“Those stairs are not ideal.”
“You ought to think ahead before thinking gets harder.”
Melissa would open her phone at my kitchen table and show me pictures of retirement flats with cream walls, clipped lawns, and smiling residents sitting in chairs that looked chosen by a committee.
“Some of them are lovely,” she would say.
Daniel would nod as if she had offered me a gift.
I would wrap my hands around my mug and say I was fine.
In Britain, “I’m fine” can mean many things.
Mine meant, please stop trying to move me out of the only place where your father still feels near.
They did not hear it.
Or perhaps they heard it perfectly and chose not to care.
Daniel started talking about paperwork.
Not kindly, either.
Practically.
Coldly.
