She asks me to take Daisy to school the next morning. She says she thinks she might be coming down with something. Daisy is perfectly happy for me to walk with her. Unlike her grandmother, and to some extent, her mother, Daisy seems to quite like me. I clip on Hugo’s lead and grab a raincoat from the pegs by the back door, then wait while Daisy zips up her own raincoat and collects her rucksack and her water bottle. The rain is light but wet and Hugo stops a couple of times as we walk to shake out his coat.
“What do you know about your grandfather?” I ask.
“Grandad Allen?”
“Yes. Your mum’s dad.”
“Not a lot. Mum and Grandma never talk about him.”
“Not at all?”
“No. Only in terms of missing having a man about the place. Complaining that the place is a mess. That things need fixing.”
I nod. That has definitely been a recurring theme in my brief experience. “And your uncle? Jasper? Did you know him?”
“No. He disappeared before I was born too.”
“When your mum was pregnant?”
“I think. I’m not sure. It’s like nobody really wanted to meet me.” She laughs drily.
I smile. “Their loss,” I say. She doesn’t say anything, but I can see from the slight softening of her facial features that she appreciates the concept.
“And did you ever meet your great-grandmother?”
“Why are you asking so many questions?”
I shrug. “Because I’m nosy.”
She shrugs too, and sidesteps a big puddle, almost stepping off the curb of the narrow pavement and into the road. I pull her back quickly. “Careful!” I say. “God, can you imagine me going back to your mum and telling her that I let you get run over? Jesus.” I press my hand to my heart and feign fear.
She laughs. “I don’t think she’d mind that much,” she says.
I glance at her. “Don’t be silly. Your mum loves you.”
Daisy sighs. “I know she does. But I think her life would go on just the same without me in it. You know. She’d just carry on.”
I find my breath held as these words make contact with my consciousness. As much as she’s a little odd, I have found myself growing very fond of this child, who is, in my opinion, very easy to love. It hurts me that she feels her mother doesn’t care about her. “Wow,” I say. “That’s quite a big thing to say.”
“It is what it is. She is what she is. I think,” she says thoughtfully, “that Mum had a bit of a weird childhood. That’s all.”
When I get back from dropping Daisy at school, Jessamine has taken herself to bed. I sit on the foot of her bed, next to the steeple in the duvet formed by her bent knees, and I ask her what I can do for her. She asks for mint tea and honey and two Ibuprofen. I slide up the bed and touch her forehead. Her temperature feels normal, she looks fine, but I head downstairs to the kitchen anyway and fetch her the tea and pills.
“Where’s your mum?” I ask as I drop the pills into the upturned palm of her hand.
“She’s gone out.”
“Where?”
“Shopping, I think.”
I nod. “When will she be back?”
“After lunch.”
I smooth her hair away from her brow and tell her that I will leave her to sleep. Then I head downstairs and systematically move through the house looking for something to explain the people who live here.
I find a photo album in one of the heavy dressers in the living room. It’s old and jacketed in a dark, slubbed linen with a metal spiral spine. I sit down and open it up on my lap.
