PART 1 — FOUR SEVENTEEN
It started at seventeen minutes past four on a Thursday with eight words on a screen.
Mum's moving in. It's decided.
I was at the kitchen table with a client report open and I read it twice, genuinely assuming it was about somewhere else.
Then I rang him.
"What does decided mean?"
"She needs somewhere for a bit." Dalton had the hands-free on. I could hear his indicator.
"How long is a bit?"
"Few weeks. Couple of months."
I shut the laptop.
"And when were you going to ask me?"
"She's my mother, Mira."
"I'm aware of who she is."
Then he did the list, which he had obviously rehearsed in the car. Her rent had gone up again. She hates that flat. She's on her own all day. The woman upstairs has a dog.
And then the bit that did it.
"Bette can't have her. She needs the back room for the business."
I sat there looking at the splashback.
"So your sister's home office is sacred and mine is a desk we can shift upstairs."
"You're only in it three days a week."
There it is. There is always one sentence, in these things, where you can hear that a meeting has been held.
Three days a week. He knew the number. He had used the number. Somebody in that family had said she's only in there three days a week out loud, in a room, to the others, and worked out that it made the maths acceptable.
"Ring her," I said. "Tell her to turn round."
A long pause.
"Dalton. Is she already on her way?"
He hung up.
At eleven minutes past five a silver SUV came up my drive at a speed I would not use on my own gravel.
Audrey got out of the passenger side. Bette got out of the driver's side.
Neither of them looked at the house.
They went straight round the back and put the tailgate up and started unloading.
Three suitcases, the big ones. Two plastic storage boxes with lids. A garment bag so full it had gone round. A carrier bag that clinked, which turned out to be about eleven bottles of prescriptions and a pill organiser the size of a laptop.
And a peace lily in a ceramic pot, which Bette carried with two hands and set down on my step like it was being delivered.
