Gran lives about half a kilometre from my house, but for all Mum cares she could be in another state. I’m pretty much the only one who visits her regularly and I understand the reasons for that. Gran is . . . difficult? No. Well, maybe. Quirky, certainly, but sometimes in a way that gets under your skin and irritates. She’s Dad’s mum but he doesn’t visit either, mainly because he died when I was six years old. That’s a decent enough excuse, I guess. Uncle Mike, Dad’s brother, drops in to see her occasionally, for reasons I’ll get to.

I let myself into Gran’s house on my way home from school. She gave me a key a couple of years back just in case she dropped down dead doing her laundry. Ever since, I’ve worried I’ll find her body over a pile of washing. So I always call her name when I’m in the door, not just so she isn’t scared when I loom in her living room, but also to see if silence is an indicator of rigor mortis setting in. Most times she doesn’t answer. She blames it on her hearing, but I reckon it’s to put the shits up me. Gran is that kind of woman.

There was no reply to my calling out.

Gran’s house smells of dust and decay. So does Gran, if I’m going to be honest. I don’t know why. She’s somewhere in her eighties but still showers herself daily and even scrubs her floors twice a week. I’ve never scrubbed a floor and I don’t intend to. I can’t see the point and Gran’s never explained it.

I found her in the living room. Living. She was scrolling on her phone like a pro. She only got a phone about six months ago but has taken to it like a teenager. I have no idea what she does on it. I ring her often but she never picks up.

‘Hey, Gran,’ I said.

‘I hate the word “Gran”,’ said Gran. ‘I’ve told you millions of times, Grace. Makes me feel old.’

‘You are old,’ I pointed out.

‘I know. So I don’t need reminding. Call me Angelica.’

I sat in the chair opposite her. It must be about as old as her and shows similar signs of fraying around the edges.

‘Your name isn’t Angelica,’ I said. ‘It’s Beryl.’

Gran put the phone down on the arm of the chair and pointed at me.

‘I identify as Angelica,’ she said. ‘So that’s who I am. I’ve read a lot about this, people identifying in various ways.’

Gran might be old but she is still dealing from a full pack. This kind of conversation happens all the time because she enjoys pulling my strings, trying to get a reaction. Most times I don’t, just to spite her. She understands that too. This time I just smiled.

‘Did I ever tell you about the time I was a suffragette leader,’ said Gran, ‘and won voting rights for women back in the United Kingdom?’

I knew I shouldn’t react. Gran loves it when she gets a fish on the line, but if I’m going to be honest I enjoy most of the nonsense that comes from her mouth.

‘Gran . . .’ I said.

‘Angelica,’ said Gran.

‘. . . we’ve been over this. Women got the vote in the late nineteen twenties. To have been a leader in the suffragette movement you’d have to be at least a hundred and twenty years old.’

Gran looked down at her body and spread both arms to indicate it.

‘And your point, Grace?’

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

Tea is a good conversation stopper with Gran. She drinks litres of it. Maybe it’s a preservative. I went into the kitchen without waiting for a reply. Gran has never turned down a cup of tea. She’ll probably be buried with a covering of tea bags. Mind you, she only accepted the bags a couple of years back. Before that it was leaves and strainers. I put the kettle on and got out the pot – another item that seemed to have been manufactured in the same year as its owner. I resisted the urge to dump the tea bags straight in. The pot has to be warmed first. I can’t believe anyone could tell the difference, but Gran can. I do it deliberately from time to time and she always sends me back to do it again. She’s like a fine-wine expert who can tell you the exact location of the vineyard and the ethnicity of the person who trampled the grapes. If it wasn’t a skill that was so completely useless, I’d be impressed.

I brought the tray back in with sugar and a small jug of cream. Cream, definitely not milk. And white sugar. Gran has three teaspoons in every small cup. I pointed out once that with all that fat and sugar she was taking years off her life.

‘Oh yes,’ she’d said. ‘Everything’s bad for you these days. Chocolate, coffee, though sometimes you hear that they’re actually good for you. Meat. Anything fried. White bread, because it’s full of preservatives. I must’ve misunderstood the word “preservative” my entire life. Smoking. In my day everyone smoked. Doctors especially. Now they tell us it kills.’

‘Gran,’ I’d said. ‘Smoking does kill.’

‘I know,’ she replied. ‘But if you listened to all the experts, we’d only ever eat raw vegetables. I am not a rabbit, Grace, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

I sighed, but Gran was on a roll.

‘And all these things that will take years off your life . . . they don’t take them off at the beginning when everything was fun. When you were going to parties and having sex with anything that moved . . .’

‘Gran!’

‘. . . it’s at the end of your life. So you eat white bread and you die a year early? Okay, saves a year of mumbling to yourself in a wheelchair and soiling your underwear constantly. I’ll take white bread, thank you very much. With sugar on it.’

It’s difficult arguing with Gran sometimes.

She stirred in the three sugars, blew on the surface of the liquid and raised the cup to her lips, peering at me over the edge.

‘Have you got a girlfriend yet, Grace?’

‘Gran, I’m not gay,’ I replied.

‘That’s a shame,’ she said. ‘Keep men out of your life is my best piece of advice. May the Lord protect and save us from swinging dicks.’

I remember Gran at Dad’s funeral. I was only six and had no real idea what was going on. I mean, I knew it was a solemn occasion and that there were lots of people with serious expressions and new clothes. I also knew that this was something I had to endure and that behaving like a kid wasn’t going to cut it. Mostly it’s fragmented images, like seeing something reflected in a cracked mirror. But I remember Gran, dressed all in black and standing bolt upright as they lowered Dad into a hole in the ground. She didn’t cry. She didn’t say anything. I had no way of knowing what was going through her mind. She looked at me once and held my gaze for the longest time. Then she went back to her house. Alone. Probably drank endless cups of tea and ate white bread.

I don’t know about love. I mean, I know the word and what it signifies, but I don’t understand the emotion itself. I think about my family and I try to understand how I feel about them: Mum, Gran, Jake and Uncle Mike. I should feel love, that’s what’s generally agreed, but I can’t kid myself that I do. I don’t hate them, don’t get me wrong (though Uncle Mike is a recent exception). But the word ‘love’ doesn’t seem to fit. They are there and I feel things when I’m around them, but I suspect the emotion that others apparently feel all the time is just . . . absent from me. Like there’s an ingredient missing from the recipe.

The possible exception is Gran.

She makes me laugh. I like being around her. If she died I’d feel sad. But I don’t know if I’d feel sad for her or sad for me that I can’t enjoy her company anymore. It’s difficult. Do I love her? I know I’d like to. But I suspect that’s not enough for a normal person.

I’m clearly not a normal person.