I’m not going to lie, I’m shook when I see the name and I can’t believe I missed it the first time. It straight up jumps out at me from the caption underneath the picture, like it’s neon, because I’ve seen that name before and there’s no way I was going to forget it. It was on some old papers my mother had been going through, when I was maybe about nine or ten. She told me it was her surname before she married my dad and I repeated it slowly a couple of times, enjoying how it felt as it rolled around my mouth. Half an hour later, Google informed me there were only 137 people in the UK with that surname, as opposed to ours, which is the twenty-fourth most popular one in the country. I remember thinking what bad luck it was that I’d ended up with a last name like Harris instead of a cool one like Mulberry. Hola, mi apellido es Harris. Doesn’t exactly have an exotic ring to it.

With Bake Off blaring, I read the story underneath the photo several times, saying the name in my head as my chest folds in on itself. Mulberry. I concentrate on taking deep, silent, closed-mouth breaths and keeping my body perfectly still, and try to translate a few of the sentences into Spanish, from memory. Most of the words aren’t covered by the secondary-school curriculum, though, not even for the undisputed top of the language class. Mulberry.

I fold the paper over, then over again so it’s just a wodge of old news with a photo of a man on top, and focus hard on the face behind the purple teeth and the twirly ’tache. I squint to blur the felt-tip additions and mentally compare it to that face in the photo albums I flick through every now and then to remind me a different version of my mother really exists.

I think about that guy for an hour or more, way after Bake Off finishes and my mother has dozed off. There’s a moment when she stirs and makes like she’s going to move off me and go to bed, but I grab the toes sticking out of the end of her cast and gently squeeze them. Don’t go. I don’t say it out loud, but for the longest time, we just stare at each other. She stays.

I hold on tight to those toes, but not tight enough because I wake up by myself on the sofa under a blanket, with the newspaper still in my hand and the sun coming up behind the curtains. Buenos días, chica. I lift my fingers up to the light, and they’re smudged black with newsprint. Mulberry.

3

Danny

When we were kids, my old man came up with a rule that made him the most popular person in our house, among very many other reasons. According to him, if things didn’t quite go to plan on your birthday, you were allowed another shot at it.