Mum.

Mum — I was a horrible teenager. I was not a wonderful twenty-something. I was an even more difficult thirty-year-old. You never gave up on any one of those people. Last Christmas, in the kitchen at midnight, with the dishwasher humming, you said "you've always been kind, you just kept hiding it." I have thought about that line every week since. I have, accordingly, hidden it less. Thank you for being patient with the slow project of me. I am, finally, getting somewhere. Happy Mother's Day. The lemon cake is in the boot of the car. Don't tell Pat.

Granny — I am twelve. I am writing this on the laptop because Mum said "real letters." This IS real. The lemon cake recipe you wrote out on the back of a Tesco receipt is on our fridge. I made it for my friend Hana's birthday and she said it was the best cake she has ever had IN HER LIFE. I told her it was YOURS. She said "is your granny famous." I said "she could be." Happy Mother's Day to my mum AND to you. You are my favourite Granny (you are also my only Granny but you would still be my favourite). I have made you a card with peonies. The peonies look like blobs. Mum says it doesn't matter.

Linda Mary Fraser — fifty-one years next October. I sat next to you on the first day of nursing college, 1975, because you had the only spare seat and a kind face. I have, ever since, sat next to you at every important table in my life: my hen, your hen, my mum's wake, your fortieth, my fiftieth, both our retirements (mine reluctant, yours overdue). We are now somehow in our late sixties, with knees, and I still ring you on a Wednesday for no reason. Happy Mother's Day, dear heart. You were a wonderful nurse. You are a more wonderful mother. The girls are lucky, and so am I.

GRANNY!! I am seven!! I HELPED with the LEMON CAKE!!! I did the eggs. I did TWO. The first one had a bit of shell in it but Mummy got it out with the OTHER bit of shell which is a TRICK. I love you Granny!!! You always have the GOOD biscuits in the special tin and you let me have THREE. I have drawn you a picture of you and me in your garden. The bee is the BIG one. Mummy said the bee is not realistic but I think bees CAN be big if they want. Happy Mum Day to you AND to my Mummy.

Mrs Fraser — you sat with me in the hospital chapel on the night my Frank died. I had no family in this country. I had no one. You were the school cook. I was the dinner-lady on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We had spoken, in twenty-two years, about rosters and shepherd's pie. That night you sat with me until four in the morning and you made me tea I did not drink and you held my hand. You have, every March, brought me a small plant on the anniversary, for fourteen years now. You will say it is nothing. It is not nothing. It is the entire thing.

Mum-in-law — I have been in this family for nineteen years and you have never made me feel like an in-law. The first Sunday lunch, December 2006, I was terrified. Adam had warned me about the cutlery. You took one look at me, took the cardigan off the back of your chair, draped it round my shoulders because the back room was freezing, and said "right, you're in." That cardigan, in my head, has never come off. Thank you for raising the man I married. Thank you for the cardigan. Thank you for the room.

Linda love — I am ninety-one and Pat is writing this for me because my hands have packed it in. The words are mine. You were a serious child. You looked at me, age four, when I dropped a casserole on the kitchen floor and said "well that's a disaster." You were right. You have been right about most things since. I am proud of you, my dear. I am proud of the woman you became and the mother you have been. Your dad would be so proud too. He'd say you turned out exactly like your nan, which was, in his vocabulary, the highest compliment available. Happy Mother's Day. Don't forget to ring me.

Linda — twenty-two years of altar flowers, eleven of them as the flower-rota chair. The parish, the church porch, and the after-service tea table have all been a kinder place because of you. The choir mothers say you are the only person who has ever managed both the rota AND Mrs Hatchard at the same time. That is, in Anglican terms, a kind of sainthood. May your Sunday today be quiet, and the kitchen — for once — not yours. With love from St Catherine's.

Granny — I am four. Mummy is writing this. I am telling her the words. I love you. You smell like the kitchen. I like when you sing in the morning. The song about the morning. I have a SECRET. The secret is I LOVE YOU MORE THAN MUMMY. (Mummy says I have to tell her too. Fine. I love Mummy.) Happy Mum Day Granny. Can I have a biscuit.

Lin — sixty-three years I have known you. You were five and refused to share the swing. We have, in those sixty-three years, shared everything else. Two prams. One terrible boyfriend in 1979 (mine, not yours). Mum's last three Christmases. Dad's funeral. The flat above the chip shop in Crouch End, summer of '83, when we were both broke and you somehow still made spaghetti for six. You have been my first call on every good day and every bad one. Today is a good one. I am bringing the trifle. Don't argue. I made it last night, it has set.