She hadn't planned to say it. It came out the way true things come out — unbidden, unedited, from somewhere below the place where you compose sentences. *She's my girl too.* Four words that said everything that had no name.

Erik was quiet for a moment. Then: "I know she is."

They said goodbye. Steph put the phone down. Tima was sitting on the sofa now, Hoppy in her lap, looking at the space where the phone had been. She pointed at Steph's hand.

"Papa?"

"Papa's coming tomorrow."

"Papa gone?"

"Papa's not gone. He's just — somewhere else for a bit. He'll be back."

Tima looked at Hoppy. She looked at Steph. She held her arms up — the universal toddler gesture, the demand that is also a request that is also a trust: *pick me up, hold me, be the thing that fills the space where the other thing was.*

Steph picked her up.

Later — after the holding, after the quiet, after Tima had slid off Steph's lap and returned to the sofa to conduct further negotiations with Hoppy — Steph found her phone. The old Sony Ericsson, the one with the scratched screen and the camera that made everything look like it had been filmed through a jar of honey. She didn't think about it. She just picked it up, and Tima was sitting there in her yellow cardigan with the purple pacifier in her mouth, and the light from the window was soft and grey, and Steph pressed record.

"What's red in Welsh?" she asked.

Tima looked up. The pacifier bobbed. "Emm... coch."

Steph reached over and took the pacifier gently from her mouth — so she could say it properly, so the sounds would come out clear. Tima surrendered it without protest, which was unusual. She was in a cooperative mood. She was in the mood for this.

"What's yellow?"

Tima sat a little straighter. "Maayyeen." A hint of pride in it — the pride of a child who knows she knows this one.

"What's blue?"

"Maayyeen."

Steph paused. "Blue?"

Tima half-giggled. "Bluuehh..." Then, with renewed confidence: "It's... a... maayyeen."

"Nooh —" Steph's voice dipped into a low laugh, the warm, not-unkind laugh of a woman who has asked these questions before and will ask them again and is in no hurry to get the right answer because the asking is the point. "That's yellow. What's blue?"

Tima went serious. Her brow furrowed. The effort of it — the genuine, full-body effort of a twenty-two-month-old trying to access a word she'd heard but hadn't yet pinned to its colour. "Ehmm. Cooch."

"Aye, that's red. What is green in Welsh?"

"Eehmm... coch."

"Green."

Tima's voice went small, a little shy. "Gween."

"Green is..."

Tima let out a light *ehehe* — a giggle that was also a stall, a buying of time, the sound of a child who knows she's losing but is enjoying the game too much to mind.

"Green is gwii—" Steph prompted.