Pria climbed up on the coffin stand, picking at the celtic lettering. Usually such a good girl, Kristal supposed this rendezvous with a dead grandmother she’d never met was pushing her seven-year-old grace a bit too far.

‘Will I get to see Daddy when he’s dead?’ Pria asked, her sweet meandering words hanging like a song in the funeral parlour’s humidity. Turning around to berate her daughter, Kristal realized that, of course, she’d asked in all earnestness.

‘Pree… Baby…’, Kristal began, clueless as to how the sentence would end. Maybe it had been a mistake to let her see the body.

‘She looks like you, Mummy’, said Pria. ‘Do I look like Daddy?’ So many questions, yet she had to give an answer. If her mother’s death was to give her another chance, she needed to take it seriously.

‘I guess you do darling, a little’, she said, sweeping aside a stray black curl from Pria’s teardrop face. ‘Except you’re far more beautiful of course. But you have his hair, his eyes. You’re just perfect, Baby, Mummy’s little Indian princess.’ Pria, unmoved by the flattery, stared nonchalantly into Kristal’s green eyes.

‘Will I ever see him?’ she asked, ‘When he’s dead like Nanna? That’s when you find people again isn’t it?’

That’s when I find people, more like, thought Kristal. It wouldn’t take seven years, even infant years, to understand that this posthumous reunion was something out of the ordinary. But regrets got you nowhere – if she’d listened to her late mum at all she’d have remembered that one. Anyway, she was sure life was better for Pria now, away from that rough life, an outsider always in fear of the next troublemaker, the next visit from the law. Nevertheless, she knew now that there were certain values of her mother’s gypsy lifestyle she’d been wrong - cruel in fact - to reject.

Finding that toy post-box had brought back memories she’d worked like mad to leave behind. Now that she understood a mother’s love, she regretted the way her feisty younger self had denounced all that her own mum had done for her. As she passed her on, into the other, better life she had believed in, Kristal longed to be able to send her just one simple message, a couple of lines letting her know that it hadn’t all been in vain. But she knew there was no point; she couldn’t make herself believe. Gazing at the flowers, she remembered her mum’s hair in the eighties, woven with forget-me-nots like a bride’s. Mary must’ve been nearing thirty as Kristal herself was now, yet she always maintained an impression of childlike innocence, in spite of everything she did. She’d always believed that Sean – Kristal’s father - would come back, that running away from Bath Road with him would one day be worth it. Kristal had realised even at age four that Daddy's handsome goodbye was forever.

‘Nanna would have loved these flowers, Pree - which ones are your favourites?’

Pria wrinkled her forehead again. Opening her sparkly shoulder bag, she took out her new mobile phone and started to fiddle. ‘The big daisies’, she said. ‘Will I ever see him, Mummy?’

Kristal picked her daughter up off the viewing block and lowered her gently to the ground. Fixing her gaze, she said, ‘I don’t know, Darling. This was a special thing with Nanna Mary. We don’t know where Daddy is, just like we don't know where Grandaddy is – he’s got a whole different life to yours and mine.’ Shacked up with some unfortunate teenage girl, she thought. ‘Maybe Mummy can track him down and you’ll see him one day, and if you do see him, he’ll be alive, I promise. But we might not find him, Baby. And we don’t need him, not really. You know you can just ask me for anything you want, Pree, don’t you?’ A single tear escaped Pria’s lazy eye; perfectly formed and soundless it trickled down her cheek. She picked up her phone and walked solemnly towards the door, dragging her bag along the cold stone floor.

‘This’ll all make sense one day, Pria’, said Kristal, ‘honest it will.’ Her daughter stopped walking, but she didn’t look back.

‘I’ve seen enough of Nanna Mary now, Mummy’, she said. Kristal reached out her hand and Pria took it, squeezing tight.

The phone call came when Kristal was at work.

She’d come into the salon at 7.30am to avoid the rush hour traffic, which seemed to be getting earlier and earlier every day now. Left Pria with Zosia, her new Polish neighbour. Zosia would give Pria a good breakfast before she walked her, along with her own children, to school. It seemed a shame the kids couldn’t see themselves to school these days, but there was no way she was taking a risk. It was like this Facebook thing. Pria thought her an ogre for not letting her go on it, but there was no way she was having her daughter plastered up there in cyber space with so many weirdos about. Every day clients came in with doom and gloom tales of modern life; turning the conversations around to holidays and birthday drinks wasn’t as easy as it used to be.

She was just finishing a restyle at the time – a confident Jamaican lady called Marilyn who’d walked straight in off the street. Kristal loved working with Afro-Caribbean hair and restyles were her favourite; it was like being back at college again, the challenge of transformation. She checked the calendar for the second time that day: the next competition wasn’t until the sixteenth of August, still six weeks away. She had her thirtieth birthday to contend with before then, so time passing nice and slow should really be a good thing.

She thought about all she’d wanted to achieve by thirty. Not bad, considering. Though painful, the clean break she’d made from Mary and Eagle’s Hill when Pria was born had enabled her to wholly embrace her own future. She and her mum had barely spoken in any case since she’d moved away from the site at seventeen, caught up in a tornado of teenage ambition. She’d lived with a string of obliging ‘acquaintances’ until she found her feet and won an assisted place at Brunel to study hairdressing. She secured her first job in record time, and quickly made a name for herself. But she never left a forwarding address. She’d seen Mary when it suited her. How the heads had turned when she rocked up on the site wearing the latest fashion and the aroma of Chanel. The unexpected pregnancy didn’t at first seem to fit with her agenda. Suspecting ridicule again on the site she stayed away. But Mary found out the news somehow, no doubt through one of her witchy friends, and she managed to track Kristal down. Kristal was furious, suspecting Mary had known where she was all the time but had chosen to let her believe otherwise. She’d shown up at the salon, clearly lubricated. Her eyes shone as she looked around her, drinking in every inch of Kristal’s new world. But it wasn’t with pride that they shone; Kristal suddenly felt gangly in her patent heels.

Looking at Mary made her stand up straight. Her mother’s once beautiful hair was thinning, and her patchwork clothes looked dowdy and out of place in the salon. She smelt of patchouli, and the weakness Kristal had run away from still quivered sweetly in her meek smile.

‘Don’t come here again, Mum’, Kristal had said, ‘I don’t need your type here.’ She meant it; she couldn’t have a repeat of this scene. Plus no way was she taking her baby down the site. She had to stick to her resolve, even when Mary battled it with more strength than Kristal knew she possessed.

The day of the phone call, Marilyn was celebrating her pearl wedding anniversary.

‘Thirty years! What an achievement!’ said Kristal, meaning every word. Her entire lifetime… It turned out Marilyn’s stunning Gucci bag was a present from her husband, Fraser.

‘I just want to ensure the years coming are as new and exciting as the ones gone by’, said Marilyn. ‘A little surprise can’t hurt anyone now, can it?’

Reinvention was promised on the glass door in sparkly purple italics– it was what Kristal did best. Occasionally a customer would book with a name she recalled all too well from her school days. Her own name, now celebrated in silver lettering in this central thoroughfare, meant nothing to them. Though renowned at school, she was never important enough to become a memory. Kristal loved that she was unrecognisable, entirely re-made as a fashionable, classy businesswoman.

Marilyn was not your regular ‘reinvention’ cut. Men usually featured in the motivations of Kristal’s customers, but rarely as something to be celebrated. The couple were off to Venice for the weekend. Personally Kristal hoped to avoid such a destination for the rest of her days, but she nonetheless cooed enviously over the romance, the history, and the famous canals. Meanwhile she transformed Marilyn’s outgrown cornrows into a sleek red and black catwalk creation. Her client would be bella of Italia, and by the look of her smug smile, she knew it. Plugging in the GHDs, Kristal turned to admire her own artistry. Though this woman must be approaching fifty at least, she shone with the youthfulness of a girl half her age. Kristal supposed it was love could do this. But still, was it ever worth the hassle?

Then the telephone rang.

‘Excuse me, Marilyn’, she said. These were the only times she regretted not having an assistant, but it was the expense and potential for abuse of trust that held her back. How could anyone else work as hard as she did for her business? ‘Kristal’s!’ she sang, ‘How can I help you?’ There was a pause before a gruff male voice confirmed her as daughter of Mary O'Brien. He introduced himself as a close friend of her mother’s, though she’d never heard his name before.

Seven years - more - reduced to nothing as Terry broke the news. Kristal’s first emotion was resentment – that she should have to think about that woman at all, on an otherwise amiable day. Amid gargled excuses of busyness, she scribbled down a number; involvement in these customs was near enough obligatory. Mary’s dead, she’s gone, Muh’s dead. No matter how she said the words, the lack of impact disappointed her. But then, looking around at the salon, and her blissfully satisfied customer, it was guilt that stung her like heartburn. Collapsing to the hard, polished floor, she let the voice talk on but she wasn’t listening. Now she would have to go back - back to the site, back to everything she’d left behind her - and yet without the chance to make up.

It was a short journey from her flat in Cotham, through St. Paul’s, down the M32 and across to the A4 – what now remained of Bath Road – and of course the site. The Eagle looked down at her in her little Renault Clio; she shrank amongst the traffic.

Arriving at the site was like stepping into one of her nightmares. The vans, the washing shed, the heaps of rubbish, the smell: it was all as she remembered except shabbier, dirtier, less utopian. There was a collection of metal scraps, which may well have still been Jinx’s, but they glared with rust. Although the angry skies threatened rain, there was no sign of the bright plastic covers she remembered. She realised there must have been some magic about this place before, remarkable now by its absence. The majority of the site’s inhabitants appeared to have left with it. Tucked away in its far corner, Mary's van fitted well into the general vision of decay. Mould had developed around the windows and the door - which by the look of things didn’t close properly anymore. As they moved closer, Kristal covered her nose and mouth with her chiffon scarf. The stench was corrosive. The night pan had clearly not been emptied in days, possibly weeks. Her eyes swallowed as Terry looked around at her, a quick glance up and down her tailored red suit as if she was naked. ‘You baint be used to this no more, eh Cock?’ he said, clearly expecting no answer.

Kristal noticed on the van door how a heart had been scrawled into the grime. ‘But Mum was always so clean!’ she insisted. Terry scowled. What right had she to ‘insist’ anything?

‘Things change, Luv. She missed you summat rotten, our Scarlet’. Mary’s gypsy name. Hearing this man she’d never met talk with such authority about her own mother made Kristal’s insides freeze. He led the way inside and she followed him, careful not to let the door touch her outfit. What a ridiculous thing to wear here - as she’d dressed hours before it had felt like some sort of statement; now it just added to the guilt. Her heel got wedged in the upside-down milk crate used as a doorstep, but she yanked it free before Terry could have another excuse to glare.

Her childhood home was almost unrecognisable. Mary’s little bottles and charms, once meticulously dusted and kept in order, now lay strewn about the place, some smashed, and every one filthy. The faded photo of her father, Sean, lay among them all in a cracked frame. To think that Mary took on all of this for him - it made Kristal determined to be honest with Pria. Clothes crawled around the floor. Kristal recognised almost every garment from when she had last been there – nearly eight years ago. Mary had always religiously packed her bed away, and yet not any more. Unmade and unclean, it was tricky to picture her mother here at all.

Mary had been run over two days previously. More gypsies got killed that way than cats, claimed a news article Kristal had been reading only the week before. And yet it was clear to her now that her mother had been dying for sometime.

‘Broke her ‘art, like, not been let see the lill’ un. She used t’…’ Terry continued. But Kristal wasn’t listening. She’d noticed something that’d stopped her own blood, let alone this pious old gypsy’s prattle. The post-box – there it was, on the bed, under a filthy nightie designed for women half her mother’s age. When on earth had she started wearing the things? She lifted the box, only to notice that the tin stopper was missing; it must have been hurriedly wrenched off, as the seal was damaged. Empty of course. She wondered on which side of death Mary had been robbed. But who was Kristal to judge? Her mind was racing –

A desperate night. She’d come back to the van with Darren – a loser from the year above if only he’d still gone to school. They were high, she was horny, and she knew just where to get enough cash for a good time. Only Darren had other ideas in mind and Mary returned to find them at it in her bed, the contents of the moneybox pocketed for later. She’d said nothing, just picked up the box, replaced the seal, and put it back in its ‘secret’ place. She’d looked at her daughter for a few moments then at last opened her lips to speak.

‘I found that box, you know. In a field up by the Eagle, near Bath Road. I saved it for you.’ She looked at her daughter again without emotion and walked out of the van.

Kristal hated her for knowing, for not getting mad. The following morning she shredded up a dress made from silk patches that Mary had meticulously collected and sewn for her in golden thread. She needed to hurt Mary, to provoke a reaction that would somehow absolve her of the shame of years of tolerated stealing. Her teenage inability to shock made her feel useless. Mary slowly swept up the pieces and took them to the fabric bin, silent tears streaming down her doll-like face. Kristal looked at her in disgust and finally made the decision to cut herself loose from this weakness.

Kristal clutched Mary’s raided post-box to her chest. It was hard, sharp-edged, cold. She collapsed to the bed. All these years of keeping her hands clean; she looked down at them now, her knuckles bold and angry white, her fingers dripping blood. Old blood. Blood she thought she’d buried beneath prize-winning hairdressing and meticulous mothering. But the blood was there, dripping down the walls of her immaculately furnished flat. Oh yes, she’d proven she could not only do ‘normal’, she could excel at it. But it didn’t make her any different from Mary.

‘I killed her’, she said. Terry said nothing. Though she continued to stare at him, Kristal could only see herself, in snapshots, indelible… Instructing the midwife to turn the mad woman away. Writing the letter. Explaining how Pria had given her a new start. Explaining how the alcohol, the demands, the violence on the site - none of it fitted with a new baby and a new life.

She saw herself barring Mary from the salon, telephoning the police, applying for a withstraining order: shopping in her own Muh. She saw herself and she felt sick.

Terry threw Mary’s old keys onto the bed next to Kristal. Mary’s little purple troll was still attached, its filthy face smiling up at her with surreal humour.

‘Anyway, Lady. It’s all yours now’, he said. Taking one last long look at her, he left the van. Kristal picked up the keys and looked at them: her inheritance. All that she had struggled to run away from now neatly resting in the palm of her hand.

She opened a window and the catch fell off. A gust of wind blew through with a ferocity that made her shiver. But it had refreshed the stale air.

Picking up the obtrusive post-box, she imagined Mary free from all of this at last and she hugged its awkwardness towards her. Things didn’t fit as comfortably as they should in this life; living wasn’t simple in anyone’s world. Kristal could make changes if she really wanted to, but it was too late to tell her mum that she loved her now.

She took a detour via Toys R Us on her way to pick up Pria. At 3pm the car park was rammed and she gave up trying to find anywhere in the end, parking up at Flower’s Hill instead and enjoying the windy walk through the grey industrial estate. She loved buying presents for Pria; you could get such great things for children now. In this computerised, brightly coloured plastic palace she often forgot what it was she’d come for. Taking out the little portrait of Pria she kept in her wallet, Kristal thought about the growing up her daughter would have to do this week. If she wanted Pria to feel seven and safe again she was going to have to open up a little, tell her some forgotten stories.

She found what she was looking for – plush brown with a white chest, and the signature green head and yellow beak of the male variety. It didn’t clap, but when you clapped it quacked and walked about. It was a start. Mary had been right to send Sean’s circus duck back after all, but maybe she and Pria would go to a show at a travelling circus one day. And maybe one day she would tell Pria about her dad and why life was the way it was. Maybe they would go caravanning as mother and daughter, ‘slumming it’ for a bit, like Nanna Mary. Maybe, if it was possible, Pria might even have some dad memories of her own. But first Kristal would take her to meet her long lost Nanna.

Through the pain of what was too late and what could never be, Kristal smiled in the realisation of what could be if she could only find the strength. Life would go on, and she felt strangely okay about it. As she walked back to the car she let the tears fall at last, the first she had shed in seven and a half years.