A circular kitchen table signifies a household of equality.

Which relative had imparted this wisdom to her young, bored self Tilda could not remember, but the sentiment often came to her when sitting, as an adult, at a table with no corners. The table in front of her now, aunts Carol and Begonia across from her, was covered with a plastic tablecloth; a floral splurge of mustard yellow from a deep corner of the 70s, witness to decades of poorly seasoned casseroles and frosty family reunions, of secret midnight whisky and Marlboro Red marathons. To an outsider of the familial triangle, the silence occupying the table might have felt overbearing – syrupy, almost – but to the three women it was a strangely innocuous discomfort, as cutlery clinked and scraped over a reliable array of conserves, cold toast and small dishes of unsalted butter. A small jug of room-temperature skimmed milk and a teapot with the shameful secret of holding a mere two teabags in its fuselage. The exotic idea of coffee nowhere to be found.

Aunt Carol leaned forward, her voice tumescent with excitement as she declared, ‘We’re going to the garden centre.’

‘Gone where? Where’s Arnold?’ Aunt Beggy said.

‘There’s been a change in management,’ Aunt Carol said.

As if it was a scandalous yet delectable secret.

‘Oh,’ Tilda said, ‘really?’

‘They sell everything,’ Aunt Carol said.

#

There was a gloomy irony in the idea of a garden centre, Tilda contemplated, steering her spluttering Ford Fiesta into the carpark of Lucky Petals Garden Centre, Aunt Beggy and Aunt Carol swaying benignly in the backseat. Selling pots of miniaturised nature from an air-conditioned cathedral of glass and below-code aluminium, atop a wide slab of concrete, was an industry Tilda had always found difficult to fathom.

‘Where’s Arnold?’ came Aunt Beggy’s refrain from the back seat, as Tilda pulled up the handbrake.

‘For goodness’ sake,’ Aunt Carol said, ‘she’s always asking.’

Tilda turned and saw a smirk lingering on her aunt’s face, and realised, with a brief, nauseous twinge at the back of her neck, that it was the expression Aunt Carol always displayed when responding to Aunt Beggy’s demands of her long-absent husband’s whereabouts; perhaps, Tilda considered for the first time, because Aunt Carol knew, while Aunt Beggy didn’t, where Arnold actually was. As Aunt Carol unclipped her seatbelt and pulled her lemon-yellow cardigan over her shoulders, Tilda saw (as she had for as long as she could remember) the snarl of dark skin on the inside of her aunt’s upper arm. A scar or a burn, but time had obscured any certainty of its origin, and Tilda, right hand still on the steering wheel, thumb of her left poised over the seatbelt release button, suddenly remembered the invisible fume of hatred that would hang around Aunt Carol’s shoulders every time Arnold was mentioned, a hatred that must have diffused over the years, replaced by this smirk to which Tilda had never paid any real attention – until this moment, sitting in her car with her two elderly aunts in the back seat, and Tilda was thinking now what one person could do to another to incubate such hatred, the kind that poisoned for a lifetime.

Tilda released her seatbelt and opened the door.

The carpark glittered with pristine Teslas, poorly parked, like a mass beaching of killer whales. As she was helping Aunt Beggy out of the back seat, Tilda saw a ruddy face staring at her from the passenger side window of a Model 3; a rigid, toothless grin fixed across an elderly gentleman’s face (which was redder than the car it leered from) in an expression of mingled agony and mirth. Walking towards the garden centre entrance, an aunt on each arm, the man’s grin tracked Tilda’s progress in a steady movement; a sentry marionette with a mechanical pivot in its neck.

Tilda steered her aunts through the automatic sliding doors, welcome jingle attached, and was presented with what could only be described as a metropolis of barbecues. Wi-Fi enabled! 4K HMI! the signs informed her. Sales assistants circled like name-badged wolves.

‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it?’ Aunt Carol said.

Tilda picked up the pace.

‘What did happen to Arnold?’ she said. ‘I don’t think I ever met him. I can’t remember him, anyway.’

‘That one flips burgers automatically,’ Aunt Carol said. ‘Magical.’

‘Mum hardly mentioned him,’ Tilda said. ‘You lived with him and Aunt Beggy for a while, didn’t you? After the war?’

They were moving through aisles of reduced-to-clear Christmas decorations; tumbleweeds of knotted fairy lights and bulging rolls of fake snow. Aunt Beggy clucked her tongue interestedly at a wiggling, singing Santa figurine as they passed.

‘My own grandmother used to say to me, do you know what she used to say?’ Aunt Carol said.

‘What did she used to say?’ Tilda said.

‘She used to say,’ Aunt Carol continued, ‘she used to say, we don’t just get further away from the past, the past runs away from us, too.’ 

They circled an impressive display of birdfeed and rat poison before entering the greenhouse. Tilda could see the café, their day out destination, at the centre.

‘I can’t smell a thing,’ Aunt Carol declared. ‘How is your relationship with … Rory, is it?’

‘Ron,’ Tilda said. Things were not going well with Ron. Things were not going at all, in fact. ‘I wouldn’t call it a relationship.’

‘You really should, at your age,’ Aunt Carol said.

An employee pushed between them, and Tilda felt a flare of pain on the inside of her left arm, for a moment derailing her mind from thoughts of the holiday in Italy she and Ron had shared the previous summer, where he’d complained it was too hot, the olive oil too rich and the locals’ gesticulating just too, well, much. The relationship had become painfully transparent, where they chafed against each other’s preference of dinner choice or the activity of the day, then tried to make up for it through silent and passionless (yet impressively lengthy) fucking, Tilda receiving more excitement from the peace lily on the windowsill above the bed tickling her neck than the two hairy thighs threatening to push her through the bed slats.

Now, as when Ron had attempted to touch her erotically, Tilda’s skin was reacting. She pressed a thumb to her stinging arm, the arm that Aunt Begonia had been hooked onto only a moment before, but Aunt Beggy was gone, entranced by a row of pink orchids on the far side of the greenhouse. Suppressing the urge to swear (even as an adult she couldn’t bring herself to curse in front of her aunts), Tilda turned to look for the person who had pushed past. She glimpsed a grin on a pimply teenage face, wreathed in huge yellow leaves, before a horde of fussing prams blocked her view.

‘Well,’ Aunt Carol said, ‘plenty of fish in the barrel, as they say.’

‘What?’ Tilda said.

Aunt Beggy had returned from the orchids.

‘He’s not there,’ she said.

Tilda plucked at the affected skin on her arm. A red disc was rising from the flesh.

‘Let’s find a table,’ she said.

They were seated in the corner of the cafe, where the scent of bougainvillea was potent. A silver teapot with china cups was wheeled over, followed by a crystal cake stand and platters of triangle sandwiches. Not a crust in sight.

‘Lovely,’ Aunt Carol said.

Tilda scratched at her arm. Aunt Carol bit into a salmon, dill and cream cheese sandwich. Predictably, she grimaced.

‘Just lovely,’ she said.

‘Aunt Beggy,’ Tilda said, ‘would you like a sandwich? Some carrot cake? You should eat something.’

Flakes of skin were gathering under Tilda’s fingernails as she scratched. The rising welt was hot to the touch.

‘I am interested in viewing the patio furniture range,’ Aunt Carol said.

She was still chewing her sandwich. It must be mush by now, Tilda thought, sloshed around her mouth by her tongue. Suddenly, details of her aunt’s appearance came into sharp relief: the thin, vaporous hair; skin hanging in veiny folds from her jawline; the single hair protruding from the contours of her chin like a tiny water fountain. And that yellow fucking cardigan.

‘Let me see it,’ Tilda said.

Aunt Carol stopped chewing and regarded Tilda. A smile curled at the corners of her mouth.

‘See what?’ Aunt Carol said.

Tilda reached across the table and took a fistful of cardigan.

‘The mark on your arm, how did it happen?’ Tilda said. ‘Where is Arnold?’

A warble resonated from Aunt Beggy’s throat. A gurgle of panic.

‘Aunt Beggy?’

Aunt Carol snatched her cardigan back.

‘You leave her alone,’ she said.

Aunt Carol put down her teacup, which split in two. Tea soaked into the tablecloth and began to spread. Sitting there in the café, the nexus around which the garden centre swirled, something unseen between Tilda and Aunt Carol ended. Since childhood, Tilda had known the bonds between the women of the family were not visibly strong on the surface – leafless branches brushing against each other in a rare wind – but she’d always assumed, naively, that the roots in the earth below were interwoven and sturdy, able to withstand the stab of a rogue trowel. If one root was severed, then so were a few. No matter.

What happens is what happens – another shard of wisdom from a blurred face of the past.

Now, Tilda knew she had been wrong.

Her arm was burning. The disc of angry flesh had broken out in pink furry pimples. From the top of each pimple a black spot was sprouting. Under the fluorescent lights of the cafe, they shone like the blank, merciless eyes of a spider.

‘Aunt Carol, I’m sorry, I don’t know what—’ Tilda said.

‘You failed us,’ Aunt Carol said.

Tilda resisted the monumental urge to scratch. Aunt Beggy, meanwhile, had picked up a tuna, sweetcorn and watercress sandwich. She eyed it with suspicion, then dropped it with a soft thud. A lump of sweetcorn, like a tobacco-stained tooth punched from a mouth, arced through the air between them and disappeared into her teacup. Tilda gasped as the patch of black-eyed pimples bulged and split open with a soft pop. A subcutaneous black spur erupted from her arm, and with it a cold nausea washed over Tilda; adding to her horrified delirium, yellowish mucus was throbbing from the wound, in tandem with her heartbeat.

‘There he is!’ Aunt Beggy whispered.

On the other side of the cafe, by the counter where the dirty plates and cups were stacked, and the leftovers scraped into the bin beneath, stood a grinning man. Tilda recognised the puce, smiling face from the carpark when they arrived. Aunt Beggy cooed in delight.

Chairs and cake stands were upended as the man blundered towards them. Other diners roared in polite outrage. Aunt Carol was on her feet, finger pointed at the advancing stranger like he was no stranger at all. Her yellow cardigan had fallen from her shoulders and Tilda saw again the stain of darkened skin on her arm. The grinning man climbed over the table, hands and knees squashing through their forgotten sandwiches, reaching for Aunt Beggy.

‘Not her, the fresh one!’ a voice shrieked, announcing the return of the pimply-faced employee.

As commanded, the old man turned his blissful, vacant face to Tilda and lunged, pushing her backwards off her chair.

‘Left arm, you idiot, left!” the teenager screamed.

The gurning man closed his mouth over the puss-soaked stinger on Tilda’s arm. He sucked. The barbed tip pierced his left cheek in a spurt of blood on her face.

A crimson worm emerged from the hole in the cheek. Its skin had a texture that reminded Tilda of a mosaic. For several long moments, the worm regarded her with its eyeless head. Then, flexing the wet rings of its body, it slithered up the wrinkly ladder of the man’s face, pushed aside his left eye and disappeared into his head. The grip on Tilda’s arm loosened. She tried to push herself out from under the man’s weight, until something else forced her to the ground. Struggling for breath, she looked up into the bulging eyes of the pimply teen.

‘Where is it? Where did it GO?’ he said.

He seized the old man’s head, frenzied fingers probing nostrils, mouth, eyes, until a muscly bicep curled around his neck and pulled him away. By then, Tilda was already unconscious.

#

The garden centre manager’s desk was black and egg shaped, positioned in front of a window overlooking the carpark. The office was air conditioned. Beside the PC monitor, a can of Lynx Africa body spray.

Tilda was sitting between her aunts.

They all faced the window, looking out to a sky of nothing.

‘Are you in pain?’ Aunt Carol said.

The bandage around Tilda’s arm, applied by a nervous sales assistant, was starting to come loose. A sweet, phenolic odour clung to her skin.

‘I’m fine,’ Tilda said, suspecting that, at best, her ribs were bruised.

Aunt Beggy was rocking in her chair.  

‘I’m not feeling well,’ Aunt Carol said. ‘I knew that salmon was off. I just knew it. What do you think, Begonia? It was off, wasn’t it?’

Tilda stood up, unable to stand another word, as the door opened.

‘I am so sorry to keep you waiting,’ the manager said, striding in. ‘The paramedics are on the way.’ He was a heavyset man in an ill-fitting white shirt, sporting large sweat patches under his arms.

‘I’m fine, really,’ Tilda said. ‘The, erm, swelling has gone down.’

‘I insist,’ he said. ‘You had a bit of a fall.’

The manager manoeuvred himself in front of the desk. He attempted a casual hybrid posture of sitting and leaning, then, when the desk creaked, settled for leaning.

‘And you have the vouchers for fifty per cent off all food on your next visit, of course,’ he said, to plug the silence in the room.

‘Yes,’ Aunt Carol said. ‘Very kind of you. We’re looking forward to coming back already.’

‘That man,’ Tilda said. ‘The one who…’ She lifted her arm.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ the manager said, ‘he’ll be fine. He practically lives here. Loves the brownies.’

Aunt Carol was wringing her hands in her lap, knuckles like pearls.

‘Arnold loves brownies,’ Aunt Beggy said.

‘Let me tell you, it has been an absolute nightmare keeping up with these exotic flower species,’ the manager said, as though it was a relief to be telling them. ‘The market is effing flooded with them. They’re a piece of piss to maintain, you see. I heard from a supplier friend of mine that the smugglers are hiding the seeds in the lining of their shoes. You have to commend the craftiness, really.’

‘Exotic,’ Tilda repeated. ‘And the boy?’

‘Gone,’ the manager said, with an emphatic crossing of his hands, palms down. ‘For how long, who knows? His uncle’s on the board of directors.’ He slapped his thick thigh and barked with laughter. ‘Always a troublemaker, that kid.’

‘But how—’

The door swung open again. The jittery assistant who had bandaged Tilda’s arm stood on the threshold, panting.

‘A child has projectile vomited on the wisteria display,’ she announced.

‘Can’t you deal with it?’ the manager said.

‘I have to disentangle Mrs Leadby from the clematis again.’

‘Christ on a chrysanthemum.’ The manager sighed. ‘Sorry about this,’ he said to Tilda. ‘Please, don’t go anywhere.’

When the door closed behind him, Aunt Carol stood up and walked to the window. She steadied herself against the windowsill.

‘Ah, here’s the ambulance,’ she said. ‘Not a very swift response.’

‘It’s hardly an emergency,’ Tilda said, taking her seat.

She looked down at her arm. A dark orange gunk was seeping through the bandage. She thought, caramel.

Aunt Beggy grabbed Tilda’s right hand. Her aunt’s skin was cold and slack on the bones of her fingers, but the grip was strong.

Aunt Beggy said, ‘There’s just so much fuss, isn’t there? So much that doesn’t matter and so, so little that does.’

After a few minutes of silence, Aunt Carol took her seat again by the desk. Tilda ignored the spasm of pain in her arm. Still holding Aunt Beggy’s hand, she took Aunt Carol’s in her left. Aunt Carol, who had never been adept at nurturing relationships, avoided Tilda’s gaze; instead, she appeared fixated on the McDonald’s burger wrapper which had rolled, forgotten, under the desk.

Under Tilda’s skin, red lines were unfurling from the bandage.

At what table, Tilda thought, turning to Aunt Beggy, could we ever be equal?

She smiled at her aunt as the tendrils of infection crawled up to her shoulder. The stinger throbbed.  

‘We’re all here now,’ one of the aunts said.

The blue ambulance lights slid up and down the walls. Tilda felt something squirm and push against the bandage. It was just past lunch time, but the room was growing dark, and with the shrill song of the checkout guns, the smell of freshly irrigated soil and citrus floor detergent, Tilda could feel every leaf in the garden centre tremble in her ileum. Something was ballooning inside. Her lungs were flooded. Maybe it was love, she thought. She listened to the trolleys in the carpark rattle under slabs of all-purpose compost; soon to be driven away and sliced open down the middle, their guts spread over uncountable flowerbeds carved into the face of the land.

A cloud of moisture hung briefly in the air. Tiny, luminous droplets in the dark. A sad chandelier. Tilda realised it was a voice.

‘We’re all going,’ it said.

Tilda looked down at her hands. She did not see the fingers of her aunts, only the encroaching dark. Their grip she still felt, but they were gone from her now.