The road back felt longer than it ever had before and Rob’s house was not the welcoming beacon it usually was. It felt lacking, somehow, now that she had been there.

Penny was facing a problem – namely that once she’d started reading her mother’s diaries, she couldn’t stop. She found herself immediately entranced by this more private side of Anna, one that of course she’d known had existed, but something that had only ever been present within her peripheral vision. Each entry she read provided more insight into a woman that she knew so well – but one that perhaps she hadn’t known completely.

But another thing that Penny was beginning to find fascinating was Anna’s uniquely intimate insight into her father and who Ned was as a person.

February 12, 1987

Getting ready to celebrate Ned’s birthday. Of course, he doesn’t know it. I’m not even sure if he keeps track of his birthdays any more, but I do. This is a milestone birthday though for him. Forty years old. Are we both old enough to be forty? It seems crazy to think that Ned has four decades behind him – as will I shortly – and I hope we have another four decades ahead of us.

The girls are very excited with the party planning – Penny in particular is a little girl who loves a good celebration, no matter what the cause. I do wish that Ned would encourage her a bit more though; he doesn’t seem to realise that she’s not the same as Elle, and somehow is a little bit needier.

I realise, of course, that for him these big occasions always seems like a struggle up until the day, and then he has a good time – even if begrudgingly. And regardless of his gruff exterior, I always feel especially pleased when he comes to me and notes something special or interesting that Elle or Penny did. For instance, just the other day he approached me as Elle was finishing her homework – she was out of earshot and didn’t hear what he had said. He said, ‘What level is she now reading at? A bit ahead of things, isn’t she?’ And I agreed with him and told him that though only eleven she was reading at the level of a fourteen-year-old, that’s what her teacher had told me.

‘And she likes to draw too, doesn’t she?’ he commented. I told him that yes, she loved that perhaps most of all, and joked that maybe we have a future artist on our hands. It’s nice to see how proud he is of her.