‘Is it really? When can I expect it?’ the editor asked, giving Saskia a craven look.

‘Soon.’

She was just about out the door when he said, ‘A caregiver has called for you several times. Something to do with your mother.’ He hesitated before continuing, ‘Something to do with Christmas. Apparently your mother was expecting you. Has been agitated ever since.’

Saskia stopped cold. Her mother had no business interfering with her life. And what right did the caregiver have to divulge so much to someone she had never met?

‘Do you want me to come with?’ the editor offered.

‘Why on God’s green earth would you want to do that?’ Saskia asked as she turned to him. As soon as she saw the expression on his face, she realised she had hurt him. Men … The problem with them was that once you had slept with them a few times, they thought they needed to start doing nice things for you. ‘My mother has always been untrustworthy … prone to dramatics … an attention-seeker,’ she explained as she headed out of his office.

Saskia arrived at the cottage on Ninth Avenue that her mother had lived in ever since she and her husband had separated but not divorced. It had all been too little too late, Saskia determined as she opened the squeaky gate. The cottage looked as if it had been torn out of a children’s book of fairy tales. It had a verdant and overgrown garden with effusions of rose bushes and flower beds everywhere, and there were climbers and ivy plants creeping up the walls, almost choking the cottage – someone’s green thumb obviously knew no bounds. Saskia walked up the crooked stone path that led to her mother’s front door and used her key to let herself in.

She found her mother sitting by the window and painting a sunset. Her mother looked so peaceful and everything around her was so tranquil that Saskia knew immediately that she should not have come. It was yet another false alarm.

‘This is what you called me for?’ Saskia asked the caregiver standing beside her. ‘You called me here so that I could watch my mother be happy?’

‘She was really bad a few hours ago. Very agitated … kept calling your name,’ the caregiver defended herself.

‘I’m a very busy woman. I don’t have time—’

‘Sassie? Is that you, dear?’ her mother said, turning away from the sunset to give her a look filled with hope. Her flowing, snow-white hair and black dress with a cape made her seem as though she were at once both benifecence and maleficence when all she really was was a mother.

Saskia took a deep breath. The caregiver escaped the room and closed the door behind her.

‘Yes, Mother. It’s me.’

‘Come here, dear,’ her mother said, motioning with her hand. ‘Come see the beautiful bounce in the sky.’