The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q

Book 1: The Quint Chronicles

by Sharon Maas

Genres: Literary Fiction; Sagas; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Thirty years of family secrets. Three generations of women. One family heirloom that could change everything.

When she ran away from her childhood home in Guyana, Rika swore that she would never return. Cut off from her family, she has fought hard to make a life for herself and daughter, Inky, in London.

Now, over thirty years later, Rika’s cantankerous, wheelchair-bound mother, Dorothea, arrives in London. But as old wounds re-open, Dorothea and Rika are further apart than ever.

Inky soon learns that her grandmother is sitting on a small fortune. As she uncovers the secrets of the past one by one, she unravels the tragedy that tore her mother and grandmother apart. But nothing can prepare her, or Rika, for Dorothea’s final, unexpected revelation.

An epic, mesmerizing tale of tragic loss, the strength of words left unspoken, and the redeeming power of love.

Release date: January 30, 2015

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 482

Sample

I’m Inky; comes from ‘Inka’, a creative spelling of ‘Inca’. Mum’s the creative type; she named me in memory of her meeting Dad on a bus from Huancayo to Cusco back in the late sixties, a sixteen-year-old runaway passing through Brazil and Peru on her way to India. She ended up in England. If that seems a roundabout way of doing things, well, that’s Mum for you. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The whole story came out when, thirty years later, she and Gran decided to put an end to their cold war. Gran was coming to stay with us in London, which was why we were there that day at Gatwick.

‘Here they come!’ said Mum, and stiffened visibly in anticipation. She’d been nervous all morning, which with Mum meant she’d been even more silent than usual, responding to my meaningless chatter with the vague ummms and head-nods that told me she was hearing without listening. Now even the head-nods stopped and she just stared, fists clenched in anxiety as the glass doors slid open.

A new batch of passengers ambled into the arrivals hall; at first just one or two forerunners, then little clumps of them, pushing loaded trolleys or tugging bulging suitcases. Gran and Aunt Marion had changed planes in Barbados and these were mostly returning tourists, which was obvious at first glance. They radiated laid-back cheer, holiday glee; women with stringy blonde hair in disintegrating cornrows and men in shorts and flapping sandals, faces lobster-red or baked golden, smiling and waving at familiar faces in the waiting crowd. The aura of Caribbean sun and white sand still clung to them; you could almost smell the salty air wafting around them, tingling and cool. I swore I could smell coconuts. You could almost hear that calypso beat, the steel-band pulse, feel that lapping aquamarine sea. They almost danced in, to a reggae-rhythm, waving and cooing to friends and family in the waiting crowd.

Among the holidaymakers, a few naturally brown passengers strolled in. The locals: Bajans and other West Indians. I craned my neck, peering between the tourists for Gran. A hazelnut-brown little old lady in a wheelchair should be easy to spot. We waited.

A few last stragglers came through, and then – nothing. I looked at Mum.

‘Do you think they missed the plane?’

‘No – Marion would have rung me up. Maybe she had problems at Immigration? I hope her visa’s OK. I jumped through all the hoops about sponsoring her, but …’

We continued to wait. And then the doors slid open one last time and there they were.

My grandmother. Spitting nails. A crotchety old bag.

She wasn’t even looking out for us; for me, the granddaughter she’d never seen outside a photograph, and for Mum, the daughter she hadn’t seen for thirty years. This, I’d imagined, was supposed to be the momentous Grand Reunion, the Big Day when we all fell into each other’s arms weeping with joy. But it wasn’t to be; Gran was far too busy lambasting the neon-yellow-jacketed airport assistant pushing her wheelchair to look out for us. Her upper body was half-twisted backwards, all the better to look the poor man in the face, her own face distorted with fury. She jabbed the air with an admonishing finger and though we couldn’t hear a word, she was obviously bawling out her victim for some unknown transgression. So right from the inauspicious start, I understood that Mum’s guarded description of Gran was probably an understatement. Gran was a good deal more than ‘‘a bit difficult’’.

The assistant looked desperate, his relief on seeing us palpable. Just behind them, Aunt Marion came, pushing a baggage-laden trolley, her expression a mixture of embarrassment, anguish, and sheer exhaustion. Mum called out her name and waved wildly. Aunt Marion looked up and waved back, relief flooding her features too, and a moment later she and Mum flung their arms around each other. So at least they had a Grand Reunion.

The assistant dropped Gran’s wheelchair handles as if scalded, mumbled a few words about a missing suitcase to whomever was listening, and scurried off.

Gran and I looked each other up and down, silently; Gran still frowning as she surveyed me, her unfulfilled rancour still hanging in the air, looking for a place to land. It found me.

‘You look just like you mother at you age,’ she said. ‘Too thin.’

Her frown deepened.

She couldn’t pronounce her th’s. ‘Mudder’, she said for ‘mother’, and ‘tin’ for ‘thin’. I smiled to myself, in spite of the brusque greeting. It wasn’t often I got to hear a Guyanese accent. Mum had lost hers over the last thirty years, most of our friends and relatives from back home likewise. And yes, Mum still called Guyana home. I didn’t.

Mum herself had never returned, never seen her parents again. Her father died a few years ago, leaving the Georgetown family house, and Gran, to Aunt Marion. And now Marion, who had selflessly cared for the two old dears all these years, was also leaving home. Her own daughter, living in Canada, married, pregnant, and about to give birth, had invited her to come and help look after the baby. Who could blame Marion for jumping ship?

Aunt Marion’s last daughterly duty was to deliver Gran into Mum’s care, and here they were, the two of them. Poor Mum. Much as I looked forward to Gran coming, I’d been sceptical from the start. Mum couldn’t even look after herself; how would she cope with an invalid? But she’d been adamant. It was her duty. It was her turn now. Marion deserved a life. Mum herself needed to tie up a few loose ends with her mother, sort out some unresolved matters. Make peace. It was the right and honourable thing to do. It would be hard, she’d warned, but together we could do it.

I knew exactly what that we meant. I knew Mum. I knew she’d bitten off more than she could chew, and that once more she’d rely on me to pull her through. Trouble was, this noble task she’d taken on was open-ended.

I wondered casually how long Gran had to live before she, too, popped off; and then I caught her eye, just for a second. The lines of her frown relaxed, her eyes sparkled, the severity of her lips spread into a smile. Guilt flashed through me. It was as if she’d read my wicked thought. But then, still looking at me, she pointed to the wheels of her chair.

‘How you like me round legs?’ She cackled at her little joke, and clacked her dentures, the top row hanging loose for a moment. Without waiting for me to respond, she turned away, looked at Mum for the first time, and poked her in the ribs with a long bony finger.

‘The child too thin,’ she repeated, by way of greeting her long-lost daughter. She stretched out that skeletal finger again, this time to poke me. I took a hurried step back.

‘Bag o’ bones. You don’t feed she proper, or what? I know you can’t cook but when you got chirren to raise …’

Mum let go of Aunt Marion and spun around.

‘Rich, coming from you! When did you ever cook even one meal for us? Talk about pot calling the kettle black!’

Gran ignored the admonition. For my part, I was stunned. I had never, ever, in my whole life, heard Mum speak to anyone in that tone of voice: accusatory, resentful, and rude. It was a revelation. So Mum had an Achilles’ heel after all, and it was Gran.

‘I hope she ain’t a scatterbrain like you!’

‘Don’t you dare tell me how to raise my daughter!’

They glared at each other. Something passed between them. Even I, an innocent observer, could tell that a dark cloud of history hovered over their heads. I willed it to dissolve. Please, please, don’t make a scene. Not here, in public. This was supposed to be the Big Moment. The Great Reconciliation. They ought to be clasping each other in teary boo-hooing, exclaiming, ‘Oh, it’s been so long!’ and ‘Oh, how I’ve missed you!’

The menacing moment passed, and history fell between them with a thud; an invisible and impenetrable wall. Mum’s voice was mild on the outside, cold as ice on the inside.

‘Mummy, Inky is eighteen, not a child any more. She feeds herself, believe it or not! Anyway, welcome to England!’

She bent down to formally kiss the old lady. Gran sucked her teeth, pushed her away, and turned back to me instead. She leaned forward and stretched out for me again, this time with both hands, scrawny fingers waggling to beckon me nearer.

‘… and she in’t got no manners or what? Come child, give you ol’ Granny a big hug.’ Claw-like fingers closed around my forearms as she pulled me down. What could I do? I let myself be pulled in, leaned down and reluctantly pressed my cheek to her face. It was dry and wrinkled like old leather, yet soft as silk to the touch; dark as mahogany, it smelt of face powder mixed with something biting, lemony, old-lady-ish. She let go of my arms, placed those scraggy hands around my face, and looked into my eyes again. This time for more than a glance. Our gazes locked; hers held mine. I could not look away. These were not the eyes of a life-weary curmudgeon with one foot in the grave. Fire was in those eyes, and life; and, to my astonishment, an amused twinkle, as if she were enjoying a private joke, as if she read me through and through. Condescension fled. But I had no time to think, for Aunt Marion was pulling me away from Gran.

She folded me into her soft and generous body, kissed me on both cheeks. She smelt of stale perfume and perspiration; it had been a long trip, lengthened by the task of looking after a cantankerous old mother. We exchanged words of greeting. I vaguely remembered her; we’d met before, when I was about ten. She’d come to visit us in Streatham, just after Dad died. She’d comforted us and cooked for us; delicious Guyanese meals I’d never in my life tasted before, and won me over.

Gran was quite right; Mum wasn’t much of a cook. She was deeply and passionately into health foods and had raised me strong and healthy on a variety of whole grains, organic vegetables and healing herbs. But I hungered for good traditional food, and Aunt Marion had shown me a whole new culinary world: ‘good Guyanese cooking’, she‘d called it. But the memory of Aunt Marion and her luscious menus had faded over time, and today she was practically a stranger.

But not for long. As we walked the long corridors to Short Term Parking, me pushing the luggage trolley, Aunt Marion and I swung into easy conversation; and by the time we reached the lift it was as if I’d known her forever. Behind us, Mum pushed Gran’s wheelchair. It was a brand new one, state-of-the art, bought for her by Uncle Norbert, sent to Guyana especially for the trip and her sojourn with us. Mum had told me all these little details over the last few weeks, trying to fill me in on years of family history, yet doing so as vaguely as possible. She’d tried to describe the complicated web of relationships between her, Gran, Aunt Marion, Uncle Norbert and Uncle Neville; who got on with whom, who wasn’t speaking to whom, and so on. I’d been intrigued, but I could tell that this was only half the story; that what was left unspoken was the really interesting part. Mum was an expert at leaving important things unspoken.

Now, she and Gran were engaged in a boisterous quarrel and it lasted all the way to the car. That is, Gran was doing all the quarrelling; I could hear her tirade from several yards behind. It seemed that one of Gran’s cases had indeed gone missing, the one with all her valuables, and that was what she was so cross about, and she blamed everyone, including Mum, for its loss. Mum merely murmured calm rejoinders. She seemed to have regained her equilibrium, and that was a good thing. She’d need it with Gran.

‘They’ll find it,’ I heard her repeat, over and over again. ‘They always do. They’ll deliver it home in a day or two. You’ll see.’

But Gran was beyond calming. It was as if the Crown Jewels were in that case. In a sense, as I was later to find out, they were.

We reached home an hour later. The first thing we discovered was that there was no way Gran could use the wheelchair in the house. The doors were too narrow, the hallway too confined. The rooms too small, too cluttered. Later, we learnt the term ‘‘turning circle’’, and that there just wasn’t such a thing in our home. Gran would need a rollator to get around. We had to park the wheelchair outside the front door.

We’d rearranged the house so that Gran could live in the former dining room, on the ground floor next to the kitchen. But there was only one bathroom in the house, and that was upstairs, so she’d have to climb the stairs to get to the toilet. Mum thought there might be some help available from Social Services in getting either a stair-lift built in or an extra bathroom added downstairs, but in typical Mum fashion had not actually made any enquiries. There was the question of whether such help was also available for new immigrants; Mum didn’t think so, but she was still convinced that everything would work out for the best, somehow, if you just stayed positive and lived in the here-and-now, stress-free.

Mum was brilliant at philosophy and positive attitude, bad at paperwork, bureaucracy, accounting, and other pesky details of mundane daily life. Somehow, we always got by, on a wing and a prayer. As for the huge debt she’d inherited from Dad: if there was anyone in the world who could smile with a noose tightening around their neck, it was Mum.

Dad’s ghost still hung over us. It was his liver. In his youth, he’d had hepatitis while travelling in South America, and then the alcoholism of his final years. Liver cirrhosis in your early forties isn’t a pleasant way to go. He’d left the chaos of his financial mismanagement for Mum to sort out. She’d been struggling to do so ever since, and it seemed to have no end.

Gran was bursting for a wee, and naturally Mum had not yet bought the potty she’d said she would. She seemed to think these things would materialise out of thin air. So our first challenge presented itself: to get Gran up the stairs to the bathroom. She could shuffle slowly on level ground with a stick or an elbow to cling to, but stairs were a major problem. Mum and Marion each took one arm, and with Gran squashed between them, began the slow climb upwards.

I lugged the suitcases into Gran’s room. When she was halfway up Gran stopped, called my name. I stepped back into the hall. Gran was looking down. She hooked her eyes into mine again.

‘One year,’ she said.

‘What?’ I had no idea what she was talking about.

‘One year! At the most. Mebbe six months if you lucky. This ol’ body in’t got far to go. Just in case you was wondering.’ She cackled, turned away and continued up the stairs.

Gran lay down on her bed and immediately fell asleep. It was as if sunshine entered the house, dissolving a mist of darkness. Mum and Aunt Marion enjoyed another long embrace, right there outside Gran’s door. Mum, half the size of Marion in width and a head shorter, burrowed her face in her younger sister’s voluminous breast. A slight tremble rippled through her. Aunt Marion massaged Mum’s back with a gentle circular motion, as if rubbing strength into her.

They pulled apart, silently looked each other in the eyes for another eternity, then fled into the kitchen, still holding hands. I followed them.

‘I’m sorry to do this to you, Rika,’ Aunt Marion said as she poured water into the coffee machine. ‘Really, really sorry. But …’

‘Don’t apologise! Please don’t! I’ve felt so bad all these years, leaving her to you. Now it’s my turn. Inky, see if there’s any of that cake left from yesterday.’

It was some kind of whole-grain-nut thing Mum had brought back from her health food shop, and indeed, I found two crumbling pieces in a paper bag in the fridge. I took it out, put it on a tray with some plates, cups, spoons, milk and sugar, and carried the lot of it into the living room, where our dining table now stood. We’d had to rearrange the furniture to make room for it, taking out one of the sofas. That was now crammed into the junk room upstairs, shoved in with all the extra stuff we’d grown out of but never actually thrown out due to lack of time, or, more probably, motivation. The junk room was actually our third bedroom, and would have been useful as such, now that Marion was staying for a week, but then we’d need another room for the junk, which we didn’t have. So Marion would be sleeping in Mum’s room, Mum with me in mine.

They came in with the steaming coffeepot, still discussing Gran’s toilet arrangements.

‘If you can get a commode she’ll be all right,’ Marion was saying as she took her seat at the table. ‘You just need to empty it out regularly. But between you and Inky, it won’t be a big problem.’

‘It’s bathing her I’m worried about,’ Mum said. She poured three cups of coffee. ‘We’ll have to get her upstairs for that. And we don’t have a stand-up shower, only the bathtub; she can’t climb into that.’

‘Oh Lord. Mummy’s got to have her daily shower. What about this extension you were telling me about?’

‘It’s only theoretical,’ Mum said. ‘I was thinking we could add a room. Right there.’ She waved vaguely towards the garden. A bathroom extension, if one ever came, would have to go there; it was either that or next to the kitchen, which just wasn’t practical. Mum and Marion discussed the possibilities for a while, even getting up to inspect the house. Marion suggested putting up a wall through the middle of the living room, so Gran’s room would be right next to this fantasy extension, and the dining room back in its original location. There wasn’t much I could add to the conversation. I knew it would never happen. Finally, after all the visionary plans were made, Mum confirmed my assessment.

‘It’ll never get done,’ she sighed. ‘How’m I going to pay for it?’

‘I thought the Government took care of that kind of thing? That’s what Neville said.’

‘Not for Gran. She just arrived in the country. She hasn’t got permanent residence. I just don’t see them investing in her as an immigrant. And,’ she added, ‘It wouldn’t be fair on the British taxpayers.’ After a moment of silence, she added, ‘I just can’t afford it.’

They both sipped their coffee and ruminated.

‘What I’m wondering,’ Mum said after a while, ‘Is what Mummy’s going to do all day. Inky and I are both working. Won’t she be bored?’

‘Mummy, bored? Not on your life. You know her saying: ‘Only boring people get bored. Interesting people make their own entertainment.’ I bet you, in a week she’ll own the place.’

That was exactly what I was afraid of. I sipped at my coffee, dipped a piece of the nut cake into it and fished it out with a spoon, hanging on to every word they spoke. This was my life they were talking about, my world that was about to be shredded by a high-maintenance battle-axe. And nobody had ever once asked me.

‘But she had that exciting social life back in Georgetown. The politics. The Unions. All her friends, the women’s associations, the Old Girls Union…’

‘You don’t think she’ll have that here? Half of Georgetown emigrated to the UK in the last thirty years, the other half to North America. She can’t wait to catch up with old friends over here. She’s got an address book, so thick.’ Marion held up thumb and finger, an inch apart. ‘But you know what? Get her a computer. A laptop. Internet. That’ll keep her busy.’

‘I can’t afford a new computer.’

I spoke for the first time.

‘She could use your laptop, while you’re at work, Mum.’

Mum snapped her answer almost angrily, unusual for her. ‘No way. Out of the question. I’m not having Mummy poking around on my laptop.’

I realised why, right away. She was afraid Gran might read her private mail, find all those exchanges with her creditors, and discover the terrible secret of her debt. And immediately I knew, vaguely, the way one picks up on things over time without having them actually spelled out, that Gran’s incorrigible nosiness, more than her bad temper and bossiness, was the bone of contention between the two of them.

Mum’s flight from Guyana so long ago, and her decision never to go back all these years – decades – had something to do with Gran, that much I knew; but not the details. Mum’s break-away was a Quint family thing – taboo. I never asked why, Mum never offered an explanation. It was just one of those things, a fact of life. But, meeting Gran, picking up on clues, I now had an inkling. She was the reason. She must have done something unforgiveable.

It used to be, when I was small, that I asked to see my Granny. She was the only one I had, and I knew what grannies were like. Everyone else had one; all my friends. They cuddled you on their laps, hand-fed you with cake and spoiled you silly. Dad had been an orphan, growing up with an aunt in Northumberland, so there were no grannies from that side. And so I had clung to my romantic notion, created from those grannies I did know or had read about, and Gran had fed those fantasies. She and I had exchanged such letters! I’d written her one after the other as a child, told her everything, all the things I couldn’t tell Mum. And she’d always written back, warm engaging letters that had won my little-girl heart.

I’d made a dream Granny of her, and wanted to make it reality, visit her. But Mum always said no. We couldn’t afford it. And then I had grown up, and no longer asked to visit, for I had more ambitious dreams than soft-bosomed cake-baking grannies. The letters had long stopped flowing back and forth.

Now, I hadn’t written to her for at least six years. As far as I knew, she and Mum had never corresponded; not once in thirty-odd years. This whole visit had all been mediated and negotiated through Marion.

‘But your laptop stuff is password protected!’ I protested now.

‘You don’t know Mummy. She’d hack into my account.’

I thought of Gran and said to myself, no way. She’s much too old. But Marion seemed to take the notion of Gran as an IT hacker as a serious possibility.

‘Yes; I wouldn’t trust her with your private files. But you could maybe buy one on instalments,’ she suggested, and I laughed to myself. As if any company in the world would ever give Mum credit. But Marion couldn’t know that.

‘Or better yet, I could get Neville to buy it. Why not?’ Mum said.

We all looked at each other then, and laughed in unison. Of course, Uncle Neville would have to buy Gran’s new laptop. It was only fair, and he’d do it out of guilt.

Neville was one half of the bundle of trouble (Mum’s description) that came after Marion. ‘Obnoxious twins, Gran’s darling boys,’ Mum had said. The other twin was Norbert, who lived in New York City.

I’d met Neville a couple of times, but Norbert only once in my life. I was nine, and we were temporarily rich at the time. Dad, Mum and I had gone to visit friends of Mum’s in America – my Uncle Matt, actually, Mum’s godfather – and Mum had thought it her duty to visit her brother. It was a mistake; a big one. I don’t know what happened, but we didn’t stay longer than a day; from my childish point of view it had all been one of those stupid grown-up arguments about money. We hardly ever spoke about him at home, and once when I’d asked about him, all Mum had said was, ‘He’s just like Neville, only different. Worse.’ That told me everything.

Uncle Neville lived in Birmingham. He was a solicitor, stinking rich, and he had actually offered to take Gran in – of course he would! – but unfortunately his wife Monica was a hard-working solicitor herself and wouldn’t have the time to give Gran the care she deserved, and a professional carer was out of the question. The same was true for Norbert’s wife in New York; Norbert being just as willing to take Gran in, were it not for his wife’s stressful schedule. Norbert was an attorney, also stinking rich. The two of them were in competition to see who could best provide for Gran in other, non-caring ways – i.e. money. Both of them had promised to pay Mum monthly support to cover Gran’s expenses, and one of them had paid her travel expenses to London, the other Marion’s. Norbert had paid for Gran’s new convertible wheelchair, the one she had travelled with. So it was Neville’s turn to be generous.

‘Why don’t we get Neville and Norbert to pay for the bathroom extension?’ Marion asked. ‘It would be peanuts for them.’ But Mum shook her head.

‘Never. They’d say it’s just a trick of mine to get them to finance my home improvements. And anyway, can you see the two of them collaborating to buy anything together?’

That was another family thing: that Neville and Norbert weren’t on speaking terms, and hadn’t been since they were teenagers. A strange situation for twins to be in, but then the Quints – at least, this branch of the family – were all weird, with the shining exception of Marion, and, apparently, Granddad, while he was still alive. But at least Mum’s weirdness was somehow cute, whereas Neville and Norbert – well, the least said of them the better. Except that now, Gran, with all her own weirdness, was all geared up to occupy a huge chunk of my life, and I’d better develop some survival techniques.

‘How ill is she, anyway?’ Mum asked then. ‘Does she need to see a doctor soon?’

Marion shook her head. ‘She’s frail, but not ill. Nothing’s wrong with her except general wear and tear. And as you may have noticed,’ – she chuckled wryly – ‘her mind’s as sharp as a needle. Plenty of life force there. She’s got a good ten more years to go.’

Mum squirmed, grabbed the coffeepot and began to top up everyone’s cup. Marion placed a hand on Mum’s shoulder, and rubbed it.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll take her back when I can.’

But Mum instantly pulled herself together.

‘I’ll be fine!’ She said brightly. ‘And I’ve got Inky as back-up. Inky’s a jewel.’

‘I was just wondering,’ I asked casually, ‘Does Gran have – you know – powers? Like, knowing the future, or reading people’s minds, stuff like that?’

‘Ha!’ Marion chuckled again. ‘Times, I really think she does. She’ll say something uncanny, turns out to be true, and you have to ask yourself, how does she know? But of course she doesn’t. Not really. She’s just good at guessing. That’s her thing. Trying to impress.’

I nodded in agreement. She’d just been guessing around, trying to make an impression.

‘Yes, and she’ll stoop to any …’ Before Mum could finish the sentence, Marion broke in.

‘And stubborn as a mule. Once she’s made up her mind about someone or something she won’t give up. She won’t give up anything that’s hers. Wait till she unpacks her bags. You’ll see… And that’s just a fraction of it. The rest we had to box and ship over. It’ll arrive in about a month.’

‘What! More stuff! Where am I to put it!’

‘In the junk room, Mum. Where else?’

‘But I was about to clear out the junk room, make an office!’

‘Ha! You’ve been saying that for years!’

‘But I really am going to do it – soon! I can’t put any more stuff in there!’

‘And even then it’s not everything,’ Marion continued. ‘There’s a whole lot we had to leave behind – Daddy’s old Berbice chair, other furniture, big things. They’re all stored in Lamaha Street, in Aunt Evelyn’s old room. And boxes and boxes and boxes of junk. All Daddy’s office files. Mummy refused to sell it or give it away or chuck it out. She clings to everything, especially if it belonged to Daddy. It’s like she keeps him alive that way. She seems to think she’ll be going back home someday. I had to leave her that dream; the house is too big for Evelyn and she wants to move out and rent it out. If only we had the money to renovate it … Mummy said …’

Perfectly on cue, a loud banging interrupted her. We all looked up.

Gran stood in the open doorway, walking stick in hand. She banged it against the wooden floor one last time and then, assured that she had our undivided attention, said:

‘Where the telephone? I need to call the police about that suitcase. Somebody must be teef it and I need to report it.’

I looked from Marion to Mum. ‘Teeth?’ I asked.

‘“Teef.” Thief,’ said Mum. ‘It’s a verb in Guyanese.’

That evening Mum called together what she called a Family Council. She had something to tell us, she said. Once we were all seated around the dining table she launched into her spiel. This was a different Mum to the one I was accustomed to. She was authoritative, determined, and very, very serious.

‘I just wanted to say,’ she said, in this new, stern voice, ‘that I want us all to get along, especially you and me, Mummy.’

She looked straight at Gran, who was doing her best to pretend she wasn’t listening, flipping through a TV magazine she’d picked up along the way.

‘Mummy! I’m talking to you!’

Gran looked up then, closed the magazine with some reluctance, and scratched her head.

‘Is what?’

‘This is an experiment. It can only work under one condition. I’m sorry I snapped at you yesterday but that could happen more often if you don’t keep to the rules. Just one rule, really. This is a fresh start; a new beginning. I want a clean slate. The past is past: done with. Whatever happened then has no bearing on now. I want us