Her co-workers celebrated Marjorie’s maternity leave with cakes in the break room, and despite the fact that she’d only been working there eight months, everyone put in money to give her a card and a cute baby growbag. She was grateful and emotional and promised faithfully to be back within six months and raring to go. She cried in the car on the way to her mother’s because she wasn’t sure if she could keep that promise. I’m so tired. I’m too old to be a new mother. This baby will kill me. Her mother was waiting at the door. She had her shopping bag and her walking stick ready to go.

‘How was your last day?’ Vera said.

‘Good, and it wasn’t my last day.’

‘That’s what you think.’

‘Please don’t be negative,’ she said.

‘OK. You look lovely.’

‘I look like an alien is about to burst out of me.’

‘You’re glowing.’

‘I’m sweating.’

‘You don’t make being nice to you easy, Marjorie.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Can we stop for a coffee and a cake?’ her mother asked.

‘Go on, then.’

Vera smiled. ‘Something with jam and cream.’

Vera Shaw had mellowed. It had been a slow and almost imperceptible process but she seemed less bitter, happier even; she received pleasure from little things that would never have pleased her before, and it was joyful.

‘Whatever you want, Ma,’ Marjorie said.

‘Mammy,’ Vera said.

‘Mammy.’

‘And I’d like to pick up something for the baby.’

‘You don’t have to do that.’

‘I’d like to.’

Marjorie felt like crying again – happy tears. ‘Thanks, Mammy.’

They spent an hour shopping in the centre, and by the time they’d picked up all of Vera’s shopping and something nice for the baby, Marjorie needed to sit down and eat. She couldn’t touch coffee or tea, the heartburn was ridiculous, so she drank a glass of cold milk and tucked into a slice of double-chocolate cheesecake while her mother enjoyed a Victoria sponge with extra cream. Marjorie was halfway through her cake when her mother brought up the subject of her father.

‘Would you like your father to know about the baby?’ she said.

Marjorie nearly choked. ‘No.’

‘I understand, but are you sure?’

‘I’m positive. He doesn’t care about me – why would he care about the baby?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It just seems like news you pass on.’

‘Well it isn’t.’

‘OK.’

Marjorie went off her food. She drank the milk she would not have touched before she was baking a baby.

Vera played with her food. ‘No one’s perfect,’ she said.

‘I know that.’

‘Some of us are far from it. I wasn’t a good mother. I know that.’

‘You were fine, Mammy.’

‘In my experience, fine is not good.’

‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’