In the bathroom, Genevieve’s creams still littered the shelves as a reminder of her. My intention hardened when I saw them. I sat opposite the slim sliver of wardrobe mirror. I had a babyish face that no amount of make-up could transform. I removed my top. I took off my trousers too and I was, surprising myself, in my underwear. My bra and pants were gritty, cheap and childish looking so I took them off too. It was cold because the window was not a proper window, just two boards my mother had nailed up.

Outside, I could hear the familiar creak of the deckchair and I knew he had arrived back. There was the short snap of matches being lit one after the other. I felt something fluttering on my back teeth. I reached right in, all the way into the part of my mouth I did not know, and yanked out a trail of dead flies – black, long and sticky-looking. I discarded them and I waited.

Hump

At seventy, after suffering several disappointments, the first being my mother, the second being me, my father died. One evening he gathered the family in his room and asked if anyone had any questions. No one did. The next day he died. At the funeral everyone looked like someone I might sort of know. These strangers told anecdotes and made general health suggestions to each other. I passed out the sandwiches. The sandwiches were clingfilmed and oddly perforated, like they had been pierced again and again by cocktail sticks. I said ‘Sambo?’ to every single person in that room. It was a good word, a word I hoped would get me through the entire evening. I wasn’t strong on speaking or finding ordinary things to discuss in large groups. The place was crowded with false grief, people constantly moving positions, like in A & E, depending on the severity of their wounds. I mentioned that I held his wrist when he passed and through the use of the phrase ‘flickering pulse’ I was booted up to First Class.

My father told me he regretted not talking more. He felt the time others used for conversation, he had filled with snooker or nodding or looking away. He surmised, through a mouthful of diabetic chocolate, that he had only spoke thirty per cent of his life. It was a dismal percentage and I was familiar with what dismal percentages could do to a person. We were spending a lot of time together then, linking arms and being totally happy. I had this one trick I did for him. I’d curl up tight into his bed, under the starched sheets, and peep out at the nurses like I was an old lady. It was a scream. They said I was their youngest patient. I laughed and asked them to leave the pills in a tidy arrangement on the bedside locker. My antics gained me a certain level of recognition and infamy in the retirement home and, at times, I could feel my father almost bursting with pride. We both agreed it was the perfect trick for the occasion of his near-death.