‘I know, but what a bargain.’

It made her happy.

It kept her busy.

‘Look at this,’ she announces, fishing around beneath some letters on the coffee table. And she gives him another box, this time small but heavy.

Her grandson takes the lid off and looks inside. It’s a high-quality paperweight, inscribed with his grandmother’s name, her beloved London borough and some words about her work in the community.

‘The mayor gave it to me. It was in the papers.’

‘The mayor? Wow.’ He humours her but part of him is proud of her.

‘Yeah. Indian fella, but really nice.’ It had taken her fifteen years to warm to the West Indians that had found a home in the East End, but many had become her friends. Now she was annoyed with the Somalians.

This is often how his visits went. He would go around and make her a cup of tea and she would hand him treasures she had discovered. He’d play cards with her. She would cheat. He’d make her something to eat, they’d have another cup of tea and he would leave her, often with a plastic bag of miscellaneous items she thought would bring him some money.

Then she hands him a letter.

‘Can you just read that for me, darling, it’s from the hospital and I haven’t got my glasses.’

Her grandson does as he is told. He reads every line of the letter. Twice. To be certain.

‘Nan, this letter is from nine months ago. It says you have cancer and that you probably only have six months to live.’

‘I know. I’ve read it. I didn’t know how to tell you.’

She looks well to her grandson. And she has outstayed her welcome according to the doctor’s estimate. But he’s worried that she’s finally telling him because she knows she is going to deteriorate quickly.

She isn’t. She has another year in her.

‘Can you tell your brother for me?’

He agrees but doesn’t want to do it.

Then she says, ‘Go over in that corner. There’s a banjo. I paid twenty-five quid for it. Gotta be worth double that.’

And when she does die, there are plenty of people from the community at the funeral. West Indians and all. And there are flowers and hymns and tears and she has a name.

But there is another community that she belongs to that nobody knows about. Where she doesn’t have a name. She is known only as 139 – Paperweight.

95

IF THEY DON’T WANT TO DIE, THEY HAVE TO

Too many people. That’s the problem.

7.7 billion of them.

And they’re all so precious.

History tells us that we will be wiped out at some point. We get to start all over again. But, instead of waiting for a flood or a meteor to hit, we are imploding. We are killing ourselves. We are shitting in our own house then sitting around in it and complaining that there’s shit in our house.