"Give me strength – Christ, my great dead ancestors, someone." Her sentences clump together, clogged and mushy in one droll. My whole self slouches against the stiff leather chair to the delayed clicking of her remote, flicking to a quiz show identical to the last one. She might stick the new one for ten minutes max before grumbling about the host, saying he's awfully cheeky or badly styled or is generally unbearable. Some presenter looks delighted with himself on screen before he evaporates, replaced by an equally suited-and-booted Belfast man solemnly reporting the day's news. She gives a strong self-deprecating tut at his broad accent before settling on some twenty-four-seven multiple-choice show. 

“Sixty-four, Richard,” she calls out, like he can hear her through the telly. At the blare of a negative buzzer, Nanny hums knowingly before her gaze drifts to me. Magnified by her glasses, she squints. “Who are you texting?”

“Nobody,” I grunt, clicking my phone on and off again like a blinking flashlight. I do so much as think about my phone, and she pounces on my back, paranoid I'm conspiring or hacking or ringing the cops on her. Nanny doesn't see that there's digital ping-pong, photo albums and fifty billion other apps beyond messaging somebody. She reckons that's all phones do, but then, that's all her phone does. 

“Why aren't you answering then?” she demands, digging her finger at the dodgy square box. Blue lasers glow across her cheeks, illuminating each rugged crevice. “You should be going on them quizzes. See Maureen's Joe? Wee Joe, now, not Joe-Joe. Well, he went on one of these big money shows.”

I smirk at her fingers arching in speech marks, so slowly that the sarcasm loses effect. “Made his millions, aye?”

Nanny gives me a lasting look. “He near owed them money.”

I snort, emphasising it with a long slurp of tea. It’s barely heard over a crackly laugh track and ding of a correct answer. These shows never miss a good question on Ancient Egypt, a former soaps actor or chemical elements. Nanny says I ought to get every science one right since she has told her pensioner mates about her scientist grandson. According to local folklore, half the North thinks I’m developing some cure or potion or monster made of computer gadgets, and rumour says I'm a Doctor of Chemistry. I'm doing French, but somewhere along the he-said-she-said trail that translated to periodic tables.

“Are you going to that concert?” she asks, snapping me out of a gaze-to-be. I glance to see if she switched to the news, trying to find a context clue about it. “The one your man's doing, the singer with the hair.”

“What are you on about?” I mutter, more defeated than irritated. Her thick feg aroma is seeping into my brain, bringing fog like an insomnia pill. “Saying he sings and isn't bald doesn't help.”

She waves this off. “You'll know him, it's your man.”

“I know many men.”

“Did nobody say to you about going?” she muses, her eyes swelling with sympathy. Ever since I got jumped in Primary Three, she reckons I haven't a friend in the world. “You should be asking somebody to go with you, son. Who would say no to your wee face?”

“I'm good.”

Nanny purses her lips before taking a damp breath. “Emily, she lives up the street! She knows the what's-what in music, what's top of the pops. She would go. I bet she has connections to get a free ticket or two.”

Emily is also sixty-five, but she swerves around the fact. Nanny's always trying to get me in their bowls club, their Tea and Family meetings, the Saturday park run, because in her own words, it's not like you're busy. Me going to a concert would be the talk of the place, a revelation shining from above that there's hope for everybody – even Nanny Lowry’s wee grandson. God help him. “Right, thanks.”

She grips her chin between two fingers and pretends to be entranced by a plaque hanging on a ribbon, one with drawings of little stick grandchildren and their button bodies. It’s me not answering that does her head in, and I don’t even have an answer for why I do that. Not one defined by words or tangible sensation, only a sense that there’s a billion existential, moral, eternal wonderings floating around the room. 

“Are you still playing that game?” she wonders, pointing her remote at me like a bow and arrow. “On your thingy-bobber, the one where the soldiers go after the zombies.”

“I haven't for ages.”

“Ah, no?”

I shake my head to her receiving hum. Wires seem to push and tug between us as though she is reaching, stretching for me, but I'm as stiff as a rod. There's an eagerness in the stuffiness, and perhaps it's only going one way – that digs my heart a decent bit. Over her head hangs a family portrait of cousins upon cousins all hopped-up in coats and warmed by wrapped arms, grinning away as snow floated and hopes soared. It's a good albeit dusty picture of the past, of the days we used to cram ourselves inside her living room and scoff gravy chips. Of days when we were all together underneath her and around her, days that flicker into memory when there's more than her around the telly.

I perk up my head. 

“How are you, nevermind?”