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.