Meredith chuckled. Cammie awakened every morning in full-monologue mode, and she generally did not cease talking until it was time to go to bed. Meredith said as she toweled herself off, “Have you had your breakfast already, luv?”

“I forgot,” Cammie informed her. Meredith could hear some scuffling and knew her daughter was shuffling her slippered feet on the floor. “But anyways, Gran says they’ve got babies. Baby otters. She says when their mums die or when they get eaten, their babies need someone to look after them properly and they do that at the park. The otter park. What eats an otter, Mummy?”

“Don’t know, Cam.”

“Something has to. Everything eats everything. Or something. Mummy? Mummmeee?”

Meredith shrugged into her dressing gown and pulled the door open. Cammie stood there, the mirror image of Meredith at the very same age. She was too tall for five and, like Meredith, far too thin. It was a real gift, Meredith thought, that Cammie did not resemble her worthless father in the slightest. This was beyond good, since her father had sworn he would never see her should Meredith “be pigheaded and carry on with this pregnancy because, for God’s sake, I’ve a wife, you little fool. And two children. And you bloody well knew that, Meredith.”

“Give us our morning hug, Cam,” Meredith said to her daughter. “Then wait for me in the kitchen. I’ve a cake to bake. D’you want to help?”

“Gran’s making breakfast in the kitchen.”

“I expect there’s room for another two cooks.”

That turned out to be the case. While Meredith’s mother worked at the cooker, turning eggs and overseeing bacon, Meredith herself began the cake. It was simple enough as she used a boxed mix, which her mother tut-tutted as Meredith emptied its contents into a bowl.

“It’s for Jemima,” Meredith told her.

“Bit like taking you know what to Newcastle,” Janet Powell noted.