Aunty Joyce’s neatly braided head bobbed to the rhythm. “Peter loves this song.”

“This was the music,” Dad agreed, as the old tune played through the TV screen.

“Come and help me with the sheets,” Mum said to me. I followed her to the corridor, where she’d been doing the folding.

She held up a satin sheet in the fluorescent lighting. “I’ll need to tell Mercy to stop ironing these on high, it’s really damaging the threads.”

When we’d finished folding them, she placed a pair of matching silk sheets – hers and Dad’s – telling me: “Take these to Aunty’s room.”

Aunty Joyce was already in her room when I knocked and entered. She was in her white night slip, and her head was wrapped in a cotton scarf. In the harsh power-saving lights, I could see the lines in her makeup-free face. There were dark pink marks on her cheekbones, and her eyes had fading greyish looking bags underneath them. Her breasts sagged to near her stomach and her slim fingers looked claw like.

“You brought sheets for me?” she said in a delighted tone. “Thank you, angel.” She walked from the other side of her bed to give me a kiss. “Put them over there.” She pointed at the chair in the corner.

I put them where she asked, feeling light and special, as I always did when she paid me attention. After, I opened the door to leave and said, “Goodnight Aunty Joyce,” and for a reason still unknown to me, I added, “and I’m sorry about Anne earlier.”

She looked up from where she was now sitting on the bed. “You know, for someone who’s not his, you sure do look like your father.”