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‘Hey, Grandma.’ I can’t help but smile as she answers the phone in her sunny little room.
I hear her sip her tea and imagine her lips smiling against the bone china rim. ‘What’s up, lovey?’
‘Nothing’s up. How are you?’
‘It’s the middle of the day on Friday and you’re calling me. What’s up?’
I shake my head, but those damned tears that have been dogging me for days are threatening to fall. I blink my eyes angrily, staring at a family as they walk past me. Mum and Dad holding hands and three small children of varying degrees of growth and rugged-upness run past, looking as though they’re being pulled back by a magnetic force when all they want is to sprint along.
‘And is that birdsong in the background?’
I bite into the pain au chocolat; crumbs flake down my front. Absent-mindedly I brush them aside. ‘I’m on the Heath.’
‘You mean you’ve unshackled yourself from that desk?’
I laugh. ‘Yes, Grandma. From time to time I do get out.’
‘Have you spoken to your mother recently?’
I furrow my brow. Grandma is the only person on earth who understands my relationship with my parents. She understands that I love them, but in a dutiful way—they did give me life, after all. They also gave me self-doubt and insecurity and a sense that I’d never be good enough for anything other than the life they envisaged for me. Grandma tunnelled me right out of that existence, though.
‘Not for a week or so.’ Actually, it’s closer to a month. ‘You?’
‘They called yesterday. They’re in Cambodia.’
I arch a brow, imagining my perfectly manicured, elegant mother in Cambodia, of all places. ‘I trust the Shangri-La’s penthouse is sufficient?’
Grandma laughs. ‘Well, you know—they’re doing volunteer work.’
I burst out laughing at this ongoing joke between us. My parents are incredibly wealthy, incredibly entitled aristocrats and they have apparently reached a point in their life where they’re bored with that and are looking to ‘make the world a better place’. So far this has involved paying a lot of money to buy shoes for children in Africa, travelling to Lithuania to learn about child smuggling and now a trip of Southern Asia to ‘help provide vaccinations’ to the poor.
I wonder how helpful my mother—who faints at the sight of blood—and my dad—who can’t stand heat, mosquitos or poverty—are actually capable of being.
‘I think they’re going to cut their trip short,’ Grandma says, almost managing to keep the droll amusement out of her voice.
‘Oh, I’m so surprised by that.’ I fail miserably. ‘I daresay the philanthropic community of Cambodia will breathe a sigh of relief when they board their flight home.’
‘Yes, well... Their hearts are in the right places,’ she murmurs, and I nod.
Perhaps.
‘They’d do better to donate to a foundation,’ I say. ‘Money is what these people need. And then trained staff can do their jobs without westerners assuaging their guilt over the quality of our lives getting in the way.’
‘Phew, that’s been building up for a while, has it?’
‘Sorry. I just can’t stand volunteer tourism. If I see one more photo of a schoolfriend posing with emaciated children in Africa I’m going to punch something.’
‘Darling, it all brings attention to good causes.’
‘Yeah—and it makes rich people feel better about their rarefied existence in the process.’
‘Mmm...’
Grandma is nodding. I just know it.
‘So nothing’s going on, then?’ she asks.
