At the table, there are rules. No open-mouth chewing but elbows are fine. You don’t have to make conversation but you eat what you’re given. And there is always a fourth place, set with silverware that never needs washing.

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We know it’s spring when she bleaches the curtains and sometimes there are pancakes because she says you don’t have to wait for a random Tuesday in April to make them.

The extra plate gets lemon wedges and sugar, just like hers. We drown ours in syrup, roll them up around sliced banana and eat them like tubes, hot enough to strip taste buds but too good to care.

My brother thinks he’s funny, says, “Kids are like pancakes — you always fuck the first one up,” when she curses at the frying pan. Swearing is allowed too, so long as it’s witty or cathartic, but this earns him a look that scalds.

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We know it’s summer when she goes to war with the ants in the kitchen—bicarb and tea tree, a flick of the dishcloth and a punch of breath every time she takes a tiny life. When it’s hot there is no cooking, only scavenging. We take turns making up the worst sandwiches we can think of; mix spices into milk and dare each other to down it; get drunk on water, enough to thin the blood, laughing until we fall off the back step and she starts to yell but can’t figure out exactly for what—just watches out the door behind us as if she sees someone else there.

The extra plate sits on the windowsill and the leftovers are carried away by ants in the night.

My brother tells his classmates we have a ghost, charges them a quid to sit alone in the attic while he crawls through the eaves, scratching at the walls. There’s so much screaming she comes up to see; gives my brother such a whack he doesn’t speak to her until dinner.

He sleeps in my bed that night and I ask if he thinks it’s really a ghost at the table. He says it’d be better than a grown woman having an imaginary friend. I dream of a body trapped in plaster, its face pressing out through wallpaper, mouth stretched wide, and although it cannot speak I can feel its hunger scrabbling beneath my skin.

Stylist Short Stories: read Seasoning by Jo Gatford