Small things.

It’s not like I’ve forgotten how quickly everything can turn to shit, because we know what we know, Lou and me. It’s just now I get that taking care of another human isn’t a one-girl job. It’s Team Lou all the way these days.

George has finally given up on me and fallen head over heels for Lou, and they’re so bloody sweet with each other sometimes it nearly breaks me. I never thought I’d be happy to share my mother with anyone, but I make an exception for Georgie.

Dom – well, Dom’s hands down the nicest person I’ve ever met, no offence to everyone else on the planet. The guy’s a freak of nature, and the fact that somehow he managed to find me a two-pack of those discontinued Costanza socks was the proof I never needed. Lou agrees, and she reckons that a half-hour chat with Dom is better than a hundred billable hours with any therapist on the planet. In my professional opinion, she’s got that right.

And Danny. I honestly don’t even know where to start with my Uncle Danny. About who he is. How I feel. What he means to me. Lou loves him – quite madly, she says – and I can see why. So maybe that’ll do.

I saw them together one night, sitting on the floor surrounded by piles of neatly folded sheets and towels, old make-up, jewellery, CDs, school exercise books and piles of yellow envelopes full of photographs. My grandmother’s stuff. The leftovers of a life crammed into a couple of boxes that Lou thought were lost, but Danny’s been carting them around for years. And that’s another story right there.

I stood behind the door for a while and watched them, giggling like a couple of pixies. They were taking turns holding up photos and saying things like, where was this one taken? And do you remember when she? And how about this one? And God, weren’t those shoes fabulous? Every now and again, Lou would stop what she was saying and stare at Danny for a couple of seconds like she couldn’t believe he was there. Or that she was. They looked so happy, so comfortable, like two peas in a pod. It makes me wonder how the hell they made it on their own for so long.

When I catch my mother in moments like that, I can see how far she’s come. I don’t see that broken woman who spent imaginary summer holidays on the sofa with the curtains closed; the woman whose greatest achievement for the day sometimes was getting her foot through the leg of her trousers. Now I see a woman who’s strong and safe and totally here. A woman who’s still standing, even after everything that happened, everything that didn’t happen, and everything that’s going to happen. I see Lou Mulberry. Mi madre magnífica.

I go back sometimes to that place down on the canal, underneath Blow-Up Bridge, where a bloke called Billy Ben-Hur pissed his actual life up against a wall. If I sit on the ground behind one of the pylons, I’m out of sight of the odd jogger that passes by and it feels like I’m totally on my own. I practise my Spanish vocab out loud (Llévame al río!), or Google Earth the backstreets of Kyoto on my phone and imagine finding a shop filled with teeny tiny ornaments, where I’d buy a little golden cat to give to Larry and Meiko with the wish for a thousand lifetimes of happiness.