Krish, Dad and me are in Nana’s flat. We’re here for Krish to choose something of Nana’s. Krish didn’t even want to come . . . He only wants to be with Laila since she’s come out of hospital. Today, Krish looks more miserable than I have ever seen him. He goes around the flat peering into boxes and eventually finds a silver baby rattle on a blue ribbon for Laila. After that, he seems to lose interest. Dad’s busy looking through stacked-up papers and boxes in the cupboard. I can’t believe how organized Nana is. He finds some documents in one of the boxes to take back to Nana Josie. I roam around the flat showing Krish things I think he might like, but he just shrugs or shakes his head. I know what he means. It’s miserable being in Nana’s flat when she’s not here. It makes you remember all the fun we had here, in the past.

‘Remember that burping competition you had with Nana when we came to tea once?’ I ask Krish.

His face starts to brighten up a bit.

‘Or the time when you fell into the gloop by the pond, and me and Nana had to hose you down?’

He’s warming up a bit now.

‘And when we were little, how we used to climb over the wall, and Mum and Sheena from opposite broke down a bit of the fence so that me, you and her three boys could have a double-sized garden.’

‘Yeah! But then they moved out and the new family boarded up the fence.’

Cheering Krish up is going to be hard work today.

‘Remember May who lived in the flat upstairs? She used to wave to us from her window and throw us sweets in shiny wrappers. You thought it was raining sweets, the first time she did it.’

As soon as I say this, I know it’s a mistake.

‘Then she died,’ Krish sighs.

I have days like this too, since Nana was ill. Dad puts his arm round Krish’s shoulders, hugging him close, and, for a change, he doesn’t pull away.

‘You don’t have to take anything, if you don’t want to,’ Dad tells Krish, but Krish thinks Nana will be upset if he doesn’t choose something. Then Dad has an idea. He walks over to the cupboard he’s been looking in and takes out a blue cardboard box, covered in fine dust like brown flour, which Dad gently blows off its surface, making us all sneeze. In it, there are all Grandad Kit’s letters and photographs.

Grandad Kit died just before Krish was born. Krish often says things like, ‘At least you met Grandad Kit,’ and he seems quite jealous of that, although the fact is I only know things about Grandad Kit that other people have told me . . . it’s not the sort of knowing I have with Nana Josie. But I do sort of remember sitting on his knee. Once Mum told me the story of the day Grandad Kit died. She went to the hospital with Dad, saw Grandad’s body and held his hand. When my mum told Grandad Bimal that Grandad Kit had died, he asked my mum if she had touched his body.

‘Then the spirit of Kit will go into the new baby,’ Grandad Bimal told Mum. That baby turned out to be Krish.

Dad opens up the blue box and takes out a navy blue beret covered in medals as Krish fires questions.

‘Which war was Grandad Kit in? What did he do in the war? Who’s this in the photograph?’

When Krish finds out that Grandad Kit was a gunner in Malta during the Second World War, he is transformed; his arms morph into machine guns shooting planes down from the ceiling of Nana’s flat. I don’t think that Nana Josie would approve, somehow.

‘Can I have that painting of Grandad Kit eating fish and chips?’ Krish asks, stopping suddenly with his arm-gun firing in the direction of the painting, which has always been there, but I suppose he’s never really noticed it before. Actually, if you look closely, it’s the fish eating the chips, not Grandad Kit. This is the painting where Claude the Newfoundland dog has a head bigger than Grandad’s. Nana does some very funny paintings where she gets the perspective all wrong on purpose. The style is called ‘art naive’, but I think Nana really does see things a bit the way children do. I’ve done a painting of Laila in an art naive style where her head is too big for her shoulders and her arms and hands look really little in comparison to the size of her head. People say it does look a lot like Laila.

‘Take the easel, Mira.’

I hear Nana’s voice order me, as clearly as if she was standing right next to me in this room. I fold down the legs and drag it towards the car. Dad sees me struggling and takes one end and we carry it to the car together. Nana’s easel is surprisingly heavy.

As soon as we arrive at the hospice, Krish runs up to Nana to show her Grandad Kit’s things. He’s happy again, full of energy, but when he approaches Nana’s bed he sees how weak she’s become. Dr Clem keeps trying to get the right combination of drugs for her so she won’t feel any pain. He has to keep changing her painkillers because the cancer pain is changing too . . . getting stronger.

You can tell when Nana has been in pain because her skin goes grey and her eyes sink into her. If she’s had a bad night, she can hardly lift herself up off her pillows, but when she sees Krish, so enthusiastic, she tries really hard to look lively. He shows her the beret and the photos and the box and Nana puts on her glasses to read some of the letters from Grandad Kit.

‘I’d forgotten about these love letters from your dad.’ She looks up at my dad and smiles. I think of Jidé’s secret note to me. I think it probably is my first ever love letter.

For a moment Nana is lost in the photographs of her and Grandad Kit, black and white photographs taken on the Embankment with Toro their bulldog.

‘Look how young we were,’ Nana whispers.

‘You look like models out of a retro photo shoot. Errol Flynn and Audrey Hepburn!’ Dad says.

Nana sighs, as if to say, ‘Where has the time gone?’

‘Can I have Grandad’s beret then?’ asks Krish.

‘Of course you can,’ she says, but I can tell she thinks Krish has made a strange choice. I understand him though. It fills a gap in the jigsaw and there’s nothing Krish hates more than losing a piece of a jigsaw. He inspects the beret with all the medals on it and touches the textures on each one, as if trying to take hold of Grandad Kit.

‘It’s because I know you, Nana. I don’t really need anything of yours, unless you want to give me something . . . but I never knew Grandad Kit, or anything about you two together, when you were young.’

I think of Jidé . . . all he has of his sister and his mum and dad is a bit of cloth.

Nana holds Krish’s hand for a minute and he looks at her with his bright blue eyes.

‘Oh, and I forgot.’ Krish lifts up Nana’s painting for her to see. ‘I found something that both of you are in. You painted it and Grandad Kit’s in it. Can I have it, Nana?’

‘Yes, that one worked out well.’ Her laugh trails away into a distant memory that belongs only to her. ‘It made Kit laugh too.’

For a while Nana seems to be lost in the past, until her eyes come to focus on Mum feeding Laila, whose little body relaxes as her hand falls, slow motion, through the air. She’s still a bit weak after her illness. Nana picks up her thin wrist.

‘Shame she’s losing her fat bracelets. What did you choose for Laila?’ Nana asks us.

Krish shows Nana the silver rattle on a blue ribbon.

‘Apparently, that was my first rattle. Good choice, Krish.’

Nana tries to rattle it, but she doesn’t even have the energy to make the little bells ring.

Laila has fallen fast asleep. Mum lifts her gently and lays her on the bed next to Nana. Nana’s so small now, there is plenty of room. She puts her arm round Laila and sighs as if she’s the happiest person in the world. Mum sits close to the bed in case Laila rolls over, because if she needed to Nana would not be strong enough to pick her up by herself. Somehow Laila looks bigger than Nana; even after her illness she looks plumper . . . more alive.

My dad’s Uncle James and Aunty Ella arrive. Krish and me call her ‘Aunty Elegant’, because she is. Ella delicately picks up Laila’s rattle.

‘What an exquisite old rattle,’ she says, inspecting it.

‘That was mine, Ella,’ Uncle James tells her. ‘Mine had a blue ribbon and Josie’s had a pink one, but I won’t fight you for it, Josie!’

‘I should think not, James,’ Aunty Ella laughs.

The phone next to Nana’s bed rings. Dad picks it up.

‘Dan . . . V He doesn’t know who it is. Ah! Yes, Dan . . . from Suffolk . . . Yes, yes, Dan . . . of course, I do.’

Now he knows who it is.

‘Can you talk to him?’ whispers Dad to Nana, so as not to offend Dan if she doesn’t want to speak. She hardly wants to talk to anyone these days.

Nana nods.

‘I’m putting Josie on the phone for you. She might not be able to speak for very long, but she’s listening.’

Dad holds the phone up to Nana’s ear. I’m sitting right next to her so I can hear exactly what Dan’s saying.

‘Josie, I’m calling you from your cottage. I’ve been sitting in your garden all morning watching the flycatchers. You’ve got three chicks. They’ve come back to the same old pot, mouths open. Mum and Dad are in and out, feeding them all day long. I wish you could see them.’

Nana’s eyes have welled up. She can’t speak, but she passes the phone back to Dad and makes the shape of ‘thank you’ with her lips. Aunty Ella and Uncle James look worried, so I tell them the news from Nana’s garden.

‘The flycatchers have arrived.’

You wouldn’t think something like birds nesting could make you feel so happy and heartbroken at the same time, but it does. Dad speaks to Dan for a bit longer, thanks him for calling and hangs up.

Nana closes her eyes. These days, that’s the signal for us to leave. We all file past, kissing her. She doesn’t open her eyes. I am the last to say goodbye.

‘Did you take the easel?’ Nana whispers through her tears.

I nod.

As we walk out into the corridor, we pass Question Mark. I stand in the doorway for a moment, watching him walk across the ward to Nana’s bed. He pulls up the comfy chair, sits beside her and holds her hand. Question Mark feels me watching him and smiles up at me, a distant smile. Suddenly, I’m the stranger intruding on Nana and Question Mark . . . the stranger standing on the outside of their dying world.

When I get home, I run up to my room and call Jidé and we talk and talk and talk . . .