I stand at the bottom of the stairs and look up at Ella.  She sits at the top with her thumb stuck in her mouth and a small, much-loved teddy under her arm.

    She won’t look up, so she stares at her scuffed blue shoes.  The little brow is furrowed in concentration, ignoring me.  What’s going on in that tiny mind?

    It starts like this every time I come to visit.  First she sulks because mum and dad have gone to work, and then she sulks harder because she knows that I’ll go away again and we won’t see each other for a while.  Now she’s trying to pretend that she doesn’t know who I am.  So I begin,

    “Can you come and help me look after Basil in the garden?”

        His name makes Ella lift her head, suddenly ‘remembering’ who I am, as she looks up at me.  Her best friend in all the world (after Teddy) is Basil and our shared love for him brings this little lady out of herself.

    “OK Gran.”  The thumb is out and the brow smoothed over as she stands up and comes as carefully down the stairs as four-year-old legs will let her.

    Basil’s hutch is in a sheltered spot near the back door.  Today he is sitting quietly thinking about life.  His long ears are folded neatly down his back and nose twitching happily.  Ella, as a kind child, watches him for a few minutes.  Another child might have waded in to pick him up and play with him, disturbing his peace.

    “Shall I open the door for him so he can just hop out?”  She asks.

    “Good idea.  You can sit on the swing-seat or help me dig the garden if you want and we can watch him as he plays about.”

    “It would be good if he could dig holes for the plants to go in, in the right places, wouldn’t it?”  She says looking up at me and squinting in the Spring sunshine.  I wonder at the wisdom of one so small, as I had often wished for the same thing. 

    Ella’s mum and I don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things.  From the day she first appeared with pink hair in her battered VW van, with Basil in the back, it’s been an interesting relationship.  And now the van is gone but Basil is part of the family.

    But I used to almost dread as much as love my visits because Julie and I would rub each other up the wrong way.  We disagreed about the silliest things – how to fold pillowslips, should pants be ironed – and then about bigger things like politics and religion.  She seemed to like to argue for the sake of it and the more I backed down the more short-tempered she became.  But Neil, my son, adores her and she adores him and they make each other happy. 

As I live nearly 100 miles away, we don’t see each other much.  So Julie and I have learned to disagree agreeably for Neil and Ella’s sake.

    Julie has decided to go back to her career and it seemed like a chance for me to look after Ella while she and Neil are at work.  So I arrived this morning to stay for a while and do some house hunting.

    “Is it time to watch mum yet?” Ella called from the swinging seat.

    “Not yet, darling.” I call back, “In a while though.  We’ll go and make a cup of tea shall we?”

After many years working in local radio, with a break to have Ella and look after her, Julie’s now a game show hostess.  She is on twice a week in a sparkly dress on the early afternoon show and Ella loves to watch.

We sit together watching Basil run about, dig where he shouldn’t and nibble at the flower beds.  Me with my tea and Ella with her juice, we share a shortbread finger.

“When will you come and see me every day?” she asks.

“When I’ve found a house nearby to live in.”

“When will that be?”

“When I’ve found one that I like.” I reply.

“Basil likes his house and mum found it for him.  Maybe she can help you find a house you will like.”

I think about this.  The thought of looking at houses with Julie doesn’t appeal to me, but Ella has a point.

As we sit swinging in the sunshine until Basil comes hopping over and nuzzles my feet.  He jumps up onto the seat and settles himself next to Ella as I return to the digging and weeding that Julie and Neil’s garden needs.

As I think about how lovely it is to spend a day like this, I ask Ella what sort of house she thinks her mum might choose for me.

“A nice one with a garden and a pond.”  She says which makes me wonder if this is really Ella’s choice or Julie’s.  “And a pretty bedroom with pink curtains for me to sleep in.”  Yes, Ella’s choice so far.  “And a big kitchen with a table in it that we can all sit at, eating.  Mum says she likes Christmas at your house because we all sit in a big family with Uncle Andrew and Auntie Anne.”  This surprises me and for a moment I’m put off my digging.  Then I remember that Julie has no family of her own.

She’s an only child and her parents died when she was in her early twenties.  I thought when I first met her that she must miss not having a parent.

“Mum likes it when you come to stay.”

“Does she sweetheart?”

“Yes, she says you have funny ideas and say funny things.”

“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings…” I think as I wonder what Julie means by ‘funny’.

“Really?” I encourage Ella, realising that she might be the key to understanding her mother better.

“Sometimes she says that you’re like her mum was.  She says they had big dish…dishcush…”

“Discussions?”

“Yes and she likes that because you make her think of her mum.”

All at once the muddy waters of my relationship with Julie begin to clear.  All thanks to my clever granddaughter. It had never really occurred to me that Julie enjoyed our arguments.  I was too busy trying to be motherly to realise that wasn’t what she wanted at all.

Basil hops into his hutch and sits watching Ella in her pink skirt and white tee shirt, playing with her dolls and cars on the lawn while I make our lunch.  She feeds him carrot tops and greens one by one, chattering as I listen through the open kitchen window.

“Gran’s coming to live near us and we’ll see her every day.  Me and mum and dad and gran will be able to play with you and mum will have a mum again.”

This afternoon Julie’s TV show is on and Ella sit down to watch her mother in a sparkly green dress. 

“Mum hates green.  She says that she’s hated green since she was a little girl, even littler than me.  I wonder who made her wear that dress.  And I don’t think that this is program is as clever as mum is.”

Ella’s mind is an amazing place to be I decide.  A brighter place to be than anywhere else I know.  The things she sees through four-year-old eyes amaze me – it must be a sign of good breeding!

Julie arrives home in time to bath Ella’s and bedtime story.  She has an armful of papers about houses from the local estate agents. Together we sit down and have dish…dishush…talk about them and which ones I might like best.