Fern knew it was usually her who would be blunt, but she was gladGinny had been the one to ask the question she wouldn’t mind knowing the answer to as well.
When Daisy stayed quiet Fern prompted her. ‘Was it a result of the tumultuous teenage years – which, by the way, I’m constantly on standby for with my boys?’
‘Good luck with that,’ Ginny grinned.
Daisy took the question in her stride, staying beside her sisters and not storming away and thinking theywere trying to make her feel worse again. ‘It was a little bit more than that,’ she offered, but then quickly stopped as though she’d already said too much. ‘I’ll tell you about it sometime, but not tonight, yeah?’
‘Whenever you’re ready,’ Fern forced herself to say when all she really wanted was for Daisy to tell them everything right now.
‘Thank you.’ Daisy looked to Ginny. ‘I wish I hadn’tbeen so messed up that you couldn’t talk to either of us about Dad and how upset you were at having not been with him when he died.’
‘He knew you loved him, Ginny,’ Fern assured her. Their dad had been in hospital following the heart attack, survived almost thirty-six hours, long enough for Loretta, Fern and Daisy to say their goodbyes, but not long enough for Ginny to get home to England anddo the same. ‘I saw him in the hospital, but it wasn’t the man I want to remember. It wasn’t Dad, it was a shell of him, a version, but not the one who laughed with us, who made that quilt with us and held our hands and told us off, not the man who was proud of each and every one of his daughters.’
Fern looked at Daisy then. ‘The quiltwasspecial, nobody can deny that. But while we are all guttedthat it’s gone, it was never as special as the memories we have. Nobody can take those away from us.’
They sat in quiet contemplation, in a row on the sofa, hands linked together, until Ginny blurted out, ‘Personally I think I need a mulled wine now.’
‘Daisy?’ asked Fern, before remembering her sister hadn’t wanted any when she offered earlier. ‘You still haven’t told us where you’re off tolater.’
Daisy grinned as though she really was up to mischief. ‘I tell you what …’ The look on her face reminded Fern of when Daisy was a little girl, ten years her junior, with all the innocence of childhood and the sense of adventure. ‘If you get your pink sewing machine out of the loft, Ginny, and set it up ready to use it to piece together Grandad’s quilt, I’ll tell you where I’ve been sneakingoff to.’
‘Where are you going?’ Ginny asked when Fern leaped up first.
‘To the loft to get the machine! No way are we missing out on some gossip!’
And just like that there was a sense of being equals, sisters, with roles that had ever so subtly evolved over time.
