I walked to the kitchen and made lemonade, cups and cups and cups of it, mashing the lemons down onto the rental-company citrus squeezer until the little reservoir underneath was overflowing with juice and seeds and the counter was covered with lemon rinds, cracked open like sticky yellow egg shells. It was so hot. All the windows were closed tight but the flies still found a way in, buzzing around me the moment I tried to sit down or close my eyes. They walked all over everything. They touched us all over with their dancing feet. We could feel them all the time on our skin.

E and I played Amazon jungle with the baby giraffe. We pretended the raft would only take two of us, that there were red-bellied piranhas in the water, night on its way and all sorts of other terrible things. A decision would have to be made or none of us would make it out alive. The raft was simply not sufficient. E smiled her wicked smile, and hugged me tight.

More and More February

Can I tell you about my mother’s Christmas parties? Would you stay so I can tell you? It’s just so grey out today and I’m all alone and it feels like I’m tied up and drowning in this gown. Like a fish caught in a net. And I suppose that makes them, and you too really, trawlers doesn’t it? Where are you pulling all of us fish I wonder?

Really though. Would you stay? Just a bit longer. What if I kicked over my water glass? Would you stay then? To clean it up? Oh, that was horrible of me to say. Really, I’m sorry. I feel that we’re much more than that to each other. Much more than kicking feet and cleaning hands. I hope I can be more than that. Please stay. For just a moment. She’s at treatment now, the woman in the bed under the window, so it’s just the two of us.

Just the two of us girls. Someone might say that about us, if they peeked in. Oh, they might say, it’s just the two of you girls.

Would you listen? Mother gave the most wonderful Christmas parties. All the neighbours came. It was as if the house became a paper lantern, I always thought of it like that, in December. One of those lanterns with a candle inside that gets released up into the sky. It was all that perfect and that delicate. Nothing could be touched inside the house in December, while Mother got it ready for the party. The mantel was set with white cotton and decorated with Santa and his reindeer. The table was covered over with the best white tablecloth from Paris and set, the week before the party, with the nutcracker plates and fresh pine boughs and red poinsettias and, in the middle, the red and gold punch bowl from Hermès. Mother always said it just like that. A bit breathlessly. Hermès. She would lift her right hand to touch just here, just under her throat, when she said it. I don’t know if she knew that she did that. The punch bowl from Hermès. She would say it just like that. I want you to hear her saying it. Her voice, her breathlessness. It feels so important for you to understand.