“Tammy will have to wait. I’m on shift in an hour and a half.” Rosie caught the hood of Janelle’s sweater. “Hoover, missy. Mam’s got enough to do without cleaning up after you.”

“It’s like having two bleedin’ mothers,” Janelle muttered, her fondness for swearing still eclipsed by her reluctance to get in trouble over it. When Rosie tugged on one of her curls, she smiled shyly, the stroppy teenager morphing into the sweet baby half-sister who had made everything all right with Rosie’s new dad, and who had come to rely on Rosie for a good deal of her parenting when two further children had followed in rapid succession.

Lured downstairs by a heady aroma of roasting meat and spuds, they walked into a kitchen filled with steam, the cloud all but obscuring Maggie Badu as she slid a tray of Yorkshire puddings from the oven.

“Whoa, easy, Mam.” Rosie grabbed an oven glove and caught the tray as it began to tilt, drawing a relieved but frazzled smile from her mam, who placed the tray on the counter with one hand and rapped Janelle’s knuckles with the other.

“Ow! Jesus Christ.”

Swearing earned Janelle another smack, and she dropped the pilfered Yorkie to stick her reddened fingers in her mouth. Their mam ruled the roost, despite being a short, unassuming woman, and even her husband gave her wooden spoon a wide berth.

“It’ll be ready in five minutes,” she told Janelle. “Go and help Tammy set the table. Rosie, be a love and carve the beef. I think your dad’s watching the footy with Sam.”

“That sounds about right,” Rosie said, taking up the knife and stabbing the thick joint with a fork.

Her mam was busy with the mashed carrots, pepper flying everywhere as she gestured with the grinder. “It keeps them out of my way, and they’ll be doing the washing up while I finish that nice bottle of plonk you brought.”

Rosie put a hand on her heart, aghast. “It’s not plonk. I’ll have you know it’s a very fine”—she checked the bottle—“Australian Shiraz.”

“Lidl or Aldi?”

Rosie chuckled. It was impossible to pull the wool with her mam, and their respective budgets rarely stretched beyond the value supermarkets. “Lidl. They were two for six quid.”

“Pity you’re working tonight. We could’ve watched Strictly and got sozzled.”

“I’d need to be bloody anaesthetised to watch that crap. I’d rather be scrapping with a nowty scrote.” Rosie hefted the plate of meat and balanced the Yorkies on top. “Right, we’re good to go. Grab the gravy and corral the kids. I’m on a deadline here.”