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and sister. She kind of huddles with them, and she wears a lot of ethnic jewelry and big, buckled belts which intensify the cavewoman thing.
    â€˜You get in too many stress situations and you shout a lot. If I didn’t know you, I wonder if I would like you?’ I feel mean because, cavewoman or not, she suddenly looks like I have thrown a bucket of snot over her. She has almost no wrinkles and a small face with a lot of big hair. She is quite pretty for a mum asold as forty, I think; I can only go by what my friends tell me, and they say she’s quite cool.
    â€˜That’s what you think,’ I always tell them, even though of course I am secretly pleased. ‘She keeps another personality at home – it’s the one with a haggard old face, bad breath and the nastiest temper outside the Mafia.’ My favourite film is
The Godfather
. And it’s true – Mum does have a split personality. I try to concentrate on the part of Mum I like, and I relent a bit.
    â€˜Oh, I probably would like you,’ I offer, ‘but I doubt I would ever meet you if we weren’t mother and son.’ I get myself out of the room before she or one of the mini-brethren begins to cry. What a stupid conversation to have begun with my mum. I sound like one of Coral’s stoned friends.

Angel
    Angel’s alarm clock prods her awake, and her sweat is another skin in the hot night, sheet tangled around her legs. Three o’clock in the morning. She must have miss-set the alarm. Turning over, Nick’s back faces her, she turns again on to her front. Her nightdress and the sheet catch her, and she sits up, wide awake now, mind racing out of the room and away. A comforting yeasty smell, warm in the air, brings her back and she remembers why she is awake now. She has to turn on the breadmaker. Ruby needs bread hedgehogs to take to Brownie Camp tomorrow – today, in fact. It is not even term-time any more, but there are still non-stop child events, opportunities to fail in optimum mothering skills, scattered through the holidays. It was the obvious answer last night to bring the breadmaker into her bedroom. It would work if she turned it on in the night, and the hedgehogs would be ready at breakfast time.
    Angel presses the switch and the machine begins to churn. She lies down again on her side, her back and Nick’s curved away from one another, a channel of cold linen between them. He does not stir, but his breath rasps on the verge of snoring. She feels resentful. He can sleep. He can hop on a plane to New York and call it business, but Angel knows it will be fun. She would like to be going and it is shaming after only one week away from work, to acknowledge this. The company could really benefit from some good strong orders in the US and Angel knows Nick will be very good at generating them; while she is not working and not managing to do the hedgehogs on time.
    Angel wriggles to get comfortable in the bed, insomniac fear beating like a muffled drum in her head. What if the sabbatical does not make her life work better? So far it isn’t showing any signs of improving anything. Angel has set a lot of store by it, unable to look past it at anything else. A mother needs to take stock of life sometimes, and to do that she must be able to give things up. But what will be next? How much of what is important to her must she lose to find herself?
    The rattling of the breadmaker and Nick’s snoring are joined by the first birdsong of the morning as dawn breathes grey light into the room. Angel is chilly now, and wide awake, her resentment increasing with every noise Nick utters in sleep. At least he is going away, so she can have some peace at bedtime. Angel is glad not to have a witness to this thought.
    She gets up, unplugs the breadmaker, and takes it out and down to the kitchen. The table is already laidfor breakfast. Another day. Angel puts the kettle on and sits down at the table. Ruby will be