She takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. ‘I guess so. Maybe. But I sometimes think it’s better that what’s in the past stays in the past. Don’t you?’

I imagine she’s talking about our row over the pills. Wanting to put it in the past. So I squeeze her hand and say, ‘Mostly yes. But that’s for him to worry about, not you. You should rest. And maybe,’ I stroke her breast gently, ‘we’ll have a go at making babies later. But only if you want to.’

She nods and smiles weakly. ‘Yeah. Let’s do that.’

36

BEFORE

To start with, it was all OK. Mama had made me a nice room in the new flat – not quite as nice as my room at Rhonda’s, but way nicer than the room we’d shared in the old flat which I still remembered a bit. It was tidy at home; there weren’t dirty dishes in the sink the whole time and there was always milk in the fridge. Mama wasn’t as good at cooking as Rhonda, but she told me she had had some cooking and ‘parenting’ lessons when she had been in the hospital where I used to visit her and now she was better at cooking than she used to be and she said she was also a lot better at parenting. I didn’t understand that – surely you either were a parent or you weren’t, but that’s what Mama said. Things had changed – I still had Weetabix every morning for breakfast, because I liked it and Mama said it was good for me, but sometimes she would also cut up a banana for me to have with it, and I never had Weetabix for other meals any more. My clothes smelt cleaner and they weren’t too small. Mama always got up in the morning and she always slept in her bed. The milk in the fridge smelt like it should do and the yoghurts didn’t go fizzy.