She pushed away her plate. ‘Yeah, it’s great,’ she said, and she ran up the stairs.

Davey cursed. ‘What was that, Ma?’

‘I could have told her in the form of contemporary dance and it wouldn’t have made any difference.’

Juliet refused to come downstairs when Marjorie arrived. Instead she remained in her room behind a fortified door. In the sitting room Jack watched TV with the sound on at a deafening level and Molly, Davey and Marjorie ate shop-bought pavlova in relative silence.

Jack and Molly lived as strangers under one roof, while Davey tried to placate his parents and Juliet and forge a new relationship with Marjorie. Molly watched from the periphery but she didn’t engage. What will be, will be. It wasn’t going to be easy, her with a baby on board and him the substitute parent of a teenager and with a lifetime of selfishness to overcome. She didn’t know if it would work out but she hoped it would. She just kept taking her tablets and hoping she’d start to feel something again. Sorry.

Chapter Sixty-One: Marjorie

Chapter Sixty-One

Marjorie

CHANGE WAS COMING AND it was coming hard and fast and Marjorie wasn’t prepared.

We’re family now, Rabbit.

We were always family, Marj.

What does Johnny think of this? she asked her dead friend one day.

Johnny doesn’t think because Johnny’s dead, Rabbit replied. She chuckled to herself.

She talked to Davey on the phone a lot during the three-month period when he was boxing up his life in America and preparing to ship out. Many of their conversations turned into negotiations on ways to move forward. He was all in.

‘We don’t need to pretend that anything will change between us,’ Marjorie said.

‘Not true,’ he said. ‘Coming home was the hardest decision I ever made. The only highlight was seeing you. I was about to call you to tell you that when you rang. I love you, Marj, always have, always will.’

It took a while for it to sink in and for her to believe it.

What do you think, Rabbit?

You love him, Marj, always have and always will.

Finally he arrived home and landed on her doorstep with a large bunch of flowers and a big grin. She burst into tears in his arms and they sat on the sofa and she cried and ate cake as he stared at her stomach and wrapped his hands around it. They laughed and she cried. They talked and she cried. They kissed and she cried. They had sex and she cried right through it, but she also smiled and moaned and yelled the words ‘Oh thank you, sweet baby Jesus!’ as she rode him like she was breaking a bucking bronco.

Her mother reacted to her pregnancy surprisingly well.

‘Well, your life is over.’

‘Can you please be happy for me?’