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the sausages on her plate. She even refused to eat chocolates moulded into animal shapes.
    I’d hoped Anglican girls’ school might provide the consistency she didn’t get being ferried between two households every second week. The school chapel was one of the few places where her loyalties weren’t frayed. The Virgin Mother could be relied on to keep her mouth shut, and God wasn’t about to argue over custody. She fell in love with the vicar and asked to be baptised.
    We’d had our ups and downs, especially when Philip was transferred across the Tasman Sea to Melbourne, Australia. Thirteen-year-old Lydia, railed against changing schools and countries. Once she’d made the adjustment, though, she became a high achieving all rounder.
    Her final exams resulted in a scholarship to Melbourne University at the age of seventeen, and a bewildering array of degree options. She chose Economics and Political Science.
    While her marks continued to be stellar through her undergraduate degree, the only work that put light in her eyes was with disabled people part-time.
    She went flatting, then took a year off trailing through the Third World. With a lifetime’s experience stored in photographic files on her phone, it was time for her to settle down. All she had to do was babysit her old teddies in her fabulous new bedroom and resume her studies.
    I was too infatuated with the new house to notice that our older daughter had something else in mind – a project which was about to challenge me emotionally, mentally, spiritually and in several other ways beyond my imagination.

Inspiration
    Teachers appear in many forms
    Lydia and Katharine wasted no time injecting personality into their bedrooms. We heard thumps in the ceiling as beds were shifted, pictures hung. Junk shop expeditions were made. Katharine brought home 1950s movie posters and a floral bedspread. She lined her walls with books and draped party lights around her window.
    Lydia didn’t want me to see hers until it was finished. I already had a vague idea what was in there – not much apart from a chest of drawers and our old queen-sized bed. The fact she was sleeping in a bed of marital dimensions would have driven Mum to distraction. (‘What’s a twenty-three-year-old girl doing with a bed like that? Fancy encouraging her to have loose morals under your own roof!’)
    While Lydia was busy decorating, she invited her boyfriend over for an exclusive preview. Tall and good-looking with dark hair bunched in a ponytail, Ned was a part-time jazz pianist. He had ‘one or two issues’ which Lydia assured us were managed with medication.
    Beaming, Ned nodded politely at me before bounding upstairs. I didn’t mind Ned. At Rob’s engagement party we’d danced together to ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ – a song that always reminded me of Mum peeling the eczema off her hands.
    The eczema would’ve burrowed into Mum’s bones if she’d been around to see Ned lumbering downstairs the next morning. His fisherman’s jumper was fraying at the cuffs. I couldn’t tell if the shadow on his chin was designer stubble, or just plain neglect. Everything about him screamed ‘work in progress’.
    Ned hummed nonchalantly as he poured himself a coffee. We’d never had a hummer in the house before. Lydia had spent the night at his place a few times, so I didn’t mind him staying over. In fact, I was more comfortable knowing she was tucked up in her own bed, with or without a boyfriend.
    Philip wasn’t so happy. Striding into the kitchen in his work suit, he greeted Ned briskly and sat across the table from him. The temperature dropped several degrees as the two males eyed each other over the cockerel on the cornflakes packet. I got the impression there was one rooster too many in the room.
    After Ned had gone, I asked Lydia if I could see her revamped bedroom. She shook her head.