The kitchen clock

In my grandmother's house, the kitchen clock ran five minutes fast. She set it that way on purpose forty years ago, "to keep ahead of the world", and the whole family learned to subtract: if the clock said two, it was five to two. Doing that subtraction was, without our noticing, our way of being in that kitchen.

When she died, in March, my mother and I went to empty the flat. We packed boxes, took down curtains, gave away the china. The clock was still on its nail, above the door. I checked my phone out of habit, to do the subtraction.

It showed the exact time.

Nobody had touched it. I turned it over: the same dust as always, the same swollen battery that had been threatening to give up for years. My mother said old batteries run slow, that it was only a matter of time before the two hours met. Probably.

I took it home, hung it above my door and set it five minutes fast.