Leila #19

My brother was 26 when he told me Sarah was going to have a baby.  It was late spring and we were in the long narrow garden in London.  I was almost 30, longing for a child and I felt the garden funnel. I developed tunnel vision. 
Eight months later I was sitting morosely in an Irish pub in North London when the phone call came.  The bar man put a Guinness in the stable for me and the old man next to me told me that my brother was a lucky man; 'only thick mickeys make girls'.  The next day I went down to Brixton to meet my niece.
She is beautiful, she makes me laugh and spend money I don't have, she makes me tell stories I've never dared tell and she is my 17 year old daughter's best friend.