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Linsey was all angles and energy, and she saw how Amy’s slow, slovenly beauty drove her partner to a distraction of love and fury. In many ways Moss was like Linsey, but despite that, or because of it, the child gravitated to Amy. As a consequence, she too experienced Linsey’s sharpness and often felt she had fallen short. In her childish way, Moss tried to please, tidying her bedroom, for instance, only for Linsey to cluck over the books she’d pushed under the bed, or flick at the dust she’d failed to see on the dressing-table.
    ‘Miranda, is it too much to ask that you put a little effort into your room? Go back and do it properly.’
    And if Amy didn’t come to her rescue, Moss would sulkily comply.
    She tried hard at school, but soon discovered that she wasn’t the prodigy Linsey believed she ought to be. Despite her best efforts, the As were elusive and Cs more common than Bs. With the exception of music, at which she excelled, Miranda tries hard was the best she could hope for on her school reports.
    Linsey was neither cruel nor ignorant. She knew that a child who is trying and only achieving Bs and Cs is worthy of praise, possibly even more so than the gifted A student. But Moss always ran first to Amy with her report and sheltered there from the frown of disappointment she sensed rather than saw as Linsey scanned her meagre achievements. It mattered little that this was always followed by: Good girl. Maybe better next time. Moss didn’t want to be a good girl. She wanted to be a smart girl. A clever girl. A girl of whom Mummy Linsey could be proud.
    ‘To think your father was a mathematician,’ Linsey once said, shaking her head over the results of a maths test. Moss was instantly alert.
    ‘Linsey . . .’ Amy’s voice was laden with warning.
    Moss had filed that snippet away. It was all she knew of her father, and she never dared to ask for more until much later.
    The last of the rain spattered like gravel on her father’s tin roof, and Moss became aware of the stirring of a new day. A cock crowed in the distance and the window shape emerged, a faint luminosity on the opposite wall. She thought of the morning when Linsey (she was just Linsey, by then; the ‘mother’ tag had stuck only to Amy) had come into her room to say goodbye. The noises then were city noises, but the dawn window glow was the same.
    She had heard the door open and saw Linsey’s dark shape materialise beside her bed. Amy, a much larger woman, always moved on cat-feet, but Linsey, who barely cast a shadow, was inclined to stomp and crash about in her nervous haste. That morning, though, she was like a wraith. Moss felt a hand linger on her cheek and smelled the familiar musky hand cream. A kiss like a breath, a whispered I love you , and she was gone.
    Moss saw her young self lying still, hands clenched, averting her eyes from the void she now sensed in the house. Linsey had always been there for her. There was a strength in her mother Linsey that made Moss feel safe. Linsey had always discussed things seriously with her, showing her the kind of respect one would show to an equal. Moss didn’t appreciate this approach as a child, but with adolescence she began to value it more. Now Linsey was gone. Bereft, Moss continued to lie stiffly in her bed until she heard Amy pad down the hall. Jumping out of bed and flinging herself at the pyjama-clad figure, she cried out in real fear: ‘Mum! Mum! Don’t you go too!’
    Amy gathered her in. ‘Of course I won’t go. You know that. Linsey will come back to see you. You can visit her like we said. She’s your mum too, remember. Don’t cry, sweetheart. I’m here.’ She smoothed the tangled brown hair. ‘We talked about it, Miranda—you said you understood.’
    They had talked about it, but Moss hadn’t wanted to listen. For a long time she had tried to ignore the obvious fact that her two mothers were growing apart. Now she couldn’t ignore it any more. On the contrary, she