My crazy family

I had such a marvellous family day yesterday. After escorting my six-year-old daughter Kiera to her first dance exams I came home to cook a roast dinner for eight. My Dad came with my stepmum and I'd invited the 'other' part of my family, namely my seventeen-year-old stepson Ben, his Mum Sam, his stepdad Chris and Sam and Chris's little boy Dylan.

I know most people think it's weird that my ex-husband's first wife Sam and I are such good friends. There was a time when I found it weird too; when it was all new to us after years of ignoring and hating one another. But I realised yesterday, watching my Dad extend his affection for Sam by teasing her mercilessly and aggressively about Dylan still sleeping in her bed, how normal and familiar we all are to each other now.

There was a time when I thought that my life would only ever be okay if Sam were to fall off the face of the earth and never come back. I forget that when we're together. We don't have family get togethers for the kids' sake or because we're being politically correct as a stepfamily. That is how the get togethers started seven years ago, but now we do it because it's the only right and natural thing to do. Watching my Dad communicate in the only way that he knows how as he does with my sister and me and seeing Sam retaliate as I do; by taking the piss right back, she almost felt like a sister.

It was the book that did it. We had managed to become friends before, but writing Back and Forth and having to share our stories, the lows that Sam went to for her drug addiction, the times that I excluded her from her son's life, has brought a closeness that I would never have believed possible. Sam's son Ben has been my family for eleven years now. My familial relationship with his mother is more recent, but no less strong.