LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 1

      Dear Zoe,

      I don’t know why I’m writing this – a sudden fit of the black dog, I suppose. It’s one of the unexpected side effects of motherhood that nobody warns you about, the way your imagination can take hold of you like a Jack Russell terrier, swinging your mind about like a rag doll and leaving you in a crumpled heap of paranoia.

      For some reason, tonight, I started worrying about what would happen to Martha if I wasn’t around. Well, I say ‘some reason’ – I actually know exactly what the reason was. Princess Di. I was up late doing some marking, and got sucked into this documentary – ten years since she died and all that.

      It was seeing those boys at the funeral that probably did it – little Wills and Harry, trying to be all brave and grown-up and just looking like little lost souls wondering where their mum was. All I could think about was wanting to give them a big hug. I’m not exactly a raving royalist, but this is nothing to do with money or class, is it? Losing your mum – a mum who loves you to bits, like Diana obviously did with her babies – is a terrible thing.

      Between that and the wine and the lateness, I just ended up in a bit of a mess. You should have seen me, babe – I was just a great big pile of tear-stained mush, hugging the cushions and shaking with grief for a woman I never met, and her motherless little boys. Weirdo.

      After that, I lay awake for hours thinking about it all – and about you, and Martha, and what songs I wanted played at my funeral. I never did decide – I know it should be something dignified, but … well, we’re not that dignified are we, you and me? Never have been. I keep imagining it being something ridiculous like the Venga Boys, and everyone dancing to Boom Boom Boom as the coffin is wheeled out. Or maybe a bit of Pulp, so you could do Disco 2000 with all the actions.

      Anyway. In the end, I decided to get up, and write this instead. Tomorrow, I’m going to package it up with some other paperwork, and go and see a solicitor and make a will. Not cheerful, but I think it’ll put my mind at rest. It’s the responsible, grown-up thing to do – not my specialist subject, but it needs to be done.

      The main thing, of course, is Martha. Her dad’s on the other side of the world and she’s never even met him. My parents are uptight control freaks. The only person who loves her and knows her as well as I do is you, Zoe. I don’t know the legalities of it all, and whether you can leave someone a child in your will, like you would an antique ring or a complete set of Charles Dickens first editions. I’ll have to ask those questions, I suppose.

      But whatever the answers are, I know, in my heart – my squished up, Wills-and-Harry-sodden heart – that she needs to be with you. You’re her second mum. I know you’d get her through it all, just like you and me got each other through our crazy childhoods. Nothing was perfect – but because we had each other, we survived. You can do the same for her, I know you can.

      Hopefully you’ll never see this letter, Zoe. Hopefully, I’ll be around until we’re both 100, and wearing our dentures to Chippendales concerts and swigging gin in our care home. Hopefully we’ll be giggling away at how much we embarrass Martha, and reminiscing about when we could remember what day of the week it was.

      But … just in case … I wanted to write this. I wanted to tell you that I love you, and that you’ve been more like family to me than my own ever were. And that I need you to be there for Martha, if the worst comes to the worst. If I die in a car crash or fall out of a rollercoaster, or whatever. I know the thought will terrify you, and yes, I know that you even managed to kill that allegedly unkillable cactus we bought on holiday in Ibiza that time. I know you can’t cook, and drive like a nutter, and wear odd socks, and lose your keys three times a day, and go so long between brushing your hair that you get dreadlocks.

      I know all this, but I also know that where it counts, you have everything it takes to care for a child – because you’ll love her as much as I could. You won’t try and make her something she’s not, or force her into a shape she doesn’t fit, and you’ll love her no matter how messy her room is. That’s far more important than matching socks, honestly – so believe me when I say I know you can do this.

      Anyway, I’m pretty knackered now, so I’m going to take some Night Nurse, pretending it’s absinthe, and go back to bed and hope for the best. It’s Martha’s class assembly tomorrow, and she’s playing a Ninja Fish. Don’t ask. I need to be bright eyed and bushy tailed and pretend that I enjoyed all the other kids’ performances as much as hers (which is a lie all parents have to tell –

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