Page 142 of The Year that Changed Everything

Ginger felt her heart swell with happiness at the compliment.

‘You’re going to be helping me with my study on music on people with dementia,’ said Sam. ‘I need you. And you’ll definitely have to travel – so no time to model.’

‘Write down the pain,’ said Grace loudly. ‘Because I’m starving.’

Dutifully everyone wrote.

Ginger, Sam, and Callie were slowest.

Normally, Ginger wrote so fast but she couldn’t just now.

Liza betraying her? Working with Carla who’d done her best to humiliate her? Feeling betrayed by Will for that horrible period? And yet, Liza had done her a favour. So had Carla – without her, she’d never have met Will, and he’d always been true. It had all been terrible at the time, and yet she had risen from it all like a phoenix. Tomorrow, she was going alone to visit her mother’s grave and she was determined to face up to both the past and deal with the long-buried ache of not having a mother as she was growing up. She closed her eyes and wished that the love and friendship she had in her life would continue. She wished for strength and courage, always. Then she threw her empty piece of paper into the fire.

Callie stared at her paper blankly. ‘Jason,’ she wrote. His fraud, his life, his abandoning them, his other woman ... the lack of money. She still worried about money, always would. The damn Xanax. That had been terrible but she hadn’t touched one since and never would again, if she could possibly help it. Then she thought of what she had now: Poppy; her family; herself. Perhaps Jason had done her a favour. She scrunched up her paper and threw it into the fire.To appreciating all that I have and to being me, always, she said silently.

Sam looked at India asleep in Ted’s arms. Joanne was right: the more noise a baby got used to, the more she could sleep when you were out or hoovering. She thought of the darkness of the post-natal depression. It had been terrifying, devastating, and yet she had come out of its black embrace. She had India and Ted, her darling sister and her family, her father and, yes, her mother too, who was trying very hard to change.

‘Pain’ was the one word she wrote on her paper; she threw it into the fire and wished for her happiness to continue.And please, please, another baby.

‘Smudging,’ announced Grace.

Ted brought India outside in case it was bad for her baby lungs.

It took a few goes for Grace to light the fat bundle of what looked like dried twigs and herbs and then the scent hit the room. It was a combination of sage and lavender and thyme and after that, nobody was sure what it was. But it had a smoky herbal scent as well as a hint of singed twigs

‘Let us let go of all the dark and sad moments of the past year and welcome in a new one,’ Grace said, entirely delighted with herself in her new Celtic priestess incarnation. She waved the smudging stick around. ‘Let us open our hearts to new happiness.’

After a bit more smudging, she put the collections of twigs and herbs down in a bowl and let it go out.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘how about we celebrate with a fabulous dinner. Boys!’ she called into the kitchen. ‘Bring on the birthday feast!’