“No idea yet. Anywhere but here.” She dropped her voice to another whisper. “Although Brendan is putting the pressure on for me to be near him and the current replacement in London. I’m torn between moving there to make handover easier, or going as far away as possible to teach him a lesson about...” Bridget’s beautiful head whipped up, tuning in with that amazing superpower children have at knowing a conversation is relevant to them. Jessica stopped talking, and got down on the floor. “Now, honey, the all-important question is, are you going to let us play with you?”

Bridget raised an eyebrow, which I’d never seen a child do before. “Only if you are Olaf,” she bargained. “And your friend is Hans.”

Jessica and I shared a smile.

“I think we can work under those conditions,” she said.

Twenty minutes later, when Jessica’s mum came back, we were all on the floor, hurtling our dolls through the air, following Bridget’s dictatorship.

“No, Fern, he has to go over there. THERE! Behind the sofa.” I let the small child push me into the corner of the room. “And, Mum. Mum! Listen! Olaf is melting. You’re not doing the melting properly.” Jessica had the snowman clutched to her stomach and was doing an overdramatic death scene on the cluttered floor. “Wail, harder. That’s better. Now. I am going to come rescue you. NOT YET. Keep melting!”

It was so surreal, watching Jessica flail on the floor, perfectly attuned to this little madam bossing her around. She was a totally different person to the one I remembered. This softness, this honesty, this openness. Maybe she really had changed? I marveled at how the woman I knew—the one in a constant state of mess, with more mess poured on top of the mess, could be such a grounded parent. The door slammed shut, and her mum’s familiar voice echoed, “Hellooooooo?”

“Grandma’s home.” Jessica got up mid-melt. “Come on, we need to help her with the shopping.”

Her mum arrived on the threshold, cradling two packed Aldi bags, and looking about eighty years old. I almost gasped when I saw her. “They’d run out of chocolate mousses so I had to get caramel yogurt. Oh, Fern, you’re here. Hello!”

“Hi, Ms. Payne.” I scrambled up to make myself useful. “How have you been?”

“Oh, you know. The same.” She had the same battered voice I remembered—where every sentence came out in a withered, defeated sadness.

Jessica took the bags—handing small items to Bridget, who, to my amazement, opened the appropriate cupboards and put things away without complaint.

“It must be lovely having Jessica back after all these years?” I tried.

Her mum huffed. “Yes, well, obviously you’d want it under better circumstances. I did warn Jessica he appeared too good to be true.”