The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q Read Online Free Page B

reached for the next letter in the bundle. I put my hand on hers to stop her, and shook my head.
    ‘No, it’s OK. It’s great that you kept them. So those boxes are full of your other grandchildren’s letters?’
    Her eyes sank, and her smile disappeared. She took the bundle from me, and fumbled the rubber band back around it. She put it back in the shoebox, replaced the lid.
    ‘No. My other grandchildren don’t write. Nine grandchildren I got, and only one did ever write me letters, you. The others – nothing. Now Marion’s children, they don’t count, they grow up in Guyana, they know me. But Neville and Norbert – them children never write me. Just Christmas cards, birthday cards. And photos. Lots of photos.’ She sucked her teeth, a long drawn out choops sound. Then she chirped up again, grabbed my wrist, and said, ‘Hand me that album!’
    She pointed to one of the albums on the floor, half-wrapped in a lacy nylon petticoat. I leaned over, picked it up, and tried to hand it to her. She made an impatient flinging motion with her hand.
    ‘No, no, not that. The green one.’
    I handed her the green album. She sat back in satisfaction, laid the photo album across her lap, and opened it. She pointed to the first picture on the first page.
    ‘You!’
    I knew that photo, and all the other ones in the pages to follow. Gran flipped through the album, showing me the familiar pictures of me growing up, exclaiming over the ones she liked particularly. I knew them all; Mum had them in her own albums.
    ‘One t’ing I got to say for Rika,’ Gran said now, ‘she never write sheself, but she make sure you write and send photos. What she tell you about me?’
    That last was a shot out of left field, in a different tone and a different tempo, stripped of nostalgic chattiness; urgent, probing. I looked up to meet her gaze, and this time there was nothing of the mirth I had seen there before. What I saw this time was – anxiety. I didn’t know what to say.
    ‘Why – well, nothing, really.’
    ‘You mother still vex with me, after all these years. She pretend nothing wrong, but she vex bad. She didn’t tell you the story?’
    I shook my head. ‘What story?’
    Gran searched my eyes for a while, then seemed satisfied.
    ‘Nothing. It was nothing. Long time ago – over thirty years. She was only sixteen. You mother always take t’ings too serious – she too sensitive. She don’t forget or forgive. It was nothing, everyt’ing sorted out. But she don’t write and she don’t never come back home. Just Christmas cards.’
    I was embarrassed. ‘Mum always wanted to go home,’ I explained, ‘she always talked about Guyana, she calls it home. But it’s a long flight; she never had the money.’
    ‘Don’t give me that. Y’all was rich, rich. Y’all did go on big holidays; Kenya, Mauritius, America. But she never bring you home.’
    It was true. There had been a few years of wealth and opulence; Dad had even invested in a Docklands penthouse, just before he went bust and his plans to move there dissolved into thin air.
    ‘She said – she said Guyana had gone to the dogs. She said it was no place for a holiday. She said, when things get better, she’d take me.’
    But trying to excuse Mum only made things worse.
    ‘Holiday? Since when is going home a holiday ? She cut you off from you own roots, and that’s a crime. You don’t know nothing about where you come from. Not true?’
    I wanted to say, I come from London. Thereare my roots. That’s where I grew up. A London child; a South London child, to be precise. Streatham, Norwood, Crystal Palace. Croydon: that's my habitat, my territory. Those are my places, the localities where I prowl. I know the smells and the sounds; I’m sure I could find my way around blindfolded if I had to, and I rarely stray beyond my boundaries, because the sense of home begins to fade, and I start to feel slightly insecure and get fidgety. I will if I have to, of course, and it's