‘Thought you needed checking up on,’ Mumshine says, and snorts at her own dumb joke. Hope wakes, sits up erect, pulls her thumb out of her mouth, dumbfounded, recognises her beloved grandma, rushes over, and we tumble across the floor in a tornado of hugs.
‘Where the f**k have you BEEEN, oh my God, Mumshine! I went through, through the-I almost didn’t get OUT, Mum, what the f**k?! I needed you!’
‘You’re here now,’ she says. ‘That’s all you need to ask yourself when the road gets hard. Am I here? Am I alive? If the answer is yes…’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ I double down on my squeeze. I let my chin stroke her lips, her moustache hairs brush my nose. I let her moist eyes press against mine. I let her so close her eyelashes tickle my cheeks.
Mumshine says she pushed a scooter for miles across the cit
