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careful in future.’
    Had her own actions helped push Linsey away? This thought had always made her uneasy. The night she was rushed to hospital with asthma, for instance. It was Linsey who bundled her up so decisively and confronted the triage nurse, ensuring that not a moment was wasted.
    Moss remembered waking up in the narrow cot, the nebuliser over her face, to find a dark figure watching over her. It was Linsey, her hand threaded through the bars of the cot and resting lightly on her own.
    ‘Where’s Mummy? Where’s Mummy?’ Moss clawed at the 37 mask, dislodging it.
    Linsey’s voice was soothing. ‘It’s okay, Miranda. I’m here.’
    ‘I want Mummy Amy .’ As Moss’s wail filled the sleeping ward, Linsey tried frantically to calm her.
    ‘Mummy Amy’s just gone to get a coffee. She won’t be long, now. Shh, Miranda. You’ll wake the other children. Look, you’ve started to wheeze again.’ Linsey struggled to replace the nebuliser but Moss continued to wheeze and wail until Amy came hurrying back. Her mothers changed places at her bedside while a nurse dealt with the nebuliser.
    ‘Thank God you’re back, Amy.’ Linsey sounded really frightened. ‘That awful wheeze . . .’
    Why had she acted in that way? Moss now wondered. Small children are said to sometimes favour one parent, then the other, but Moss had always favoured Amy. She had loved Linsey, but always felt she had to measure up, whereas with Amy, she felt she had nothing to prove.
    One way and another, Moss had had a singular upbringing. Until she started school, she hadn’t realised that there was something odd about her family. She knew of at least two other children who didn’t seem to have fathers and it had never occurred to her that there was anything remarkable about having two mothers.
    She was still in first grade when, walking home from school one day, she was confronted by three older boys who shattered her simple view of the world. She was with Zoe and Michelle, her two best friends. They were nice friends, she remembered. It was a nice day and they were talking about—she couldn’t remember what, but it was funny. They were giggling, smothering their giggles behind grubby fingers, doubled over with secret laughter. She did remember that—that and a little cloud, shaped like her granny’s Staffie, Geordie. The three friends crossed the road at the lights and began to skip across the park. They were nearly at the other side when three fourth-grade boys leaped out from the bushes in front of them.
    ‘M’randa’s mother’s a lezzo!’ they chanted. ‘M’randa’s mother’s a lezzo!’
    The little girls moved closer together. Puzzled, Zoe and Michelle looked at each other and then at Moss, who was equally puzzled but on the defensive. The trouble was, she wasn’t sure whether it was Amy or Linsey she had to defend.
    ‘Which mother?’ she challenged.
    The boys feigned paroxysms of laughter, snorting and guffawing, punching each other with delight. ‘Which mother! Did you hear what she said? Which mother!’
    The little girls took the opportunity to flee.
    ‘Lezzos,’ her tormentors called out after her. ‘Lezzos.’
    Moss burst through the door and flung herself at Amy. ‘David Hynes and the other boys said you and Mummy Linsey are lizards,’ she sobbed.
    Twenty-three-year-old Moss slid down into her sleeping bag and remembered Linsey’s distressed indignation and the embrace of Amy’s soft arms as her mothers attempted to explain their relationship to a little girl struggling with matters beyond her comprehension. She had finally found comfort in one certainty. ‘I knew you weren’t lizards,’ she told them firmly. ‘David’s a stupid idiot.’
    Kids like me have it so much easier today , Moss thought. It was so unfair. They were good parents, both of them.
    Yes, she loved them both, but there was a stillness, a placidity, in Amy that made her seem somehow safer. As she matured, Moss became aware that