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flat and have them taunting her from inside the doorless wardrobe. She didn’t want this any more. She was heading home. And not just for dinner.

Art must take reality by surprise.
(Françoise Sagan)
    â€˜Goodness – I know babies need a lot of kit but . . .’ Sara commented, as Cass made her third trip from her car into the house with bags. What she’d brought was lined up in the hallway, starting with Charlie in his car seat at the bottom of the stairs and stretching back to Cass’s laptop and a pair of black bin bags by the door. These looked suspiciously like laundry, which was no surprise – both girls had left home yet still seemed to think the washing machine was for their casual use – but Sara hoped it wasn’t Paul’s washing as well as Cass’s and Charlie’s. Cass was only twenty-one – she shouldn’t be drudging around for her idle boyfriend. Moreover, Sara’s inner feminist reminded her, what did age have to do with it?
    â€˜There. I think that’s it,’ Cass said, sitting on the bottom stair and reaching down to tweak Charlie’s sock, which was dangling off his foot. ‘Just about everything. You don’t mind do you, Mum?’
    She looked despondent and slightly sheepish, not meeting Sara’s eye. Sara also noted that her hair looked straggly and matted and needed washing, and that the skin around her nails was bitten and flaking. Poor girl, this independent-motherhood bit was taking its toll. She’d been so determined that it would be all right, that she and Paul could manage, pointing out that there were solitary teenagers, years younger than her, coping fine by them-selves in tower-block bedsits. She, on the other hand, was a privileged and relatively affluent student, flat-sharing with her equally privileged and definitely affluent trust-fundx boyfriend. The three of them were, she’d insisted proudly, A Family.
    â€˜I’m not sure. It depends what’s to mind. What’s wrong, Cassie?’ Sara could guess what was coming. It didn’t take a genius to recognize that a stricken-looking daughter unloading all her worldly possessions was going to be on the premises for more than an evening. Was this post-natal depression kicking in late or something else?
    Cass’s eyes filled with tears and she covered her face with her hands. The cuffs of her pink linen sweater were bitten and holed. She hadn’t done cuff-chewing since she was fifteen and was picked on by the school nasty girls who gave her a hard time when Conrad, in a Sunday Times piece on the gardens of contemporary painters, had been photographed naked lying face up on the diving board, surrounded by pots of priapic agapanthus at their most suggestive about-to-flower stage.
    Sara sat on the stairs beside her daughter and put her arm round her. ‘Come on, tell me. It’ll be all right.’
    There was a long intake of breath, then out it all came. ‘I can’t do this! I’m so tired and I thought it would be so easy!’ She shook and sobbed. ‘And why can’t I do it? Other women can!’ Sara winced at the word ‘women’, recognizing, as Cassandra herself had earlier, that this represented one of life’s big moving-on moments. She’d become a grown-up along with becoming a mother. Barely beyond her teens, she seemed years older, right now, than her single, child-free sister of twenty-four.
    â€˜No one can do it all by themselves, Cass. It’s the same for all new mothers.’ Sara knew this wasn’t necessarily the most reassuring thing to say, but she could only go with the truth as she knew it. ‘And you’ve got all your university work too – that’s as much as having a demanding full-time job as well as a baby. What about Paul? Doesn’t he help you?’ Sara felt the inner feminist prodding her again for using the word ‘help’. It made the childcare sound