Although, really, Ginger thought, as she shoved the door open and found herself standing in what was the only entirely clear area near the door, if her great-aunt was lying on the floor, it would be from being concussed by a falling box.
Grace was a hoarder. Not a common-or-garden person with a closet stuffed with too many pairs of shoes or handbags or sweatpants. No. Grace was a hoarder of epic proportions with added shopping-channel-aholism. When the fruits of her late-night shopping arrived, she got the postman or the delivery man to shove the box into the closest available space. Consequently, the entire downstairs was like the Argos warehouse with boxes everywhere, many of which were unopened.
Ginger worried desperately about her great-aunt, but nobody else seemed to: ‘She’s happy,’ Ginger’s dad said.
‘Ah, she likes a bit of shopping,’ said Declan.
‘Bit of shopping? It’s like a warehouse in there,’ protested Ginger. ‘Besides, the house could be falling around her with rot and she wouldn’t know.’
‘That house is in perfect condition, worth a fortune: three thousand square metres, gas heating and a conservatory, and not a speck of damp. Grace won’t let it rot and neither will I – I check on her, you know,’ Ginger’s father always said, upset at the thought that he would let his beloved aunt wither away in her home. She had helped him rear his children and he owed her forever for that. ‘And she has Esmerelda.’
‘Who is just as bad when it comes to shopping,’ sighed Ginger.
Grace’s husband, Arthur, had died over thirty years ago, when she was fifty-five. For years, Grace had steadfastly helped raise the Reilly children, gone out to see films and to restaurants, and generally socialised. But a bad fall at the age of eighty had made her more housebound, which was when she’d discovered internet and telly shopping and a whole new world opened up.
Because Grace Devaney never saw a fake gold pendant with matching earrings and bracelet that she didn’t like.
Now boxes, opened and unopened, covered the whole house and Ginger worried that emergency services wouldn’t be able to reach her great-aunt if she were ever ill.
‘Aunt Grace!’ yelled Ginger now.
Finally, someone answered.
‘Helloooo?’ said a voice and Esmerelda appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘I upstairs hoovering, I no hear you,’ said Esmerelda, who was a statuesque Romanian lady of incalculable age with jet-black hair and lively make-up, which featured much blue today. Esmerelda cooked, vacuumed between the boxes and, sadly, spurred Grace on in the purchase of electric fly swatters, non-slip wellington boots, sink plugs for travel in Africa and useful kitchen implements neither of them would ever use.
‘I just dropped in to say hello,’ said Ginger, smiling warmly. ‘How are you?’
‘No good, the arthritis. But we order new vitamins. They coming soon. Good for dogs too,’ said Esmerelda, pleased. She looked Ginger up and down. ‘There is new drug we see on telly – make the fat stick to it and not to you. Grace get it for you, no problem. You want?’
‘I’m good for now.’
Ginger was used to Esmerelda’s constant efforts to make her thin, and strangely, unlike if anyone else had suggested such a thing, it didn’t upset her. Esmerelda herself was built like a tank. She merely wanted Ginger thin enough to catch a man and then she could do what she wanted.
‘You no want, it your funeral.’ Esmerelda shrugged. ‘You never get married.’
‘I don’t want to get married,’ lied Ginger.
‘You marry girl if you want,’ Esmerelda pointed out. ‘All is good. Man, woman, love. Who cares if you the gay. All love.’
‘Ah no, I’m fine,’ said Ginger. Neither men nor women were interested in her, but there was no point explaining this to Esmerelda. Ginger retreated to the source of the noise.
As soon as she opened the living room door, two furry creatures threw themselves at her.
‘Hello pooches,’ said Ginger, hunkering down to pet the dogs.
‘Ginger, my dear, how lovely of you to visit,’ said Grace, like the Queen welcoming someone to Buckingham Palace instead of into a large room filled with leaning towers of Pisa of books and old newspapers with pages left opened because Grace wanted to reread them.
Grace herself was a stately woman with bouffant white hair and she wore a fair amount of her shopping-channel jewellery over a chiffon fuchsia blouse (‘on special offer with a pair of slacks!’) and an old cardigan that looked as if Ginger herself – who had no craft abilities whatsoever – had knitted it out of porridge.
‘Give me a kiss, dear,’ said Grace.
Ginger kissed her aunt, inhaling that familiar scent of Mitsouko. Beside them, a few boxes wobbled.
Ginger had to say something. It was a death trap, a death trap made up of clever kitchen implements and jewellery that Grace and Esmerelda would need four more necks each to ever wear.
Ginger rearranged the boxes.
‘You know I worry,’ she began.
