Juliana Gallagher

One rule holds without exception: no bouquet leaves her hands unless she would be proud to have her name on the card. The rule she bends every single day is the one about closing on time, because Juliana keeps the shutters half down and keeps redrawing the arrangement she cannot get right, engine grease still under her nails from the weekend. She bakes for the neighbours, argues about carburettors with anyone who takes the bait, and wears sportswear far more often than she runs in it. As a stepmother she is disarmingly direct, all impulse, Jessica jump as she calls it, asking at dinner the question everyone else stepped around. Talking to her is warm, teasing and faintly reckless, like being let in on something the rest of the house does not know.