Flamingo lady

The hot pink fringe came last. Joan saw the shoes first. The paint-splatter brightness of them, displayed in the window of a boutique with two security guards positioned out front. Initially, she'd walked on.

- JACQUELINE BUBLITZ

Even if she could afford it - and after selling her home, she probably could afford it - she'd never purchased anything from a shop whose threshold required a line of defence. But those magenta shoes followed her for a whole block, muting every other colour, and eventually, she doubled back. When she left that fancy store an hour later, Joan was giddy with fluted champagne and showered attention. Even the security guards smiled when she stepped outside, swinging her two large shopping bags like she was in a movie.

It wasn't until she showed her hair stylist the shoes, and the silk cocktail dress in the same hue, that he suggested she colour her fringe, too.

"You'll rock this fabulous outfit!" he'd clapped. "Let's give you pink feathers to match."

When Joan got back from the salon, no one said a thing. Not about her extravagant purchases that afternoon, nor the new, vivid streaks through her grey hair. Her daughter-in-law's top lip might have curled slightly, and her son might have sighed, but he always sighed on Friday afternoons, as if the working week had deflated him.

Her granddaughter, Remy, never even looked up from her phone.

The next Thursday morning, Joan dresses as carefully as a bride. When she emerges from the bathroom, she is powdered and perfumed, her new dress gleaming. Waiting outside for her pre-booked taxi, she realises what the fabric's colour reminds her of. It's those old Cuisenaire rods that help children learn to count. When her son was small, she'd had to scoop one of the smaller, magenta rods from his mouth right before he choked on it. Such an intimate gesture, unthinkable now, but Joan can still remember the relief of that hard, wet plastic in her hand. The shocking pink of it, and how she understood why her son had thought to taste it. Immediately, she'd packed all but the dullest colours away.