Rosie’s cheeks were stuffed full of a whole slice of cake when she spoke. A hornbeam hedge leaf stuck out of the top of her head and little bits of pink-and-yellow sponge darted from her mouth. The sight of her made Mira want to laugh out loud but the girl looked sincere, and so Mira turned back to her green plant pots and pushed the sweet-pea seeds into the soft soil as she listened.

‘I just wanted to tell you it’s all fine now.’

‘That sounds lovely, Rosie Rabbit. I’m so glad for you,’ Mira nodded, knowing that she would not have snuck through the hedge to see her if everything had been fine. Mira placed a steaming cup of hot chocolate in front of Rosie.

‘Mummy and Grandma Helen both picked me up from school and Mummy gave me a set of neon pens that I always wanted.’

‘Where does your mummy think you are now?’

‘Making dens.’

‘She won’t check?’

‘I told her that grown-ups aren’t allowed past the gazebo.’

‘And Noah?’

‘That’s easy. I paid him five pounds to stay away from me.’

‘Very resourceful,’ Mira grinned.

‘Guess what?’

‘What?’

‘Grandma Helen is living with us! It’s so cool.’

‘How long is she going to live there, petal?’

‘Not sure.’

Mira remembered that bird-like woman and felt cross. The plastic green pot cracked in her hand. The two slits of the split pinched her skin. She sucked her palm and glanced over her shoulder at Rosie, whose confident smile had dropped off her face momentarily.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Now, now, chin up. No need to look like the cat’s just died. How about you help me plant some of these, eh?’

They stood side-by-side as Mira showed Rosie how to fill the pots and press the seeds deep into the cool, damp soil. They worked silently. Rosie was the first to speak up.

‘This lady with weird stick-out teeth came round to our house.’

‘It’s what’s on the inside that counts.’

‘But I don’t know what’s in her insides?’

Mira chuckled. ‘Who was she?’

‘She was a social worker.’

Mira knocked over three potted plants with her elbow as she turned to Rosie. ‘Did she ask you lots of horrible questions?’

Rosie stared at the spilt soil. ‘Not lots.’

‘Tell me one.’

‘She asked me what my favourite subject was and I told her it was maths.’

‘Maths?’

‘It’s not really my favourite.’

‘Oh?’

‘I like art and forest school best.’

‘So why did you say maths, you big banana?’

Rosie giggled. ‘Because she was being nosey.’

‘She’s just doing her job, pet.’

They fell silent as they continued their potting. And then Rosie spoke up again.

‘You know how your mummy slapped you?’

‘Yes, petal.’

‘Were you telling the truth?’

Mira felt her blood run cold with fury. Rosie’s hot chocolate was on the edge of the workbench. Mira nudged it and the hot liquid cascaded down Rosie’s blue duffel coat and onto her red wellingtons.

Rosie squealed. ‘Hot, hot, hot!’ she cried, hopping up and down and shaking out one wellington.

‘Dear me, how careless of me, eh?’

Mira bent down and brushed Rosie’s coat with a cloth, and Rosie lost her balance slightly. Mira stopped being so rough, remembering how little Rosie was, and how vulnerable. Softening, she looked at her, and buttoned up one of the toggles. ‘Never mind, my little Rosie Rabbit,’ she said gently. ‘D’you think your mummy’ll notice your dirty coat?’

‘I don’t care if she does. She’ll just blame me for it. She blames me for everything.’

‘Has she been blaming you for everything that’s happened recently?’

‘Not really but only because Granny Helen is here.’

Mira nodded gravely. ‘Off you pop then. Better not be gone too long.’

‘I don’t want to go home.’

‘Take a couple of pots of these and say your school gave them to you.’

‘Thanks,’ she sulked, like they were poor consolation.

‘And why don’t you send me a note in the blue bucket to tell me how you’re getting along?’

Her face lit up. ‘That’s a good idea!’ Then she balanced the pots into the crook of her arm, freeing a hand. ‘Can I take two more pieces of cake so I can give Noah one?’

‘Of course,’ Mira said, slicing two pieces and wrapping it in a napkin. ‘Next time you come, you can have two cups of hot chocolate to make up for it and we’ll check on our little seedlings, okay?’

‘Bye,’ Rosie said, hugging Mira goodbye as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Mira’s heart shattered into a thousand pieces.

‘Bye, petal,’ she called back, her voice breaking a little.

Mira clutched the side to stay upright as Rosie scampered out, her pockets stuffed full.

How Mira had hungered for her own child’s arms to hold her as Rosie’s had, to share secrets together, to heal their troubles, to fight, to make up, to feel their little rosebud lips on her cheek, to see their shiny eyes light up when they spoke of happy things, to inhale that edible, intoxicating smell of newness and innocence, sugar and mud.

Rosie’s departure left Mira with a grotesque yearning in her chest.

Abandoning her sweet peas, she hurried back into the house and straight into the dining room.

Her fingers worked through the photographs as nimbly as a tea picker’s: happy photographs into happy piles, sad photographs stuffed into brown envelopes.

The album would be filled with a dreamy past, the rewriting of her history; it would tell stories of cordiality and smiles and contentment. All the dismal memories had to be expunged, replaced by the bigger picture of childhood bliss. It was better to see the good rather than dwell on the bad.

She heard the front door bang. Barry was home.

‘Hi, love! I’m in here!’ she called out.

Barry came in to see her.

‘Shall I run your bath for you, love?’

‘Thanks, I won’t be a minute.’

‘When d’you think you’ll finish it?’ Barry said, leaning into the doorway, watching her adept plucking and sifting.

‘Really soon now,’ Mira said. She would not be able to explain to Barry how or why she had found her way with it finally. She had been too busy trying to remember the past, to seek the truth, when what she really needed to do was to forget.

Then her fingers made contact with a photograph she had long forgotten about.

Bang. BANG. The door to her teenage bedroom had been shoved open. Click. The doorway flashed, and flashed again. Mira had pulled her dressing gown from the floor, to cover at least her belly, if not her bra and pants. It was too late. Deidre had got what she wanted.

‘Those stretch marks are so gross,’ Deidre had jeered. ‘It’s like you’ve got a giant alien baby scratching at your insides.’ The camera flashed again, leaving globs of red and green swimming before Mira’s eyes. Violated. Resigned. She had dressed for school, knowing she would have more to contend with there.

Her school friends had reacted to her pregnancy with the predictable mix of quiet, suspicious awe and nasty snickering. She had not been popular before her pregnancy; now the mean girls had a tangible reason to dislike her. There was one girl who had been friendly. But she smelt of urine and Mira didn’t like her. Mira didn’t need friends. She had her baby. When she was in break time or bored in lessons, she spoke to it, quietly. They had a bond only she could understand. She remembers thinking that the rest of the girls in her class were immature, and she told them so often enough to keep them away.

Mira pressed the photograph to her chest, where her heart thumped through to her fingertips.

She felt Barry’s presence behind her.

‘What’s that one?’ he said, peering over her shoulder.

‘Nothing.’

‘Come on, let’s see it, hand it over, is it an embarrassing one?’ he teased.

Mira scowled. ‘Stop it.’

Not getting the hint, he tugged at the corner of the photograph. ‘I bet you look drop dead gorgeous.’

It was unlikely he would identify the teenager with long, pretty hair and a pregnant belly, but she couldn’t risk it.

‘If you dare touch me again, I’ll scream until I’m sick.’

Barry reeled back, and Mira was also aghast by her reaction, mortified by its childishness.

‘I’ll call down when the bath’s run. I’ve booked the March Hare for seven.’ The quietness of his delivery spoke volumes about how wounded he was.

The door clicked closed. She was not in the mood for their Friday-night date at the pub to celebrate their twentieth-fifth wedding anniversary. A pint and a pie were what Barry had wanted to mark the occasion. All she wanted was to immerse herself in the album until she had finished ridding it of all unhappiness.

As she sat opposite Barry on the small round table by the roaring fire, they avoided mentioning their fight. He was a little withdrawn, but the traditions of their anniversary played out like clockwork. She sipped fizzy wine. He supped a pint. They ate chicken pie and chips and reminisced about their small registry-office wedding on the edge of town, followed by a jolly knees-up at a pub similar to the one they sat in now.

While she smiled and pretended to be taken back to the charming moments of their wedding day twenty-five years ago, all she could remember was her guilt. How fraudulent she had been in that ivory suit, how sick she had felt when she promised to be true to him in her vows, how much she had been shamed by Jesus Christ’s face looking down on her from his cross. She had not been true to Barry. She had married him on false pretences and she had prayed to God the Almighty to forgive her for wanting to hide her sins from the man she loved. She hoped that this new start, this handsome marriage, could help her to move on from her failures, from her shabby past, from the unendurable agony of letting her firstborn go.

The memory of her baby had to be lost and forgotten about; undisclosed, therefore unreal.

‘Here’s to the next twenty-five,’ she said, holding up her flute.

Twenty-five years of marriage had not been long enough to forget. She was still a fraud. Time had not been a healer. But that was her cross to bear. The guilt, the secret, the white lies were part of her life, just as breathing was. Barry was the only good thing to have ever happened to her and she had been willing to make personal moral sacrifices to keep him.

He clinked her glass and pushed his spectacles – whose lenses had darkened in the bright pub – up his nose. ‘Blimey, in twenty-five years, we’ll be seventy-five.’

‘Can always rely on you for a cheery thought.’

‘You don’t think we’ll get lonely in our old age, do you?’

‘As long as I go first, I’ll be fine,’ she grinned.

‘I’ll bump you off then before I’m about to croak.’

‘Good plan. There’s nobody else who’ll miss me.’

They looked deep into each other’s eyes for one long-held moment, acknowledging their bond.

‘It’s a shame we’re not closer to your Deidre’s Harry. Being around the young ’uns keeps us young, so they say, or not as sad about getting older, I wouldn’t wonder.’

‘Goodness gracious, I’m grateful we’re not closer to Harry. He’s the kind of child who puts you off children.’

But Mira knew what he meant. He was referring to their own childlessness. He would always test her on their anniversary, just to check that nothing had changed.

When Barry shared his Eeyore-morose fears or philosophies on life, Mira enjoyed the power she held to snap him out of it.

‘I don’t regret a thing about us, Barry,’ she said, putting both her feet on top of his boots as though she was a child about to dance on his feet.

‘I know. Me neither,’ he said, beaming. ‘We’re a good team, just the two of us.’

Last year, and on the many years before it, this similar conversation had left Mira feeling warm and comfortable. She had never wanted another child, and had been thankful that Barry had been unwavering on the subject. Their agreeable match had given her all the nurturing and fulfilment she needed. This year, however, her mind darted straight to Rosie. Her sweet, new little confidante, who made her feel like singing and dancing when she was with her, and ever so young again.

She couldn’t wait for the morning to check for the blue bucket. She hoped that the little accident with the hot chocolate hadn’t scared her away.