Long-distance

It was 14:25 on a Saturday, which meant it was 08:25 in Montego Bay, Jamaica.

Granddad had gone to sleep, but didn’t wake up.

Mum’s not been home since Thatcher raised the price of everything.

The call had come from that aunt, the one we’d not seen since she’d moved house without telling us. She said she didn't think mum would be welcome back home for the funeral, what with her ‘Henglish accent.’ The same aunt who’d had memorabilia of the Royal Family past and present scattered throughout her house like graffiti.

Another call came from a cousin, one that had known me as a baby, and who wrote us letters – to this day – from New York. She warned us that keeping a body in a morgue in Jamaica was very expensive. She asked if we would be at the funeral, because she hadn’t seen us in so long.

I ran to Tesco’s to buy some Captain Morgan’s. Mum’s tipsiness transported her back to her school days, a jock who was an A-grade student. She remembered the early morning sun caressing the goats in the field on the farm. How granddad told her she’d better hang onto her smarts, because she didn’t have much else.

It was part of why she left, she said. A tiny part.

He’d phone now and then to check she was still a civil servant, still a mother, and that he’d know otherwise, even over 4,000 miles away.

She smiled just as the tears fell.