And the smock—she shook it out in front of her with one hand, the other still resting on the leather—better than any piece of art she’d seen hanging on a wall. She could see the woman who bought it new—a young mum she’d have been, maybe twenty or twenty-one when she fell pregnant, and still fresh-faced and smiling as she chose the smock her suddenly hip-height baby would pack in a small green backpack for her first day at school. She could see the child: looking like Lena at five, hair always stringy, cheeks always red, chubby arms and legs always in motion. This child who looked like Lena but wasn’t her, proud as punch slipping the yellow smock over her head to get busy with the work she’d come to this place, the school, to do. But then—disaster! She becomes distracted by a table mate’s impossibly pretty painting of a horse and she allows her paintbrush to drip drip drip bright blue all over the yellow smock. Panic swells and tears start but then the teacher bends down and holds her hand and tells her that the smock is for getting paint on. And she remembers that’s exactly what Mummy said and so must be right. Still … it seems wrong to allow paint on your clothes. A test, then. With the teacher smiling on, she deliberately drags the brush over her belly. The girl across from her says, You’re in big trouble now. But the teacher laughs and says, See? It’s fine. Now get back to your painting and don’t worry anymore about the smock. And she paints a horse that isn’t as good as the other child’s and then a dog that is white and fluffy and then green trees and then purple ones because she can. At the end of Art Time her smock is prettier than it was when she took it from her bag and she can’t wait to tell Mummy how well she did.

Imagine throwing that out! It hurt Nic’s heart to think of the iciness that hid inside even the warmest-looking people sometimes. Thank god she had found the smock, could make things right. She would frame it. (There was a frame in Lena’s room just waiting for the right thing to fill it, another smaller one on top of the TV cabinet. She would introduce the smock to each, see how it fit, see which brought out its cheerful yellow background and bold globs of paint better.)