Our Mother Collected Strangers

How it begins

Our mother had given us an uncle none of us recognized.

He stood beside the barbecue in a photograph from nineteen ninety-eight, holding a plate with one burnt sausage. On the back she had written Uncle Harun, before his operation.

I remembered the barbecue.

I remembered the sausage.

I did not remember the uncle.

My brother said she had probably meant somebody else's uncle. My sister said that was how uncles worked. I put the photograph on the kitchen table beside the estate agent's folder.

By the end of the afternoon, we had found two cousins, a great-aunt and a woman described only as Our Helen, when she had the good shoes.

None of them appeared in the family tree my mother had drawn for my school project.

All of them looked comfortable in our garden.

We did not.

The house was full of the practical noises of bereavement: cupboards opening, charity bags tearing, somebody testing a lamp they did not want. My sister found a tin of biscuits so old that the lid had become its most edible part.

Under the tin lay an address book.

Harun Moss. Flat six. A number written over another number.

I called before my siblings could agree on a theory.

The man who answered listened while I explained.

Then he asked whether the apple tree was still there.

"For now," I said.

"Your mother promised me a cutting."

He did not ask who I was.

That hurt more than it should have.

I invited him to dinner because I wanted to see whether he knew where we kept the plates.

When he arrived on Friday, he brought a carrier bag of clean tea towels and another photograph.

In it, our mother stood beside a hospital bed, looking exhausted and young.

Harun placed it in front of me.

"She said you never wanted to know about that year."

I looked at my brother.

We had always called it the year she was busy.