mick said whenever he visited.
‘They’re deaf too,’ said Declan. ‘Or they are now.’
Grace had been the major female figure in Ginger’s life as a child and she had been wonderful, even if she had never been blessed with children herself.
When it came to picking up the Reilly kids from school or helping them with homework, Grace, recently widowed, had been there.
Ginger gave one more blast on the doorbell because she never wanted to startle Grace by turning up unannounced.
Cloud and Pepperpot, two overweight cockapoos, did not arrive at the door barking madly and when Ginger pushed open the letter box and yelled again, no furry friends leapt up to sniff hello.
She could hear loud TV blaring from the living room and reckoned it was the QVC jewellery show, Grace’s favourite.
Ginger got her house keys out of her bag and opened the door, feeling, as she always did, the fear that dear Grace would be laid out on the parquet flooring of the kitchen having had a heart attack.
