My mother had been going to the mainland every Tuesday for months. It was her day for seeing her mainland doctor, but what she really bought was something money couldn’t buy, a whole day to herself without the battering dialogue of my grandmother, Brenton’s sarcasm, demands from the guests, and the general lack of privacy. Sunita didn’t think it wise that my mother went alone on her Tuesday visits and the rest of us agreed. We feared her being lost, floating away into a crowd and never re-emerging. Or making a scene somewhere and ending up on the front page of a newspaper.
‘I’ll go with you, Mum,’ I said.
My mother declared that if she was to have a chaperone, then she wouldn’t go at all. And so, with our grandmother’s permission, Brenton and I decided to follow her. Sunita would take ca
