Penny pulled an album out at random – one from right in the middle – and sat back in the chair with it. Tucking an errant lock of fair hair behind one of her ears, she opened the book, immediately smiling at what she’d found.

This album was from around the time that Penny was seven or eight years old, which made Elle almost ten. Looking at the carefully displayed photos, she turned the page, and at once had her suspicions confirmed.

‘Eight years old. The year of the Barbie birthday party,’ she smiled, leaning closer to a picture that showed her resplendent in a pink dress, pink patent leather shoes, pink and white striped tights and to top it all off, a crown made of sequins and plastic jewels. Her eight-year-old self proudly displayed what she remembered to be one of her favourite gifts that year – a Barbie Dream House. The pile of plastic was nearly as tall as her. She wondered what had ever happened to it. Most likely lost to the place where all bits and pieces of childhood went when outgrown.

Turning her attention back to the photo, Penny couldn’t help but giggle. While she posed proudly next to the plastic monstrosity, Elle stood next to her looking unimpressed – no doubt disgusted by a birthday party gone way too girly for her more sophisticated ten-year-old standards.

She turned her attention to the next photo in the album. In it, she was sitting in Anna’s lap, obviously exhausted from the day’s festivities, because her eyes were half closed and her mouth gaped open. Not the most attractive picture of her, but interesting just the same.

Indeed, it wasn’t that she was so interested in looking at herself, but rather what the rest of the family were doing. Her mother had one arm curled around Penny, in the other hand she held a glass of what appeared to be white wine. Anna was laughing at something or someone off camera – her smile was wide and open, her eyes bright and she was obviously trying to hold her composure enough not to wake her daughter, or spill her wine. Penny’s heart constricted with sorrow at this wonderful depiction of her mother exactly as she’d been in life: happy and full of fun.

And then there was her father.