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