It started with a grumble.

Dorothy’s ears twitched - she had dozed off and looked up from her place on the armchair like a ruffled sparrow. The rumble grew louder, grumbling into the unmistakable chug and hiss of a delivery truck slowing outside.

95 Portland Road.

Dot stretched her arms out in front of her and twisted her wrists into a click, then up above her head stiffly, she closed her eyes as she yawned awake. Light flitted in from the shades.

There were children outside and a bicyclic click. It's summer. The little bells at Saint Francis are chiming down the road. The rubbish man has been - the streets are clean and the buildings are gleaming.

“David,” she calls out nervously, glancing toward the window. “David, is that for us?”

“Mum, it’s for you,” David replied cheerfully from the hallway - bounding down the stairs in an oversized jumper tucked in at the back, seemingly already halfway out the door, unshaved, toast in his mouth. Forty-one, a writer for The Guardian, single - a recurring habit of buying his parents the newest gadget (whether they wanted it or not). Something called a “MP3 player”. Then an iPod which became an iPhone then an iWatch. “iDespair”, Dot had joked at the time.

Outside, a large truck had parked awkwardly at the pavement, blinking hazard lights and a buzzing noise. Dorothy worried the neighbors would be upset. Sally next door had a running feud with the Ocado van that had become quite serious.

A man in a red jacket wheeled a colossal box down a metal ramp. The box was tall—as tall as Dorothy herself—and plastered with bright blue branding that read: C16 Care Model - NVIDIAx. Small symbols of gears and circuits surrounded its sleek lettering. The box was a matte black rather than the typical stale-brown cardboard, and looked a bit like what you'd imagine a large iPhone box might. Dot had come out onto the step and noticed a newspaper had popped out of the bin when they'd come - she busied herself picking it up, and started to pull the bins in.

"Leave that mum - I'll get that in a bit!" called David over his shoulder by the truck.

She kept pulling the bins in.

"It's not to leave them out" she said, mostly to herself - glancing nervously up at Sally’s window in case she had noticed. Sally's gate was open, so she paused to close it. "I'll say hello later" she said to herself again, thinking of tea.

“David, tea?”

Portland was a small inlet street in the east of Notting Hill: white walk ups now moslty converted into flats. Pitched spires and angled roofs, chimneys poking up like little flags of luxury. Homes with curtains always open with attractive bookshelves behind. Sometimes small gardens in the front, often a basement unit with looping stairs down. Broad doorways, Victorian bootscrapers, and delicate iron trellis fringes like little balconies.

David signed for the box quickly, brushing his hand over the scan. He grabbed the edges, tilted it onto its side with a grunt, and began the slow, strained process of dragging it toward the front door. It wasn't as heavy as expected - draggable at a stretch.

“Careful when you get in! The floor!” Dorothy called after him as he scraped the box over the threshold and into the hall. Bumps up the pavement and over the step. David wrestled the box up and over each step to the front door and dragged the welcome mat into the house.

“It’ll be fine, Mum. Just a bit of cardboard,” David puffed, huffing as he maneuvered the bulk past a side table.

Clang!

A photo frame tumbled off the wall, striking the floor.

“Oh, David!” Dorothy said, darting and shuffling forward. Her feet had been hurting her. The frame had landed face down. Dorothy picked it up carefully, smoothing the glass. Dot and her late husband, smiling broadly into the camera. She gave it a little polish with the edge of her cardigan and paused. “You’ve got to be careful with these things,” she said quietly. She paused and then - as if forgetting to put it down - took the frame with her into the kitchen.