Spring stole in when I wasn’t looking – much like everything else around me that happened while I was in a haze of grief and if it wasn’t for Doreen’s push, I would still be wrapped up in my age-old floral housecoat wallowing in deep cups of self-pity and stale packets of Batchelor’s minestrone soup.

Doreen was right, and as much as I hated my sisters’ cheerful countenance, sage counsel, and witty remarks, she was right. ‘You ought to do something, Gloria, you ought to go out, do things, meet people, get your life together.’

‘I really ought to do something,’ Gloria thought for the umpteenth time as she tried to organize her thoughts on her life – or the semblance of her life. A fresh upsurge of panic made her heart race, and her hands grew clammy. ‘Failing to do something is like dying while still alive,’ Doreen’s words echoed in her mind. ‘But that’s how I feel.’ ‘I’m dying alive,’ she argued. “Stop it. “Just stop it,” she muttered. “You’ve got to get back your sense of perspective.”

 ‘Maybe getting organised or a holiday would be a good way to get started again,’ Doreen suggested.  She knew Gloria too well and knew how her sister had enjoyed a predictable and efficient life. For Gloria, everything was planned, in its proper place and therefore she rarely lost control of things – not until the miscarriage, not until her husbands’ sudden death. He was forty-one. Micks’ death appeared to have taken their plans to the coffin – a plan to buy a house, to start a family, to support Gloria’s fledging home-based business till she got off the ground and now she simply floundered.

To be continued…