But if these diaries contained what Penny thought they did, it could be quite possible that all of those memories were still alive and well – safe on the pages of these books. The thought immediately comforted Penny but then something else dawned on her.

Was she right to consider violating her mother’s privacy? After all, these were her diaries, her most private thoughts, desires, confessions probably. Was it really right to go ahead and read them?

Penny swallowed hard.

If she read this stuff, there was no going back, no matter what it said. It’s not as if she could ask Anna for clarification on something that she didn’t know about or didn’t want to know about, Penny thought, swallowing a little. Though knowing her mother, she decided that it was unlikely that Anna had any deep, dark, hidden secrets that could potentially change the way that her daughter viewed her. And if she had, then that was a risk that Penny was willing to take.

She opened the first book that came to hand – the most recently dated – and flipped through the pages, finding that the majority of it had not been written in. Finally, she spied some pages that contained Anna’s careful handwriting. The last entry was only last Tuesday morning, and the moment that Penny laid her eyes on it, she felt a chill go up her spine.

The last one – the very last thing that Mum wrote, thought Penny. She swallowed hard as she began to take in the words and then realised that she couldn’t do it. Not just yet at least. It felt too soon. She closed the little book and placed it back in the drawer.

Penny looked closer at the spines of the other, older-dated books, and chose one at random. ‘1981. I would have been three.’

She opened the book, grimacing slightly when the spine cracked and the pages crinkled under her fingers – it had obviously been some time since this diary had been opened and it had grown brittle with age. Flipping through the pages randomly, she stopped on an entry dated ‘July 29, 1981’.

Penny immediately smiled when she saw what the entry was about – it had been one of her earliest memories as a little girl – and one that she was quite fond of.

Happy Wedding Day! Roused the girls from bed this morning with the encouragement of ‘Get up, get up, it’s time to go and see a princess!’