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begins to carve lines into the paper with the Biro Mum hands her. I watch her as she draws two circles—one big, one small—then fills each with two dots for eyes, one for a nose, and then a big grinning smile. Finally, she draws sticks straightout of the circles, representing arms and legs. Two of the arms touch, and Esther scribbles where they join, a small tangled spiral to show they are holding hands.
    “That’s me and you, Mummy,” she says, totally satisfied with her work.
    Mum holds her a little tighter and kisses the top of her head. “The perfect way to start the book,” she says. Greg puts his arm around Mum, and I see her shoulders stiffen, just for a moment, before they relax. She looks at him. “Will you write the date underneath?”
    Greg writes: “Mummy and Me by Esther,” and the date.
    “There.” Mum smiles, and I watch her profile. She looks content for a moment, at ease. “The first ever entry in the memory book.”

saturday, august 13, 2011
our wedding
    This is a tiny piece of the duchess satin my wedding dress was made from. I cut it from the hem, where it will never be missed. I half hope that perhaps one of my girls might like to wear this dress on her own wedding day….
    I had my dress made in scarlet because it seemed more appropriate than white or ivory, and anyway red is my favorite color. It’s not like I was a spring chicken when I married Greg: it was two weeks before I turned forty, although we don’t talk about that. And I certainly wasn’t anywhere close to being virginal. I felt more beautiful on that day than I have ever done—more beautiful and more alive, with every single person present that I have ever loved, or will ever love.
    It was an August wedding, held by the sea at Highcliffe Castle in Dorset. I wanted a big, blinging wedding; I wanted everything to be shiny and covered in glitter, just like my crystal-encrustedshoes. I knew that the six-tier cake, the trays of tiny canapés, the endless glasses of champagne didn’t matter as much as the man I was marrying, who was marrying me and my family against all the odds. But that’s just me; it’s always been me. I wanted the air to be full of the scent of lilies, and the laughter and chatter of my guests; I wanted the sea to sparkle bright blue in the sunlight, and every emerald-green blade of grass to stand proudly to attention under a smiley-faced sun, just like one of Esther’s drawings.
    Caitlin walked me down the aisle, which meant a lot to me because even on our wedding day she still couldn’t quite believe that Greg genuinely did love me. When I first told her I was seeing our sexy young builder, she was appalled. She said, “It’s some kind of scam, Mum. He’s probably trying to rip you off for money. He’s using you for sex, Mum, because he knows you are desperate.” And when, after only almost a year of being with Greg, I told her I was pregnant: “He’ll leave you in the lurch, Mum.” That’s my girl, always says it how it is, never pretends for the sake of it.
    As we walked down the aisle, Caitlin and I held hands like a couple of little girls. She looked stunning, of course, although she was still sulking over the fact that I hadn’t let her wear the little black cocktail dress she’d had her eye on. She was dressed in ivory organza—it floated around her ankles as she walked—and her hair, the dark tumultuous curls she got from her father, fell in soft tresses around her heart-shaped face.
    The ceremony took place in a room with a full-length window of diamond-paned glass that looked out across the ocean, which was just as blue and as sparkly as I wanted it to be. I could see tiny white sails on the horizon, little boats far out at sea, bobbing away completely oblivious to this, the happiest moment in my life. But even so, I felt like those tiny boats, miles andmiles away, were part of my wedding too. And so was the sun, and the stars beyond it, which sounds a bit over the top and a