Free Mothers & Daughters by Kate Long

throwaway pile. That bowl had been on our sideboard throughout my childhood. I could see my mother dusting it now.
    And then, towards the bottom of the box, was real treasure: two yellow Kodak envelopes. That meant two virgin batches of photographs, unviewed and uncatalogued. My heart gave a little jolt of anticipation. Another night where I’d be able to get the albums out and go through them, refining our family story.
    The prints, when I opened the flap, were an out-of-fashion size, mean and small by today’s standards. They weren’t especially old ones, but then I wouldn’t have expected them to be. Pictures of my girlhood were few and far between.
    This first set seemed to be of a family barbecue in the garden here, with another, more random selection towards the back of the pile. Eagerly I pushed the shed door further open to let more light in, and settled myself against the work bench.
    Phil’s picture was at the front, a Phil with thicker hair and a sharper jaw-line, but the same easy, charming smile. ‘Git,’ I told him, and the word hung satisfyingly in the air for a moment. But even just speaking that one syllable started a little hot fizz in the middle of my chest. Thinking of your ex is like scratching eczema, a woman on
Oprah
once said. Let yourself get started, and you’ll end up a terrible mess.
    I slid the picture away to uncover instead a bright-eyed Dad with a very young Jaz perched on his knee. What age was she there? I could only dimly remember the hair-in-plaits phase; she was usually too impatient for anything other than a lightbrushing. Knowing Jaz, she’d have had those ribbons off minutes after the picture was taken.
    The next photograph fixed the date more clearly, because it was of Mum, which had to mean pre-1986. And then it clicked: my thirtieth birthday. Which made Jaz five, Mum about to be diagnosed. Another year on and she’d be dead. I held the photo up to peer more closely. What I was looking for, I suppose, was whether there was anything in her face to show that she knew. Her eyes were slits against the sun, her mouth turned down at the corners. There was still no getting past that expression.
    I put her picture to the back and carried on. More pictures of the party, the lawn in its pre-pond days, the kitchen before we had it extended, Dad actually lifting Jaz right up and swinging her round. And here was my very best friend Eileen – good God, Eileen! – raising a glass and obviously in the middle of saying something. ‘Oh, I miss you,’ I said, ‘like you wouldn’t believe. What I could tell you if you were still here.’
I know
, she went.
It’s a bugger
.
    I sat for a minute, holding the pack and thinking how fast twenty years can go. Some days I feel all ages and no age, as though I’m hovering over time, somehow. I can be back at school in a blink, with everyone I knew and all the same jokes and worries and obsessions. Astonishing how you can be the girl at the leavers’ assembly – winking at your pals while the Headmistress drones on about the world awaiting you – and also the grandmother sitting on your own in a cramped shed sorting through the dregs of your dad’s life.
Failure is a natural part of existence
(I could actually hear old Miss Wilson saying it, see the rope of beads swinging from her bosom),
but it’s how we deal with failure that matters
. It’s the only line of hers that’s stuck; that and the one about strangers judging you by your fingernails. I always hear her voice when I’m rooting for an emeryboard. Eileen used to do a very good impression of Miss Wilson.
    The packet began to slide off my knee, and that brought me back to myself.
Get your skates on
, said Eileen.
    The last photo of the batch was me with Phil, our arms round each other. I had my hair in a bob with a side-swept fringe, and I was wearing extraordinary blue eye-shadow. Phil was puckering his