All baggy and saggy. Shapeless cardies and stretchy pants. Pale pink or blue. Definitely not smart. But I’d also imagined that a nan would be someone warm and soft. A person you could go to for cuddles. That’s what I’d imagined. Mum’s mum wasn’t any of those things. For a start, she wasn’t what you would call old. Not old old. And her clothes weren’t baggy or saggy. She was wearing a striped shirt, not a cardie, and instead of stretchy pants she had on a really cool pair of jeans. Ones I wouldn’t have minded for myself. Above all, she wasn’t either warm or soft. She was slim and kind of tough-looking, with the same red hair as Mum only not pretty and curly like Mum’s. She wore it scraped back, very tight, from her face. And no make-up at all. Mum didn’t wear very much, but she did like a touch of eye shadow and lipstick. I had the feeling that this woman (I found it really difficult to think of her as our nan) would probably regard make-up as too frivolous. Definitely not someone you would go to for cuddles.
