Mum is up and about and back to her crusty self. I get her over to the pig shed under cover of Dad’s golf umbrella and set her up in an upholstered chair that has seen better days. She’s muttering to herself while going through a box of bric-a-brac. I start out sorting a similar box but decide to toss the lot of it on the charity pile. I just can’t summon the energy to look at another mismatched, chipped salt-and-pepper set. Who will grieve the crocheted toilet paper doll?
I glance from time to time through the window cut out of the back of the building, at the rain flitting on the water that has accumulated there. If I suspend my disbelief, it seems a kind of coded song, the tempo of which ebbs and flows. I see it as colour – teal, orange – and am buoyed by it. There is that scent of car
