’It’s as if obesity is a disease you can catch, like chicken pox’

MY mother’s gone radio silent; it’s Tuesday afternon and her Monday morning phone call that has punctuated my life as inevitably and reliably as the weekly shop, never arrived. 

And I know she’s not “traipsing round the world like a Romany, visiting my children god knows where,” which might mean she’s at home, putting her feet up, as she likes to say- though this is a preposterous image if ever there was one.

I can’t talk now love,” she answers, when I call her, “I’ve got six old people to collect from the Majestic.”