Mothers and Daughters Read Online Free Page B

disown her. Loved her, in fact, on those occasions when she let Finn play her guitar, or helped Torran organise his rock collection—but no, she wasn’t hers. Years ago, Morag had longed for a daughter. Pregnant with the twins, she was sure one of them must be a girl. When she discovered she was wrong she’d talked Andrew into trying again. He didn’t care—he already had a daughter, of course—but he’d gone along with it because he could see what it meant to her. When Torran was born fat and pink and with an undeniable scrotum, the disappointment had lodged in her throat like something she hadn’t ordered and couldn’t quite choke down. Yet within a week he had captivated her, just like his brothers before him, and she put away her longing. Callum, Finn and Torran were healthy and gorgeous and their blue eyes shone when they saw her. This was her lot, and it was a damn fine one.
    Anyway, she no longer felt as though she was missing out. She wouldn’t have been any good at those shopping trips, with her track pants and her hair always pulled back, not blow-dried artfully around her face like Caro’s. Besides, from what she could see, girls were much harder: Janey with her mind games and her obsession with her phone; Macy with her black boots, her ridiculous dreams of being a rock star, and the packet of the pill Morag had once found in her schoolbag but hadn’t told Andrew about. She was better off with her boys. At the airport, Caro had said something to the woman behind the check-in desk about them travelling with their daughters, but even that hadn’t stung. Not too much, anyway. Fiona had Bronte, Caro had Janey, and Amira had Tess, but she, Morag, had a whole week off, free from any parental responsibilities whatsoever. If nothing else, it was worth it for that.
    The fasten seatbelts sign came on. Morag did so almost gleefully. It had been ages since she had been alone, with no one to please but herself. Amira had said she could have her own room at Kalangalla, if she liked. If she liked?! Morag hadn’t had her own room since she was twelve, when she left Fort William, where she’d grown up, for boarding school in Edinburgh. After that it was university, and a tiny bedsit with a roommate who smelled of wet dog and sausages. She’d later moved to a share house, but even there it felt as though she was always surrounded. There were parties that lasted all weekend and on into Tuesday, people asleep in the bath or the boxroom or, once, flaked out in her wardrobe; there was always a friend of a friend camped out on the couch or helping themselves to her muesli when they thought she was in the shower. And there was Andrew. For a few sweet months there was Andrew: sharing a cigarette with her on the front steps on a summer’s evening, the sky still light at eleven o’clock, or in the kitchen with a tea towel over his shoulder, coaxing the ancient Aga into staying alight long enough to cook spaghetti . . . but mostly, mostly in her bed. Morag shifted in her seat. She hadn’t wanted to be alone then, had she?
    They’d given up the cigarettes, of course, but without realising it she’d given up time alone too. Barely a day now went by when she had more than ten minutes to herself—usually while driving to see a client or using the toilet, though even that could be interrupted at any moment if Torran had a problem that he needed her to solve. But she loved it, she told herself, the mess and scramble of family life—Macy on the phone, Finn with his head in the fridge, Callum’s RipStik in the hallway, Andrew and Torran wrestling on the rug. She loved her job too, particularly since discovering that while the homes of the elderly were no less cluttered in Australia, they were at least warmer and drier. She’d chosen this; it was what she wanted—but oh, how liberating it was to flee it for a while.
    ‘Hey,’ called Janey from behind her, uncharacteristically animated. ‘Look! Out the window.’
    The cabin