It was snowing. Fat, fluffy flakes, as large as cotton balls, tumbled from the sky, while dawn struggled valiantly to herald the day through the canopy of dense cloud. Marigold stood by the kitchen window with her cup of tea. A stout figure in a baby-pink dressing gown and matching fluffy slippers, she watched with delight as the landscape was slowly revealed to her in all its glorious softness. Little by little the garden emerged out of the night: the yew hedge, the borders and the shrubs, the trees with their gnarled and twisted branches, all hunched and still, sleeping deeply beneath a luxurious quilt. It was hard to imagine life there in the frozen soil. Almost impossible to picture the viburnum and syringa flowering in the spring. Impossible to think of spring at all in this dead of winter.
At the bottom of the garden, beside her husband Dennis’s shed, the apple tree was materializing through the falling snow. With its thick trunk and knobbly branches it resembled a mythical creature caught in suspended animation by an ancient spell, or simply petrified by the cold, for it really was very cold. Marigold’s eyes caught sight of the feeder hanging forlornly from one of the branches. It was still attracting the odd intrepid bird which fluttered around it in the hope of finding an overlooked seed. Marigold had filled it the day before but now it was empty. Her heart went out to the hungry birds who survived the winter on account of her feeder. As soon as she’d finished her tea, she would put on her boots and go out to refill it.
She sensed she was being watched and turned to see Dennis standing in the doorway, gazing at her with a tender look. He was dressed for church in a dark blue suit and tie, his grey hair parted at the side and brushed smooth, his beard clipped. He was handsome to Marigold, who still saw him through the eyes of the twenty-year-old girl she had been when they’d met over forty years before. She lifted her chin and smiled back at him playfully. ‘What are you looking at?’ she asked.
‘You,’ he replied, denim eyes twinkling.
She shook her head and turned her attention back to the garden. ‘It’s snowing,’ she said.
He joined her at the window and they both stared out with equal pleasure. ‘Beautiful,’ he sighed. ‘Really beautiful.’ He put his arm around her waist, drawing her close, and planted a kiss on her temple. ‘You remember the first time I held your hand, Goldie? It was snowing then, wasn’t it?’
Marigold laughed. ‘You remind me of that every time it snows, Dennis.’
His smile was bashful. ‘I like to remember it. A beautiful woman, a beautiful night, falling snow and her hand in mine. It was warm, your hand. You didn’t take it away. I knew I was in with a chance then. You let me hold it. That was a big deal in those days.’
‘What an old romantic you are!’ She tilted her head, knowing he would kiss her again.
‘You love your old romantic,’ he whispered into her hair.
‘I do,’ she replied. ‘You’re a rare breed. They don’t make them like you anymore.’ She patted his chest. ‘Now go and sit down and I’ll bring over your tea.’
‘They don’t make them like you anymore, either,’ said Dennis, moving towards the kitchen table where Mac the black-and-white cat sat awaiting him on his chair. ‘I knew I’d caught someone special when I held your hand.’
Their daughter Suze shuffled sleepily into the room in floral pyjamas, a long grey cardigan and bed socks. Her blonde hair was unbrushed and falling over her eyes in a thick fringe, her attention on her smartphone. ‘Morning, sweetheart,’ said Marigold cheerfully. ‘Have you seen the snow?’
Suze did not look up. She had seen the snow. What of it? She sat down in her usual chair beside her father and mumbled a barely audible ‘Good morning’. Dennis caught Marigold’s eye and a silent communication passed between them. Marigold took down two mugs. She’d make Dennis his tea and Suze her coffee, just as she did every morning. She enjoyed the routine. It made her feel needed and Marigold loved feeling needed. Then she remembered they were no longer just three and took down another mug.
‘Oh dear, have you seen outside? Snow! The whole country will grind to a standstill,’ said Nan gloomily, wandering into the kitchen. Marigold’s mother searched hard for the negative in everything and was only truly happy when she found it. ‘Do you remember the winter of ’63?’ She sucked air through her lips. ‘We were stuck indoors for a week! Your dad had to dig us out with a spade. It did his back in, that did. He came out of the war without a scratch but did his back in digging us out with a spade.’ She pulled her dressing gown tighter across her body and shivered. ‘I’ll never forget the cold. Oooh, it was Siberian.’
‘Have you ever been to Siberia, Nan?’ asked Suze in a disinterested tone, without taking her eyes off her phone.
Her grandmother ignored her. ‘We didn’t have the luxury of central heating like you do, Suze,’ she said. ‘It was bitter. There was ice on the inside of the windows and we had to run across the garden to use the toilet. We didn’t have an indoor toilet back then. You don’t know how lucky you are, you people.’
Marigold glanced out of the window. The sight of snow had lifted her spirits. The country might grind to a standstill, she thought happily, but it would look like a winter wonderland.
‘Lovely,’ said Nan as a cup of tea was duly placed in front of her. At eighty-six her curly hair had turned white, her body was frail and her face as creased as crêpe paper, but her mind was as sharp and focused as it always had been. The years had taken much, but they had not taken that. Marigold gave Nan the crossword from the newspaper, then went to the sideboard to put two slices of bread in the toaster. Nan had moved in with Marigold and Dennis only the week before after months of gentle persuasion and encouragement. She had been reluctant to leave the home she had lived in throughout her marriage and where she had raised her two children, Patrick and Marigold, even though she was only moving a few minutes up the road. She had insisted that she was perfectly capable of looking after herself and complained that she felt as if she was being shuffled into Heaven’s waiting room when she wasn’t in the least ready to go. However, in spite of her grumbling, she had sold the house for a tidy sum and moved in with her daughter, making herself comfortable in her new room. She had demanded that Dennis replace the pictures on the wall with her own and Dennis had obliged in his good-natured way while Marigold had helped unpack her things and arrange them to her satisfaction. In fact, mother and daughter had rapidly slipped into an easy routine. Nan discovered that she rather enjoyed having someone at her beck and call after all and Marigold relished having another person to look after, because she enjoyed being useful. She ran the village shop and the post office, as she had done for over thirty years. She also sat on various committees, for the village hall and the local church and the odd charity, because she liked to keep busy. At sixty-six Marigold had no intention of slowing down. Having Nan at home gave her a warm feeling of being needed.
‘Well, I adore snow,’ she said, cracking eggs into a pan.
Nan studied the crossword through her spectacles. ‘The whole country will grind to a standstill, mark my words,’ she repeated, shaking her head. ‘I remember the winter of ’63. Livestock died, people froze to death, nothing worked. It was death and destruction everywhere.’
‘Well, I remember the winter of 2010 and we all managed,’ said Suze, still gazing into her phone.
‘What are you doing on that thing anyway?’ asked Nan, peering at it from across the table. ‘You haven’t taken your eyes off it all morning.’
‘It’s my job,’ Suze mumbled, raking the fringe off her face with a manicured hand.
‘She’s an “influencer”,’ Marigold interrupted, giving Suze a nod, although Suze didn’t see it. Nor did she see the proud though slightly baffled look on her mother’s face.
‘What’s an “influencer”?’ Nan asked.
‘It means everyone wants to be me,’ Suze informed her dully and without irony.
‘She writes about fashion and food and, well, lifestyle, don’t you, love?’ Marigold added. ‘A bit of everything and she posts it all on her Instagram account. You should see it, the photographs are lovely.’
‘Do you make any money doing a bit of everything?’ Nan asked, sounding unconvinced that being an ‘influencer’ was a worthwhile form of employment.
‘She’s going to make lots.’ Dennis answered for his daughter because making money was a sore subject. Suze had turned twenty-five in the summer, but had no plans to move out and get a place of her own, or get what they considered a ‘proper’ job. Why would she want to leave home when her mother made it so comfortable, when her parents paid for everything? The little she earned as a freelance journalist went on clothes and make-up, fuelling her social media platforms, but neither parent was prepared to confront her about it. Suze had a temper, aggravated by a deep frustration at the slow progress of her ambitions. While her older sister Daisy had gone to university and now lived a sophisticated life in Milan with her Italian boyfriend, spending weekends in Paris and Rome and working in a world-famous museum, she was stuck in the small village where she had grown up, living at home and dreaming of fame and fortune that never materialized.
‘I make money writing for newspapers and magazines, things like that. I’m building a profile, gathering a following. It takes time.’ Suze sighed, lamenting the fact that old people didn’t understand social media.
‘You modern people!’ said Dennis with a grin, hoping to appease his daughter. ‘Baffles us oldies.’
‘I’ve got nearly thirty thousand followers on Instagram,’ she said, brightening a little.
‘Have you, dear?’ said Marigold, not knowing quite what that meant but assuming it was a lot. Suze had set her mother up with an Instagram account so that she could keep in touch with her daughters. And it did keep her in touch, although she didn’t post things herself. She didn’t much like the mobile telephone. She’d rather talk to someone’s face.
Dennis opened the newspaper and sipped his tea. Marigold was making him his Sunday Special: two fried eggs, crispy bacon, a sausage, a piece of wholemeal toast and a spoonful of baked beans, just the way he liked it. As she put it in front of him he smiled up at her, his eyes sparkling with affection. Dennis and Marigold still looked at each other in that gentle, tender way that people do whose love has grown deeper with the years.
‘Suze, do you fancy anything?’ Marigold asked. Suze didn’t answer. The curtain of blonde hair formed an impenetrable barrier. ‘I’ll go and feed my birds then,’ she said.
‘They’re not your birds, Mum,’ said Suze from behind her hair. ‘Why do you always call them your birds? They’re just birds.’
‘Because she feeds them, just like she feeds you,’ said Dennis, chewing on the sausage, and the rest of the sentence and while she feeds you and looks after you, you can show her some gratitude and kindness was left unspoken. ‘This is very good, Goldie. Delicious!’
‘They’ll die anyway in this cold,’ said Nan, thinking about the birds and seeing, in her mind’s eye, dead ones all over the garden.
‘Oh, you’d be surprised how resilient they are, Mum.’
Nan shook her head. ‘Well, if you go out like that, you’ll catch your death of cold and you won’t make it to spring either.’
‘I’ll only be gone for a minute.’ Marigold slipped her bare feet into boots, picked up the bag of birdseed which was on the shelf by the back door and went out into the garden. She ignored her mother shouting at her to put on a coat. She was well over sixty, she didn’t need her mother telling her what to do. She hoped she wouldn’t regret having suggested she move in.
Marigold sighed with real pleasure as she put the first footprints in the snow. Everything was white and soft and silent. She wondered at the magical hush that came over the world when it snowed. It was a different kind of hush to any other. As if someone had cast a spell and stopped everything, suspending the world in a state of enchantment. She trudged through the stillness and lifted the feeder off the tree. Carefully, she filled it up with seed and then put it back, hooking it over a twig. She noticed the resident robin on the roof of Dennis’s shed. It was watching her with beady black eyes and hopping about, leaving clawprints in the snow. ‘You’re hungry, aren’t you?’ she said, smiling at the plucky little bird who often came close when she was on her knees in the border, planting or weeding. In the spring the garden was full of birds, but it was late November and the wise ones had left for warmer climes. Only this robin remained, with its fluffy red breast, along with various blackbirds and thrushes, and the pesky pigeons and seagulls of course, because the village was a couple of miles inland from the sea. ‘Don’t listen to Nan. You’re not going to die,’ she added. ‘As long as I feed you, you’ll see out the winter and soon it will be spring again.’
Marigold walked away and the robin flew onto the feeder. It warmed her heart to see it eating. Soon others would join in. It was amazing how quickly word got around – a bit like the village grapevine, she thought with amusement. As she pulled open the back door, her mind turned to church. She’d have to go upstairs and change. She’d clear the breakfast away once she was dressed. Dennis liked to get there a little early to chat to people. She did not like to keep him waiting. He worked hard during the week, toiling in his shed, making exquisite things out of wood as his father had done before him; it was nice for him to have a rest on a Sunday and spend time with his friends. For Marigold and Dennis church wasn’t just about God, it was a social event too, with tea and biscuits afterwards in the church hall. They always looked forward to that.
In the old days Dennis would go to the pub every evening, play darts, drink a couple of pints of bitter and catch up with friends that way. Now he preferred to stay at home and indulge in his hobby of making figurines, which he created himself with his big but steady hands, and displayed on shelves he’d put up all around the house. There were knights of old, soldiers from the Great War and fantasy characters he fished out of his imagination. His latest project was a church – well, it had started as a church but was fast becoming a cathedral and Marigold thought it might very well develop into an entire village with all the people to go in it. It kept him quiet for hours while he carefully cut the plastic and moulded the putty and painted with the flair of a natural artist. It reminded her of the doll’s house he had made for the girls when they were little. That was a labour of love, complete with furniture, oak floorboards, fireplaces and wallpaper. A beautifully crafted miniature more exquisite than anything one could buy in a toy shop.
Suze was on her phone talking to her boyfriend Batty when Marigold went upstairs to get ready. The difference in her daughter’s tone was remarkable. It was as if she were two people. One sulky and silent, the other animated and chatty. Atticus Buckley, known as Batty, and Suze had been going out for three years. Marigold wondered whether they’d ever get married. People seemed in no rush to marry these days. When she and Dennis had met, they’d walked down the aisle in less than six months. Batty was a good boy, she thought, despite his silly nickname. His parents were both teachers and he still lived with them, in their large house in town. Marigold wondered why he didn’t move out and rent a place of his own; after all, his garden-design business seemed to be doing well from what Suze told them. Young people, she thought with a shake of the head. Perhaps they were on to something, she mused. After all, why spend hard-earned cash on rent when they could live with their parents for free?
Just as Marigold was about to go downstairs to clear away breakfast, the telephone by the bed rang. She frowned, wondering with a spike of irritation who would bother them on a Sunday morning. She picked it up.
‘Mum?’
Her irritation evaporated at the distressed sound of her elder daughter’s voice. ‘Daisy, are you all right, dear?’
‘I’m coming home.’
Marigold realized she did not mean just for Christmas. Her heart stopped. ‘What’s happened?’
‘It’s over.’ Daisy’s voice sounded strained, as if she was trying very hard not to cry. ‘I’m leaving as soon as I can get a flight.’ There was a moment’s silence as Marigold sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to digest what her daughter was telling her. Marigold liked Luca. She liked him a lot. He was eleven years older than Daisy, which had concerned Marigold at the beginning, but then his charm had won her over, and the tender way he had looked at her daughter. He was a photographer, which was romantic. Marigold liked creative people, after all, she’d married one herself, and Luca had the colourful, passionate character of an artist. She had thought that their relationship would last. She had never doubted it. Six years was a long time and she’d taken it for granted that they’d eventually marry and start a family. ‘I just want to be at home, Mum,’ said Daisy. ‘With you and Dad.’
‘We can talk about it over a cup of tea,’ said Marigold in a reassuring voice. ‘There’s nothing like a cup of tea to make everything feel better.’
Sensing her mother’s assumption that the split would be a temporary one, Daisy added firmly, ‘It’s over for good, Mum. I won’t be coming back. Luca and I want different things.’ Her disappointment was palpable. ‘We just want different things,’ she repeated quietly.
When Marigold hung up she remained on the bed, worrying. Daisy was thirty-two. Time was running out. She had met Luca when she had gone to work in Italy after reading Italian and art history at university, then moved in with him shortly after. Marigold wondered what kind of ‘different things’ Daisy referred to; one of them was likely to be marriage. What else could it be? Had she wasted six years of her life hoping he would be The One? As modern as young women were these days, Marigold still believed that a woman’s nesting instincts were very strong. Would Daisy have time to find someone else before it was too late?
Unable to cope with the uncomfortable feeling those thoughts induced, she searched for something positive, for a silver lining to the black cloud. With a sudden burst of happiness she found it: Daisy was coming home.
She hurried downstairs to find Dennis. He was in the kitchen working on his miniature church. Nan had gone to her room to get ready for the Sunday service, Suze was in the sitting room, still on the phone to Batty – she had given up going to church years ago. ‘That was Daisy,’ Marigold told him breathlessly. ‘She’s coming home.’
Dennis put down his paintbrush and took off his glasses.
‘She and Luca have split up. She says they want different things.’
‘Oh.’ He looked baffled. ‘And it took them six years to find that out, did it?’
Marigold began to clear the table. She was so used to clearing up after her family that she did it without thinking, and without annoyance that no one ever helped her. ‘It’ll be nice to have her home again,’ she said.
Dennis arched an eyebrow. ‘I know one person, who’s not a million miles from here, who’s going to be none too happy about this!’
‘Well, Nan is in Daisy’s old room so Suze will have to let Daisy share with her. She’s got twin beds, after all.’
‘But Suze is used to having all that space, isn’t she?’ He grinned. ‘Perhaps it’ll encourage her to get a proper job and a place of her own.’
‘Children don’t move out these days. I read about it. I can’t remember where. They live with their parents for ever, I think, because they can’t afford to get on the property ladder.’ ‘You can’t get on the property ladder if you don’t get a job.’ Dennis sighed and shook his head. ‘You spoil her,’ he added. ‘We both do.’
‘She’ll get a proper job one day and move out and then we’ll miss her.’ Marigold put the frying pan into the sink and sighed. ‘Lovely that Daisy’s coming home.’
‘I’d keep it to yourself, if you don’t want your Sunday ruined,’ said Dennis, getting up and moving the miniature church onto the side table.
Marigold chuckled. ‘Yes, I agree. Mum will say it was never going to last and Suze will have a meltdown. Let’s keep it to ourselves for the moment.’
Wrapped in coats and hats, Dennis, Marigold and Nan made their way through the snow to the church, which was a five-minute walk up the lane. Nan held on to Dennis as if her life depended on it, while Marigold walked on his other side with her hands in her coat pockets. They passed the primary school that Daisy and Suze had attended, and the village hall where they had been Brownies. But some things had changed: the village had once boasted a small petrol station where Reg Tucker, in his ubiquitous blue boiler suit and cap, had filled the cars himself, invoicing the locals with a monthly bill, but that had been converted in the 1990s into a posh house with a thatched roof, which was covered in snow. Reg had died years ago, buried in the churchyard, which now came into view beyond the fork where the lane divided. A blackbird sang from the top of the war memorial, built in the triangle of grass in front of the gate. At its foot a wreath of crimson poppies seemed to seep into the blanket of white like the blood of the fallen.
Nan complained all the way. ‘It only looks pretty for the first few hours, then it turns to brown slush and people slip and slide all over the place. I’ll probably slip and break my neck. It would be just my luck, wouldn’t it, to slip in the snow and break my neck? They should have known it was coming and put salt down. But no, it’ll turn to ice overnight and I’ll slip on it and break my neck tomorrow.’
Marigold didn’t try to change her mother’s mind. She was used to Nan’s complaints and they fell off her like rain off a tin roof. Instead, she enjoyed the sight of the village, swathed in snow. ‘Pretty, isn’t it, Dennis,’ she said, linking her arm in her husband’s free one.
‘Very pretty,’ Dennis agreed, taking pleasure from being outside in the crisp morning air, on his way to seeing his friends. ‘Isn’t this grand, girls?’ he exclaimed jovially. ‘The three of us walking in the snow together.’
‘Speak for yourself, Dennis,’ grumbled Nan. ‘You’d better hold on to me tightly or I’ll slip.’
‘I thought you were going to slip and break your neck tomorrow,’ said Dennis with a grin.
Nan didn’t hear him. She was already distracted by people filing through the gate and onto the path that led up to the church doors. ‘They’ve cleared the path, I see,’ she said, squinting. ‘But they haven’t done a very good job of it. You’d better hold on to me all the way into the church, Dennis,’ she said. ‘We should have stayed at home instead of coming out in this dreadful weather.’
Dennis did as he was told and escorted his mother-in-law up the path, greeting friends as he went. ‘Isn’t it lovely!’ they all gushed, for commenting on the weather is the British people’s favourite topic of conversation.
‘I’ve had to get my snow boots out of the cupboard,’ said one.
‘We had to clear the front drive with a spade,’ said another.
Nan gave a disapproving sniff. ‘My husband, God rest his soul, did his back in digging us out with a spade,’ she said. ‘I’d be very careful if I were you.’
The church smelt pleasantly of wax and flowers. Nan let go of Dennis’s arm. She didn’t like talking to cheerful people and went on ahead to find a seat. Dutifully, Marigold followed.
Like his father before him, Dennis was the local carpenter. There was barely a house in the village where he hadn’t worked. A dresser here, a table there, a set of bookshelves or kitchen cabinets, a Wendy house for the children or a garden shed for Grandad. He knew everyone and loved shooting the breeze. He was considered by many to be a local treasure, an honorary member of the family, for as much time was spent chatting as putting up the pieces he made, and often, once on site, he’d replace the odd doorknob that had come off or re-grout the bathroom for no extra charge. He was like that, Dennis; a good man.
However, his trade had taken its toll on his body. He had bad knees and chronic back pain from carrying heavy things, and his left thumb bore the scars from the sharp tools he used, but he never complained. Dennis had always considered himself lucky that he was able to do what he loved. The duty on his health was a small price to pay.
Marigold was proud of her husband. He was a master of his trade. ‘Just give him a piece of wood and he’ll be as happy as a beaver,’ she’d say when someone else put in a request, and it was true, Dennis was never more content than when he was working in his shed, listening to Planet Rock on the radio while Mac the cat observed him silently from the windowsill.
But nothing satisfied Dennis more than making Marigold’s Christmas present.
Every year he made her a jigsaw puzzle. It was no surprise, she knew what she’d be getting, but not what it would look like. There was always a surprise in that. He’d choose a theme first and then find pictures which he’d stick onto a six millimetre sheet of plywood before cutting it with a scroll saw. It was a fiddly job, but Dennis was good at fiddly things. Last year’s had been flowers, Marigold loved flowers. The year before had been birds. This year he had chosen an old-fashioned scene of an ice rink with grown-ups and children skating in the falling snow. He’d found the picture in the charity shop and thought she’d like it. As he sat in the pew his mind turned to her puzzle and his excitement warmed him on the inside like the baked potato his mother used to put in his coat pocket when he walked to school in the wintertime. Marigold had always loved jigsaw puzzles and Dennis was very good at making them. Every year he tried to make it a little more complicated or a little bigger, to give her a greater challenge. This year he knew he had outdone all the others. It was made up of over a hundred small pieces and would take her a long time to put together because he hadn’t taken a photograph of the original picture for her to copy. He glanced at her, sitting beside him with her cheeks rosy from the walk and her hazel eyes sparkling from the pleasure it had given her. He took her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed it back and smiled. Nan noticed, tutted and shook her head. They were much too old for that, she thought sourly.
After the service the congregants gathered in the hall for tea and biscuits. This was the bit Marigold and Dennis liked the best. Nan liked it the least. She had lived in the village all her married life and had suffered the socializing her husband had enjoyed, but after she had been widowed she’d always taken herself home as soon as the vicar had said the Blessing. Now she had no choice but to mingle because she was dependent on Marigold and Dennis, and she needed Dennis’s arm to help her back to the house.
Marigold and Dennis were talking to their neighbours, John and Susan Glenn, when Marigold felt a light tapping on her shoulder. She turned to see the round, eager face of Eileen Utley, who was in her nineties and still played the organ at every Sunday service without making a single mistake. She was holding Marigold’s handbag. ‘You left this in the pew,’ she said.
Marigold looked at the handbag and frowned. Then she looked at her right arm, expecting the bag to be hooked over it, as usual. To her astonishment, it wasn’t. ‘How strange,’ she said to Eileen. ‘I must have been thinking about something else.’ Daisy coming home, perhaps? ‘Thank you.’
She sighed. ‘I’ve been getting a bit forgetful lately. This isn’t the first time I’ve left something behind. But look at you, Eileen. As sharp as a tack. Nothing forgetful about you!’
‘I’m ninety-two!’ said Eileen proudly. ‘I’ve still got all my marbles. The secret is crosswords and Sudoku. They keep your mind working. It’s like a muscle, you see. You have to exercise it.’
‘Mum does the crossword every day.’
‘And look at her.’ They both turned their eyes to Nan, who was holding a cup of tea and complaining to the vicar about the lack of salt on the road. He was listening with the patience God had given him for these very moments. ‘She’s still got all her marbles too, hasn’t she?’
‘Oh, she has.’
‘How is it, having her at home?’
‘I think she’s happier living with us. Dad’s been gone over fifteen years now and it’s lonely on your own. She doesn’t like animals, so she was never going to have a dog or a cat for company. She tolerates Mac and he gives her a wide berth. He only has eyes for Dennis anyway. It seemed logical as we had Daisy’s old room with no one in it. And it’s the least I can do. After all, she looked after me for eighteen years, didn’t she?’
‘You’re a good girl, Marigold,’ said Eileen, patting her on the arm. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she added, because Eileen popped into the village shop at nine every morning, not because she really needed anything, but because she didn’t have anything else to do.
Marigold hooked her handbag over her arm and wondered how she hadn’t noticed it was missing. She hadn’t, until recently, been the sort of person who left things behind. I suppose I am getting old, she thought, a little dispirited. Her mind searched for something positive. Then she found it: Daisy’s coming home . . .