the intricate arches and turrets of King’s College, contemplating the dim lamplit rooms of the college where she met her husband. Before Alzheimer’s took hold, Esme told great tales about her husband, though spoke rarely of her daughter. The only story she’d tell was the story of Scarlet’s birth, how she was born feetfirst, on a river of screaming blood, in the moment between one day and the next. Whenever Scarlet asked for other, less gory anecdotes about her mother, Esme fobbed her off with fripperies. And that was before; now Scarlet only gets information she can’t trust at all.
Excepting the rare snapshot image, the main thing Scarlet remembers about Ruby is how she looked: the same red curls, the same brown eyes. Which is lucky, since she doesn’t have a photograph, everything having been destroyed in the house fire less than a decade ago, the fire that killed her mother.
“Look, Scarlet, isn’t it beautiful?”
Scarlet follows the point of her grandma’s curled finger to the orange sky breaking like cracked eggs above scalloped stone spires. Sometimes, when she’s cleaning tables, Scarlet stops to gaze across the road at King’s College, the latticed stained-glass windows of the chapel set into sculpted stone walls and topped with fluted pinnacles. A flag flickering atop the central tower like a flame. Scarlet feels comforted, though she can’t quite say why, to imagine that stained glass being fired in a furnace nearly six centuries ago, created and crafted by expert hands over the course of two hundred years. The solidity of King’s is reassuring somehow, offering a pleasing permanence in this too quickly changing world.
“Yes.” Scarlet smiles. “It’s like Bonfire Night. I’ve made cinnamon buns. Would you like one? A treat for dinner.” No matter that they’d eaten crumpets for dinner last night—her grandmother won’t remember.
“Oh, yes.” Esme smiles like a delighted child. “They’re my favourite.”
“I know.” Scarlet touches her grandmother’s shoulder before turning away. She hasn’t made cinnamon buns but still has a batch from yesterday. She’ll heat them in the microwave, though Esme would have a fit if she knew it, believing microwaves to be the Devil’s work. She didn’t speak to Scarlet for two days after she bought one, though her grandmother doesn’t remember that anymore either.
The trick to reheating is not to overdo them, only warm the centres, then pop them under the grill, to get that slightly crisped, just-baked topping. And Grandma will never know. Although the heat of the plate might give Scarlet away. It’s so hot that anyone else would drop it, but Scarlet can pull trays straight from the oven without flinching, something her grandmother has never been able to do. Not that Esme has baked in years.
In the kitchen, Scarlet fills the dishwasher—a concession to modernity even her grandmother couldn’t resist—while the microwave whirs. When it pings, she sets the plate on the counter to cool a little and switches on the dishwasher. Nothing happens. No industrious sounds from behind the flip-up plastic door. Scarlet waits. She presses the button again.
“Shit.”
She kicks it. Still nothing. Last month the fridge—which, at £356, was cheaper to replace than to fix, plus an extra £125 to take it to the dump. Now the fucking dishwasher. Which, at £2,575, must be fixed instead of replaced.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
Popping the cinnamon buns under the grill, Scarlet glowers at the dishwasher, in the vain hope of intimidating it into working. When that fails, she gives it another swift kick, picks up the plate, and stalks out of the kitchen.
Scarlet sets the buns on the table. For a moment, Esme seems not to notice, then pulls her gaze from the sunset to Scarlet.
“What—why . . .” A frown breaks across Esme’s brow. “What’s this?”
“Cinnamon buns. A treat for dinner, reme—” Swallowing the word, Scarlet gives the plate a nudge. “They’re your favourite.”
Her grandmother frowns down at the buns. “They are?”
“Try one, Grandma. You’ll love it, I promise.”
Esme eyes the plate. Before Alzheimer’s, she’d adored all baked goods. If it consisted of flour, sugar, and butter, Esme gobbled it up, no question. Now she’s suspicious of everything, like a child apprehensively eyeing a plate of broccoli. And it always breaks Scarlet’s heart a little.
“Please, Grandma, just taste them.”
Esme considers the cinnamon buns for a moment longer, then nudges the plate away, folds her arms, and returns her gaze to the sunset.
Over a decade ago
Everwhere
It is a place of falling leaves and hungry ivy, mist and fog, moonlight and ice, a place always shifting and always