It's Still Life

I was given my first pocket money at the age of six. It was a fraction of money. A quarter of some number. A quarter of an apple, according to Mum who explained money by cutting up fruit. Apples, mostly – we had lots of apple trees. But my head went stuffed-up deaf when Mum talked numbers. Fractions were like swimming to me, and since I’d nearly drowned the summer before, I knew fractions could kill. And as Mum cut and quartered another apple, and arranged pieces in random shapes, I pointed out that my fraction had a core and brown seeds. Don’t eat the seeds, she warned, they’re poisonous. They’ll kill you. It was just as I thought – fractions were killers. And then Mum decided to turn telling-time into fractions, half-past this or that, or a quarter ’til some number … even time was out to kill me.