This is one of my favorite photos. It is lucky I stole it from my parents' album before our house burnt down in 2009. Mum is so pretty here. She is even lovelier now.


Again. See, it's good to be sneaky sometimes:

Everything had been going a bit too well that summer. Tess had stopped disappearing during tea time. She sat, pink-skinned and smiling, opposite us as we served up pasta and bread. The hens in the garden clucked and fluffed their feathers in the dust.