In the picture she’s standing by my side, her face wreathed in a smile. Long, dark hair hangs loosely around her face, shiny red lipstick vibrant on her lips. There is happiness in Mom’s smile, real happiness, not the Kodak type. In fact, we all look happier in that captured second than we do now. Photos can do that, make you think life was better years ago, that things were simpler in the past.

For the people in that photo, they were.

‘You don’t look like your mother,’ Stephen observes. He puts the photo back on the nightstand and walks out the door, cool as ice cream on a winter’s day. The bang of the door closing behind him sounds extra loud.

I lie still on the bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering why his words made me feel afraid. His casual comment surges through me as if I’ve been injected with panic. Why wouldn’t I look like my mother? Bolting upright, I take some deep breaths. Relax, Becca, relax. Then I let my eyes slowly move to the picture on the nightstand, to the mother who looks like me. Does she?

Chapter Four

The next day I head for Dad’s with a terrible headache. He likes to have us all around the same table for Sunday lunch, the way we used to before Mom went away. It takes me twenty minutes to get to Dorchester and pull up outside the blue wooden house with the white porch where I grew up. I see Danny and Joanna’s people carrier hogging the driveway, leaving me to park on the street. They bought the big car because the baby is on the way. Always prepared for what life has in store. I hope it stays that way. For Danny’s sake, especially; he’s not good with changes to the script. Everything has to be mapped out and planned to perfection. Not like me, I never know what’s on the next page.

I finally squeeze into a tight space between two cars. I see Bert in his yard, leaning on a rake, and I wave over to him.

‘Hi Bert. How’s Edith?’

‘She’s fine. She’d be better for seeing you, though.’

‘I’ll be over as soon as lunch is finished.’

‘She’ll be happy to hear that.’

Except Edith won’t hear that. Edith is old, older than Bert, and things are slowly breaking down on her. Her hearing was the first gift to be taken back, almost two years ago now. But she’s in the hands of a good man who carries on like nothing has changed.

Bert shuffles off and I step up onto the front porch of my family home. Or what used to be a home, when Mom still lived here. Before the big hole appeared at the heart of it. Not a hole you can see. One you can feel.