October 2026

She is filling the kettle when she notices the slippers by the door.

They are her mother's — soft-soled, the colour of old cream, the left one worn through at the heel — and they are still exactly where her mother left them, as if she has just stepped out to collect the post and will be back before the water boils.

That was five months ago. The kettle has sat empty since. The post has not come.

Margaret is here to collect what the estate agent called "the remainder of effects." She has a cardboard box. She has tissue paper. She has been very organised about all of it, which is its own kind of grief, she understands, though she would not say so to anyone.

The morning light comes in sideways through the net curtains and makes the kitchen look slightly unreal, the way photographs of rooms always look — too still, too held. On the fridge there is a magnet shaped like a cherry, and attached to it a note in her mother's handwriting: call M. re: Thursday.

She does not know which Thursday. She does not know what she was meant to be called about.

She puts the note in her coat pocket.

The kettle boils. There are no tea bags — she checked the cupboard last time — but she pours the water into a mug she recognises as one she bought her mother for Christmas four or five years ago. She stands there holding it, both hands around the warmth, not drinking.

Outside, a car starts and drives away.

She picks up the slippers and wraps them in tissue paper, carefully, as if they might still be needed, and puts them at the bottom of the box.

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