On their way home from school, a little girl asks her mother how much she’d sell her for.
‘I’m never going to sell you,’ says the mother. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Pick a number,’ says the little girl, exasperated. ‘Any number.’
‘I’d never sell you!’ says the mother.
The little girl, who is already disappointed by her mother’s inability to name the exact colour of the leaves on the path, blows her cheeks out in frustration.
‘Please. Just pick a number higher than any number in the world. Like a billion and six.’
The mother stops at the old trailside bollard where the path flattens out. The truth is: she’s out of breath. Her cardio-vascular fitness levels are not what they used to be, and life is going at such a hurtling sickening speed that the morning and afternoon of school days have come
