Steven Pirie
Artwork by Zirenast

And she knows, Edna, were she to be truly honest with herself, that to open a teashop on Titan is not really a viable proposition of the day and age. But it does keep Doris thinking.

‘It’s a long way away,’ says her friend Doris, her brow furrowed and ridged; the cup of blue pills part raised to her lips. ‘It’s much further than the One for the Pot tearooms on Dorchester Street, and the Have Your Cake and Eat It emporium on Dolby Grove. Dr Chalami says Titan is half way across the solar system. He says it would take years just to get there, never mind us opening up a teashop when we did.’

Edna wags an old, gnarled finger. Her cup of pills is empty, so it doesn’t rattle as it shakes in her grasp. She ignores the faint tang of urine from her lap. The Home is full of such tangs, anyway, so who will notice? And what if her breathing is particularly laboured today? ‘Ah, but Dr Chalami is a born worrier, Doris,’ she says. ‘My Frank, God rest his soul, always told me anything is possible if you’ll only put your mind to it…’

Doris’s sudden snoring makes Edna pause. That, and the picture of Frank in her head; Frank dulled and torn about the edges, and faded a little more each time she trawls for him under the vast, swirling oceans of memory. And that Frank stays less time in her thoughts on each occasion is a worry. Surely it can’t be fair to lose him a second time? Surely she can’t be expected to bury him twice?

‘Frank always said the moon’s there for the taking,’ she adds as Doris fidgets in her sleep. ‘If you’ll only reach out for it,’

Edna reaches out; for Frank, for the moon, for Titan; they’re all so far as to make her shiver. Her fingers are stained red from handling the sugar-coated pills. She grins as she slips them down the side of the cushion with the others, into the hole in the lining where the auxiliaries won’t think to look. It will be tea time, soon, and already there’re three cups of pills in the lining of her chair. She supposes she’ll not need waking, except, perhaps, by Frank’s welcoming embrace.

She leans forward and strokes Doris’s arm – Doris who can no longer remember her Norman even through sixty years of marriage, Doris whose day is a blur between bouts of drug-induced sleep, Doris who believes in teashops on Titan because she has nothing else left to believe in. Not for Edna, the same fate.

‘Goodbye, Doris,’ Edna says, her fingers lingering on the sleeping woman’s broken skin. ‘Take care. Perhaps I’ll take my tea with Frank, or perhaps I’ll wait for you on Titan’s abyssal plains.’