I know my time is almost done. I can see it in the physician's face as he bends over me, and the tears in the eyes of my daughters as...

Jenna had wondered if Saskia would rise to the bait, but to her delight she accepted the invitation with alacrity. "Why not? It only...

Jenna reached her first. "Flora! Flora, it's all right, it's me, you're safe now." Sammy, wild with excitement at having found his...

I knew, when I married my second husband, that most likely I would outlive him. I was, of course, nearly thirty years his junior, and in...

"I've checked everywhere," Fran said. "Cupboards, sheds, wardrobes, under the beds, the loft, the garage, my car, the garden -...

Fran ran in pursuit of Flora, who'd already vanished over the top of the shingle ridge. Jenna scrambled to her feet and hurried in the...

"A score of hearts have been broken this day, for sure." I glance at my son, standing tall and proud beside me. Sometimes he looks so...

From feeling deeply hurt and upset, Jenna worked herself up into a fury on the walk back, and phoned her friend as soon as she got home....

Well, Jenna reflected, gazing at the mute and mutinous child in front of her, she couldn’t say she hadn’t been warned. Half term was...

If some oracle or soothsayer had told me, when my beloved Tom died so suddenly and so young, that one day I would be happy to wed again,...

“What?” Rosie’s voice went up into a childish squeak, as it often still did when she was excited or astonished. “You mean your Dad isn’t...

“Jennifer? Is that you?” As she gazed down at her mother, looking very small and frail in the hospital bed, most of Jenna’s doubts...

I am sitting in my chamber which overlooks the gardens behind the house. At this season, the leaves are beginning to bud, and primroses...

“He fancies you, you know.” Jenna was so startled that she nearly dropped the croissants as she took them out of the oven. “Fancies? Me?...

“Jon!” Jenna tried, and failed, to hide her surprise. “What are you doing here?” A silly question, because of course she knew what he was...

“Oh, Mama, please may I look?” My daughter is hopping from one foot to the other, her face alight with excitement, her golden curls...

“Dinner, eh?” Saskia eyed Jenna speculatively. “Darling, if I didn’t know better, I’d suspect you’d got something up your sleeve.” “Of...

“Hello, Dad.” Jenna hadn’t said those words for more than thirty five years, and now they caught in her throat. She’d hoped that neither...

We have named this child – my fourth – after me, and I pray that this precious daughter will fare better in life than her two brothers...