‘Ida? Sort of. From when I was very little. She was old-fashioned,’ said Nell. ‘I think she used to give me sweets when she saw me. Or money, sometimes. But I don’t remember talking to her.’ It was a feeling, more than a memory. She’d been a little girl, no more than four or five. A shiny ten pence piece tucked into her hand. ‘When I was a kid, grown-ups – older people, like my gran’s generation – were very separate from children, you know?’

Maude peered closely at the pictures. ‘You look like your gran.’

‘Do I?’ Nell said. ‘A bit, I suppose.’ The same dark hair, something about the chin and mouth.

‘Did she know your mum, too? Gina?’

‘I think so. Maybe. My mum died when I was little. I was six.’ Maude knew this story already, there were photos of Nell’s mum back at home. Her mum and her dad and her grand-mother, all of them gone now.

‘What was she like?’

‘I don’t know. Pretty. Kind.’ Nell had only the vaguest memory of her mother, a house at the top of a steep cobblestone path, a crowded kitchen, the windows steamed over and the smell of vegetables cooking. A young woman with long dark hair taking her by the hand and smiling down at her.

She felt it again, that familiar burst of love, punctuated by the tug of grief, missing the woman she barely remembered, wondering what she’d make of the person Nell had become.

Maude was still staring at the photos. ‘And this is her mum?’

‘You’re very full of questions today.’

Maude pushed the photos back into the envelope. ‘You never talk about her,’ she said, ‘you never talk about here, either.’

‘Yes, well,’ Nell said, ‘it wouldn’t mean much to you, would it? You’d only be bored.’

‘If you say so.’ Maude stood, dropping the photos on the table, heedless of her chair scraping the polished floorboard, ‘I’m going upstairs to read.’

Nell thought about checking in with Chris, maybe even asking if he’d moved the pregnancy test, and what he thought about getting Gina’s granddaughter to babysit at the weekend. Then she realised Maude had taken her bag, her phone, the box, and the shoe upstairs with her too.

Chapter 12

12