The sun is still warm as I venture out onto the patio, heading towards the border filled with herbs. I run my fingers through the trailing stems of thyme, rub my fingertips together on a sage leaf before bringing them to my nose, inhaling the fresh, herby fragrance. The white starburst buds of jasmine are partially closed, ready to bloom as the sun goes down and fill the garden with its heady scent. I get on to my knees, not bothered about the dirt and grass that will stain my jeans and start to push through the mass of tangled plants that meld together. I’ve spotted the thyme and sage, and as I part and separate them, I find woody stems of rosemary at the back of the border, the last remnants of dried purple flowers still clinging on desperately. I suppress a smile at the scent of rosemary, as I remember my mother cooking roast lamb on a Sunday, the smell filling the kitchen and creeping up the stairs to where I sat in my bedroom, eventually lured down by the scent, and the banging and crashing coming from the kitchen. I would sit on the kitchen counter as she cooked, a glass of red wine to hand. Sitting back on my haunches I feel a wave of longing for my mum, imagining her in her tiny flat in Paris, cigarette in one hand, the other crumbling a croissant into nothing as she flicks through the paper. It wasn’t all bad growing up with her, and now, at a time when I wish I could see her every day, I feel her absence keenly. We were close when I was young, being just the two of us, but she never really approved of Rav and once Rav and I were married our relationship stretched thinner and thinner as I struggled with her disapproval, until we reached a point of barely speaking at all. She hadn’t been happy about me leaving her behind to go travelling in the first place, and when I came home with Rav in tow I should have known she wouldn’t have been ecstatic about it. It had started the moment I brought him home to meet her – I’d been nervous, especially anxious as I already felt so strongly about Rav. It had been just me and my mum for such a long time, that it was important that she liked him, that she accepted him. But the moment he walked in and I had introduced him to her, hiding my shaking hands behind my back, I could tell by the way she narrowed her eyes that she didn’t like him. Rav, to his credit, battled his way through stilted small talk with her, whispering to me as he kissed me goodbye at the door that he thought he might have frostbite. I had laughed, a soft laugh that died on my lips as I closed the door and turned to see her watching us. It had only got worse. The more serious Rav and I got, the tighter my mother tugged on her maternal cord, until I felt suffocated, breathless with the weight of her neediness. On our wedding day, she had been rude to Avó, and barely spoke to Rav when he greeted her, turning her face away when he bent to kiss her cheek. She had told me at our wedding dinner that she was only concerned that Avó would never accept me, that none of Rav’s family would, that we were from two different worlds, but I knew it was more about the fact that she felt I was leaving her. I had finished my wedding day crying in a crappy Portaloo, eventually coming out to find my mother had left without saying goodbye. After that, I had tried to keep our relationship going, my heart breaking at the way she shut me out, but it was almost as if she were punishing me for marrying Rav. When she wouldn’t visit when Rav was home, refused invitations to birthdays and Christmas, and rarely returned my calls, it made things almost too difficult to bear.