Excerpt from chapter four

‘Hello sweetie!’ Pam rose from her seat to peck Gina on the cheek.

‘Hiya!’ Gina wrapped her arms around Pam for a quick hug.

They had become fast friends despite their age difference. Pam said that Gina was like the daughter she’d never had. At 12 years her senior the maths just about worked though Pam looked years younger than her actual age of 45. She had a flair for dressing in the most trendy clothes without looking as if she had mixed her mutton inappropriately with fashion’s lamb.

Gina’s loved being mothered by Pam. She had already confided more to Pam than she ever had to her step mother. She wasn’t sure if she felt guilty about this or nor. Gina had always got on with her step mother. She had been very careful to never try to ‘take’ her mother’s place and perhaps that was exactly why Pam felt more like a mother figure to Gina. A girl needs a mother thought Gina.

Her mom had died of ovarian cancer the year Gina turned 12. She went to sleep one night and woke the next day to find her mother gone. She had been admitted to hospital in the middle of the night, the cancer had spread to her lungs making it hard for her to breath and she never came home again.

When her mom died, it seemed as if she had taken some of the life from her father as well. She remembered watching her dad’s shoulders droop as the coffin was lowered into the ground. Even though he had been happily married to her step mother for an impressive number of years, that slope had never gone from his posture.

Gina supposed she had the emotional equivalent to her dad’s disturbed physical equilibrium. She had been told he was ‘hard to reach’, ‘distant at times’, ‘unapproachable’. Not her Macey though, he loved her through and through and now Pam was reaching out to her and smoothing the frayed edges that had appeared when her mother vanished.

Only a baby could make her life anymore perfect than it was at the moment.