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rules,’ Joan said sternly, suddenly feeling very unwell. Her vision became blurry again and she massaged her forehead.
    ‘Mummy, what’s wrong?’
    ‘I need to ring your father.’ Reaching for her mobile, Joan fell forward, crashing a plate off of the table as she did so.
    ‘Mummy?’ Skye said again, then screamed loudly. Joan lay face down on the table, lifeless.
    Kent leaped up from his seat, acting far older than his nine young years. ‘It’s OK. Quick – give me Mummy’s phone.’
    As Clark ran to hug his mother, Cissy screamed in her
    high chair. Squidge the dog ran round and around the kitchen table barking furiously.
    Kent remembered what his daddy had shown him to do in
    case of an emergency and swiftly dialled 999.
    ‘Hello. It’s my mum, I think she’s dead and I don’t know where our daddy is.’
    Mo Collins was rounding the corner to post a letter to Charlie, when she saw the ambulance. Grabbing Rosie’s hand, she sped towards her friend’s house. As she got nearer she could hear the children crying outside. On realising it was Joan she shouted out to the ambulance-men: ‘I’m a friend. What’s happened?’
    ‘Not sure yet, love. Looks like she just fainted, but she’s still not right so we’re taking her to Denbury General for a check over.’
    Mo ran to Joan’s side.
    ‘The children,’ Joan said weakly.
    ‘Can’t seem to get hold of her old man on his mobile,’ the other ambulance-man offered.
    ‘Can you look after them?’ Joan managed.
    Mo put her hand on her friend’s forehead to soothe her.
    ‘Of course. And as soon as Colin gets here I’ll send him to you.
    I can stay all night if I have to.’
    ‘Mother?’ Alana’s mouth dropped to the floor as the tall woman barged past her into the kitchen.
    ‘That’s me, creator of you, my one and only child – but goodness knows why, for the torment it’s brought me. The word offspring makes sense now,’ the woman declared, her Scots accent almost incomprehensible with drink.
    ‘You can’t just walk in here after six whole years and start on me. Please go, Mum. I’ve got nothing to say to you.’ Alana went to open the front door.
    ‘I’ve left your stepfather!’ Isobel Murray’s voice grew more strident.
    ‘Why, this time?’ Alana was used to her mother’s transient affairs of the heart.
    ‘He was having an affair with his secretary – been going on for years evidently. Makes a mockery of not only me but the whole bloody Bible if you ask me.’ She plonked herself down at the kitchen table. ‘And I’m drunk, Alana. Drunk as a fucking skunk.’
    Alana screwed her face up, finding everything almost impossible to take in. Her hangover was kicking in from lunchtime and this was the last thing she needed. Since her father had died when she was just eleven, there had never been any love lost between herself and any of her mother’s unsuitable suitors. Eric, whom she had only known for a year before her mother turned her back on her, was no exception.
    Isobel Murray suddenly put her head down sideways on the kitchen table and began to sob uncontrollably. Alana handed her a tissue and filled the kettle. She had never once seen her mother cry and it unnerved her rather than upset her.
    ‘It’s OK, Mother, there’ll be plenty more idiots lining up to whisk you off your pretty feet, I can assure you.’
    ‘Oh, the humiliation!’ Isobel lifted her head dramatically. ‘Where did I go wrong?’
    Alana thought she could fill a book the size of the New Testament in answering that one but she kept her mouth shut and put three heaped teaspoons of coffee into a mug.
    ‘Here, drink this, you’ll feel better in the morning.’
    Isobel Murray sat up and blew her nose loudly. ‘Thank you, Lani.’ She looked at her daughter intently for a minute and then at a photo of Eliska in a wooden frame on a shelf.
    ‘That’s my granddaughter, I take it?’ Pausing, she clumsily got up to stroke the glass. ‘She’s beautiful.’ All