communal hallway. ‘What about Windrush?’
‘Does that… apply to you?’ Mrs Dixit asked carefully. She only knew the basics about the Windrush scandal – people, especially from Caribbean countries, being wrongly deported from the UK – from snippets seen on the news.
‘I’m not sure, I haven’t checked. But I haven’t left the country, in case. And now my son wants to take me to Disneyland!’
‘We can have a lawyer look into it,’ Mrs Dixit assured her, ‘it will be fine.’ The possibility of Mrs Rampersad posing with her grandchildren beside Goofy was something the universe couldn’t possibly deny.
53 days since the accident
At Stem & Blossom the next morning, Mrs Dixit was trying to tame a particularly finicky bouquet when a drilling sound began.
‘They’re refurbishing the place next door,’ the wife owner complained, ‘it’s doing my head in! You can go early if you like?’
‘Doesn’t bother me,’ Mrs Dixit said, which was true. If anything, the noise focused her and she was able to make the grevillea sit right finally.
‘You’re a marvel, all the younger girls leave if they chip a nail!’
Mrs Dixit smiled and snipped at the bigger branches with a pair of shears, enjoying the way the ends ricocheted across the room.
An expensively dressed woman entered the shop, frowning at the noise.
‘Can you help?’ she asked, over the drilling. This question was directed at Mrs Dixit – the wife owner was still in the back. ‘Aren’t these lovely?’ The woman stepped forward and cupped the grevillea in her hands. ‘They’re so wild! As if they’re from an alien planet.’
‘Spider Flowers,’ explained Mrs Dixit. ‘Grevillea. People call them Toothbrush plants. They’re often used as filler, but I like them on their own. Get enough together, and they’re quite something.’
‘How much for them all?’
Mrs Dixit gave the (in her mind, extortionate) cost, but the woman appeared unfazed.
‘What’s the occasion?’ asked Mrs Dixit, as she wrapped them, adding some complimentary sprigs and branches to the flowers. She felt scruffy in front of the customer, with her jewellery in all the right places, and hair blown out, probably by someone fancy with no surname. She was aware of her own hands, dry and scratched from rose thorns, the nails bitten to the quick.
‘It’s a reward.’
‘Oh, for what?’ Mrs Dixit wasn’t naturally so forward, but you could get away with things in a shop. Liberties.
‘Getting out of bed this morning. For not throwing open the window and screaming into the void.’ Mrs Dixit listened intently. She hadn’t known these were rewardable actions. ‘You’re excellent, by the way.’ The woman nodded at the burgeoning bouquet. ‘Deft work.’
Mrs Dixit blushed; she was never good with compliments.
‘I hope your day gets better,’ she replied in her best retail voice, as she handed over the receipt.
‘They never do,’ the woman sighed and strode to the door brandishing the flowers like a battleaxe. ‘If it’s not one bell-end trying to ram it up you, it’s another. Honestly…’
‘Who was that?’ the wife owner asked, appearing as the shop door closed.
Mrs Dixit shrugged, her cheeks still flushed.
‘Someone having a slightly better day,’ she answered finally, as the drilling resumed.
Later, on her lunchbreak, Mrs Dixit realised she hadn’t told her employers yet that her husband was in a coma.
Shelly picked her up from work in a Land Rover.
‘This was Mum’s car,’ she explained. ‘It was in the shop when she had the accident.’
Mrs Dixit had to take a running jump to get up onto the seat, as if she was trying to mount a Clydesdale horse.
‘It’s very impressive.’
Shelly shrugged as she drove off. ‘They’re just things, aren’t they, cars? Homes are different. The estate agent is coming tomorrow to value Mum’s house,’ she was already sniffling. ‘I can’t believe we’re selling the place.’
‘Did you grow up there?’
‘Mum bought it when she left Dad,’ Shelly replied. ‘She wanted somewhere she could entertain – any excuse for a party. Her place was always a sanctuary I could go to if I was feeling down. Mum was my best friend, you know?’
Mrs Dixit nodded, but she didn’t know. Her mum had always been a cold, distant woman before she died. She could never imagine being friends with her.
Twenty minutes later, they pulled up outside a large detached house, red brick with mock Tudor accents – embellishments, Mr Dixit would have called them.
‘Is it upstairs, or is there a basement flat?’ Mrs Dixit asked, peering at the building.
‘What?’ asked Shelly. ‘No, it’s the whole place.’
‘The whole house?’
It was huge.
‘She bought it before all the prices went up,’