The bathroom floor was pleasantly cool under her feet. Staring at the bowl of the toilet, she wondered how it could be so hard for Mario to remember to pull the chain. When confronted, he said it was environmentally preferable and that there was no need to unnecessarily waste water.

‘What a load of old bollocks!’

She touched her fingertips to the thin wisps of straggly hair that constituted her eyebrows. Daily, she stared at the high arches and wished she had never plucked them, especially now that full, youthful brows were all the rage – whatever had she been thinking?

‘You look old, Bess,’ she whispered, pulling her skin this way and that, watching it bag and sag beneath her touch and patting the small pouch under her chin. It was rare for her to study her face in this way, preferring not to be reminded of how she looked.

‘You coming down, Bess?’ Mario yelled from the kitchen.

‘Yep. Coming.’ Bess pulled her hair into a scrunchie and went downstairs, hoping coffee might lift her mood.

Mario stood by the kitchen sink, beaming. He pointed to a large cellophane-wrapped orchid that stood proudly in a fuchsia-coloured pot on the draining board.

‘Happy birthday, love.’

‘Ah, thank you. I didn’t know if you’d remembered.’ She walked forward and kissed him quickly on the cheek, feeling the graze of whiskers beneath her lips.

‘Of course I remembered!’ He pointed again at the plant.

‘That’s . . . that’s lovely. Pretty.’

‘I got you a card, a really, really nice one, but I’ve lost it.’ He shook his head.

From anyone else, she might think of this as a poor excuse for not having bothered, but for Mario, who daily lost his car keys, a shoe, his glasses, the newspaper . . . she knew it was most likely to be genuine and that the card would be stashed somewhere safe and unpredictable, like in the fridge, on a shelf in the garage or in the space by the side of the telly where old magazines liked to gather.

‘It’s got a duck on the front.’

‘Oh! A duck?’

‘Yes, Bess. A duck.’

‘No doubt it’ll turn up.’ With a duck on the front. She didn’t confess to feeling a little indifferent as to whether it surfaced or not, picturing something garish, cartoon-like and very, very yellow.

Her phone buzzed with a text alert.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM! LOVE YOU! SEE YOU LATER X

‘Ah, it’s from Nat, bless her.’ She put the phone face down on the tiled countertop and opened the back door. Chutney popped his head out into the sunny morning and looked back at her as if to say, Do I have to? ‘Go on, Chuts, go and have your wee and then I’ll get your breakfast.’ He waddled out reluctantly.