Susan Finch was bored. Her husband had just left for work, her children were already at school and there was a whole pile of dishes to be loaded into the dishwasher. But Monday, Susan thought, was the day when she should be able to do nothing at all until a little while after three, when the girls would come home, tell her about their day, then slink off into their rooms. She didn’t want to hoover the carpets, didn’t want to go shopping and she certainly had no intention of loading up that stupid dishwasher.

It wasn’t going to be a good day.

Susan had lived in the town of Bournemouth for most of her life, apart from the few years reading Womens’ Studies and Classics at a university up North and a year or two travelling the world after she graduated. She had met Gram Finch (was that even his real name? Twenty-five year old Susan thought he sounded like he had just stepped out of a Tennessee Williams play) when she was hitchhiking around North America one summer. She spotted him sitting opposite her in a Fifties style diner, alone and leafing through a book of poetry. Not the kind of poetry that Mother read, Susan observed. Not trite populist drivel but poems that he seemed to be utterly engrossed in. By the end of the afternoon, once they had struck up a conversation about some American poet from the Sixties and ordered an unhealthy amount of coffee between them, she was over at his apartment discussing his own writing and her plans for the future while she gazed into his rich brown eyes, stroked his messy blond hair, undid the buttons on his shirt, caressed the back of his neck…

But that was the past. She was thankful that Gram had moved to England with her, at least, he moved there after filling in numerous forms and having a good deal of persuasion thrown at him. Years after what Gram had nicknamed ‘The Diner Incident’, the two of them settled down in comfortable married suburbia. The children (yes, children! Susan would never have imagined that when she was a student) were growing up well and got along nicely with their parents, save a few rows and threats to ‘leave home forever’ along the way.

Susan Finch knew that she would get incredibly bored that afternoon. Was there anything she could do to stop the boredom from spiralling out of control?

A knock at the door. Who could that be? She wasn’t expecting any parcels and she didn’t think anyone would want to come over at this time of day (by the time she had got herself ready and slipped the DVD into the DVD player, it was around half past one. Susan couldn’t believe how much time flied when she was having fun). Maybe there were a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses at the door – if so, she would shoo them away and claim that she and her family were all proudly Atheist thank you very much – or it might have been someone from Miranda and Viola’s school. What if one of them was in trouble? They weren’t the sort of girls who were likely to get into trouble, but you can never tell. Maybe Gram had got home from work early, but that’s impossible! He worked quite late hours on Mondays. Or it might be one of the neighbours: Mary from over the road, or Joe next door, one of the Robinsons.

At long last, she opened the door. Standing in front of her was a tall, clean-shaven man in a raggedy suit, with long, greasy hair in a half-mullet that was so black it was almost blue. He looked as if he had been kept indoors for most of his life – he was thin and pale and the thought of death instantaneously sprung to mind when Susan looked at him.

“Who… who are you?”

“Why I’m nothing but a travelling salesman, miss! I come from a long line of them, yes I do. Father’s side. Dad, God rest his soul, sold orthopaedic shoes for the older lady. Mum, well. Chocolates were her trade. Grandma sold buttons, Quick-Unpicks, thread, needles, all sorts of haberdashery and the like. Curtains, cushion-covers, you name it. Great-granddad, well. He sold guitars, acoustic guitars of the finest quality with maybe a few banjos, mandolins and ukuleles thrown in for good measure too!” He paused for breath.. “But I don’t want a thing to do with what they sold.”

Susan didn’t expect the man to sound how he sounded. She imagined him to have a much quieter voice, a little raspier than his clear, almost thespian tone with the hint of an American accent. The sheer volume and speed that his words came out almost knocked Susan over. Perplexed, she waited for his next barrage of patter.

“What do you sell?” Susan asked, with the hint of a smile on her face. She could get used to this man.

“Little old me?” He grinned, bringing a black leather briefcase, dusty and a little worse for wear out to show Susan. “I sell wishes.” A larger smile this time, showing off slightly yellowed, pointed teeth.

“Wishes?” Susan repeated in disbelief.

“Why of course! Don’t expect any less than the finest price for a wish, good woman. You name it, I’ll sell it to you and it’ll be fulfilled post-haste! You want your lawn mown, your grout cleaned up, your tiles replaced, your TV fixed, your dinner cooked for you? Ask me, pay me the price and you’ll get it right away, don’t you worry.”

“Does that mean you’re a…”

“Miss,” he put his hand to his now sweaty forehead. “Please, don’t say the G word. I am not a genie, I just have good connections. I know how things work in this world, I can make your dreams come true but I am only human. Don’t ask any more questions on the subject of my mortality or the logic that holds (or doesn’t hold) my business up, but ask any other questions! Open them up to the floor, if you will.”

Susan wrinkled her nose and scratched her head. Was this going to work? How could she get this rather shady man to grant any wish of hers? Most importantly, how did he do it and was he experienced in the field? He certainly talked the talk.

“How many wishes will I receive?”

“Well, you’ll get none of that three wishes malarkey that everyone on the block expects me to do. For now, one wish. Yes, one wish for a fixed price of twenty pounds. Think carefully about this wish and the money that you’re parting with, because this will be your only chance! Unless, of course, you like my service and you want to call me again. On that subject, here is my card.”

He handed Susan a small piece of white card with the name Amaranth M. and a telephone number, presumably Amaranth’s own, in elegant script.

“What does the M stand for?”

“That, miss, is a well-kept secret that only I and my relatives are allowed to know. And what may your name be?”

“Susan. Susan Finch.”

“Good afternoon, Susan.” He bowed. “Now, would you like a little more time to think about your wish, or are you ready? Because I can wait.”

“Um, no. No, it’s quite all right, thank you. I’ve… I’ve made my decision, thank you very much.”

“And what might that be, Susan?”

She looked in her purse and found two ten pound notes: one crisp and smooth, the other wrinkled and folded down the middle. Smiling, she looked back up at Amaranth. “It might seem a little mundane, but there are loads of jobs that need doing around the house. I,” she began to stammer, wondering whether saying the next word would be a wise decision. “I wish that someone else could do all these household jobs that need to be done. I’ll write a list of them if you’d like.”

“Susan, there is no need for a list, no need at all. My workers will come along and see what needs to be done around the house – they’ll get the gist of the wish straight away. And,” he said in a more businesslike tone, “that’ll be twenty pounds, please.”

Susan handed the twenty pounds over to Amaranth and looked at the briefcase. “What’s in there?”

“It’s where I keep the wish money. There are a few other trinkets in there too, of course. Just bric-a-brac, odds and ends, nothing too professional apart from the money.”

“Oh,” Susan scowled. “I was expecting more.”

“Everyone does. Your wish will be granted as quick as it can possibly be! Call me if you get any trouble.”

“I will, Amaranth.” Susan smiled gratefully at this eccentric and otherworldly man, waving at him with the hand that wasn’t holding his calling card. “I will.”

Amaranth shuffled away with his old briefcase in hand and a smile on his face. Now, all Susan had to do was wait. She checked her watch: half-two. The girls would be home soon and she would make dinner for them when they went about their business – going on Instant Messenger or whatever it was called, homework, Miranda’s flute lesson at five. The noise, the energy that she always missed when they were away, would return. She waited for her wish to be granted, with no idea of how long it would take. She imagined Amaranth negotiating with the supernatural realm – even if he denied that he was associated with other planes of existence, she thought it was highly likely that he did – or going to knock on other doors in the neighbourhood, waiting for someone to tell him their wish; maybe offer him a cup of tea if he was lucky, rather than slamming the door indignantly, sceptically, in his face.

Ding-dong! Who might that be?

“We’re here on behalf of Amaranth M,” a stocky, red-haired man boomed. “Said you at 49 Parkway Drive wanted your house cleaning up.”

“Yes! 49 Parkway Drive, that’s me. Susan Finch. Nice to meet you. Gosh, you were quick. I expected all this to take longer.”

“Mobile phones,” nodded a woman, as sage as a Zen master, with stern glasses and a Cath Kidston dress. “Get us here as quick as a flash, on Amaranth’s command.”

“Would you two like a cup of tea, coffee, before you start?”

Susan ushered the couple into the hallway.

“Nah,” dismissed the man. “We're fine, aren’t we Edith?”

“Without a doubt we are, Mark. So, where would you like us to start with?”

“The bathroom would be lovely. Thank you.” She pointed them in the right direction and knitted her brows together. “Do you have your own equipment?”

“What else do you think this bag’s for?” Mark grinned, throwing a scruffy beige duffel bag on to the bathroom’s blue and white chequered tiles. “Come on Edie, let’s get us a-cracking!”

Edith laughed with her hand over her mouth, like a schoolgirl. “And you don’t even have to lift a finger! It’s your wish after all, Susan.”

As Mark and Edith scrubbed away, Susan heard the doorbell go, yet again. Just as she expected, there were Viola and Miranda, looking rather puzzled.

“Mum, why is there a van parked outside?”

“I made a wish,” Susan half-laughed. “A salesman, can you believe it? He was selling wishes and came to the door this morning! I was doubtful at first, but it worked, Miranda, it worked! I wished for someone to clean the house for us. Boring, I know, but they’re here! Isn’t it great?”

“Dunno.” Viola shrugged. “I don’t like my room to be too tidy.”

“She thrives on mess,” Miranda sang, feeling proud yet unsure of her use of the word ‘thrives’. “They can do my room all they like. What time’s dinner?”

“After your flute lesson, Miranda-Panda.” Susan ruffled her hair. “You two just do whatever you want now. Mark and Edith will take care of everything.”

Until very recently, Susan hadn’t thought of Miranda and Viola as having fully-formed identities, ideas, even lives that were separate from or outside the family’s tight circle. Or the family’s vast web, if she counted Gram’s family, the official Finches, dotted around California. Not to mention Susan’s own sister Mary in New Zealand; Uncle Oliver, Auntie Mildred and all the children and grand-children, settled comfortably in a pocket of Wales. Throughout their pre-school years as curious infants and in primary school, of course, the girls were her pride and joy, the children she showed off to neighbours, the ones who learned to walk and talk, read and write. Primary Socialisation, they called it. Learning the basics. Learning how to live. Now, she saw them in a new light. Not only as a proud and doting mother, but as an observer, watching them changing, ever-changing. Turn, turn, turn. There was Miranda, Year Seven, who had only been at secondary school for a term and a half now, still a little lost, worried, uncomfortable in her new uniform. Her curly blonde hair (she got that from her dad) was tamed into two long, thin bunches, one on each side of her hair. She of the strident voice, musical ear and nascent love of drama. She who wishes she was at theatre school, but settles for numerous extracurricular activities: flute lessons, StageCoach, choir. What would she be like in four years time, Viola’s age? Ah, Viola. Dark haired and dark eyed (mother’s side), tall (from the patriarch) and slowly becoming curvaceous as a late developer into that strange thing called puberty. Studious, but as much at home at a gig with her boy-friends (or ‘friend-boys’ as she calls them) as she is in the library. Immensely popular with the ‘alternative’ kids at school, has a slew of male admirers, but does she care? Does she hell. When Miranda started at secondary school, Viola kept a watchful eye on her at break times, walked her home, took her to choir, did all she could do to help Susan out. Susan had to be proud of her, the eldest, the one who would recite her GCSEs to relatives when they visited, or when the Finches visited them at Christmas.

“German. Greek. Latin. Geography. History. Statistics. Art.”

Speak – or thought, more accurately – of the devil, there she was.

“Mum, they’re in my room and I have Art coursework to do.”

“Do it in the living room, then.”

“Oh, alright,” she sighed, grudgingly collecting her sketchbook and pencils.

Hours later, the cleaners finished. Susan said her goodbyes to Mark and Edith who drove off in their van as Miranda’s flute teacher, Ms (always Ms) Little arrived.

“Looks lovely in here,” she remarked to Miranda, who was polishing her flute, before launching into a curt, compressed half lecture, half rant about a composer that Susan had never heard of and how he (they were always ‘he’s, Miranda noted) and how he wrote well for the flute.

It was time, Susan observed, to make dinner. Today would be the day for mushroom stroganoff, the creature that plagued all restaurants as a staple vegetarian alternative. Even so, Susan had only eaten it once or twice before in an emergency – maybe a shop bought one from Waitrose, or another she had eaten at university. Gooey sauce. Rubbery mushrooms. She wouldn’t make one like that. No. She’d make a stroganoff for the ages. After spending every year of her life so far eating meat, Susan was shocked to hear that Viola – the very fruit of her carnivorous loins - had decided to turn vegetarian. Why? Moral reasons, of course. That and, well, she preferred it to meat. So, instead of shrugging or debating into the small hours with her, Susan decided to go recipe book-hunting in her own house. There were shelves upon shelves of recipe books in the kitchen, some not even used and some with food stains, tea-mug rings, splattered dried wine and ripped pages aplenty. On the middle shelf, there was a section entirely devoted to vegetarian cooking, leftovers from her and Gram’s California year, recipes made of entirely raw food. Fruit. A few fad diet books. The stroganoff was in a folder of hand-written recipes that she and Gram (why was it always she and Gram? Why was it never just Susan?) had compiled together in the early years of marriage.

Gram.

Where was he?

Susan knew that he worked long hours on Mondays, that he had to commute from Bournemouth to the university he lectured at (English Literature, specialising in American poetry. He taught the MA course in 20th Century American Literature, for Christ’s sake!) and that the train was notorious for being slow, or late, or both! She was still worried, though. He had promised her this morning that he’d be back by seven, and by Susan’s watch, it was half past six. She still had a while to wait for him, but she knew – maybe it was that fabled mother’s, wife’s intuition – that something was going wrong for Gram. Spooning stroganoff into three bowls, Susan called Viola and Miranda into the living room. Miranda, the youngest, still with traces of innocence around her that were, of course, doomed to fade away in due time. Viola, her rock, the old soul. The flute teacher Ms. Little, Ms. Amanda Little as Susan found out this afternoon, had left half an hour ago, so Susan didn’t have to cook extra for her. Still, she needed to save some for Gram.

As dinner was eaten and early evening chores were done, there was no sign of him. Worst-case scenarios flashed through Susan’s head: had he broken a leg, had a panic attack, fainted, been sent to hospital? Had he gone drinking and crashed out shamelessly at some friend of a friend’s in Southampton? Was he having an affair with one of his students? Susan recalled an undergraduate, a third year with a name like Emily or Amelia or Amelie that Gram talked about one evening. She shuddered, walked past Viola’s room, heard her music playing. Nirvana. ‘Lithium’. That took her back, back to the days when grunge was enormous, exploding right around the time when she was hitchhiking down the West Coast. Washington – she’d stayed with a lovely couple of graduate students there, immersed herself in that blossoming but short lived music scene. She’d tell the girls about those days at some point. She rapped on Viola’s door.

“What, Mum?”

“I need the phone.”

“Don’t have it.”

“Where is it then?

“Miranda’s in control of it at the moment. Gossiping away to one of her mates like a young hen.”

Susan groaned in exasperation, walked out of Viola’s room and listened at Miranda’s door, adorned with a pink “Do Not Enter” sign, a poster of someone from High School Musical, notes to herself, StageCoach timetables. Just as Viola had said, she was still on the phone and Susan would have to wait. She unloaded then loaded up that stupid, stupid temperamental dishwasher with more dirty crockery and cutlery in a mad frenzy, scrubbed the worktops, listened to the news, then marched back upstairs, checked the old grandfather clock. Quarter to nine. Gram should have been back an hour or so ago. She went upstairs to make a second attempt at knocking on Miranda’s door, entered before she responded.

“Give me the phone.”

“Why?”

“It’s important. I need to talk to your father. Do you even know what time it is? He should have been back by seven, half past seven maximum.”

Miranda looked at her pink, digital Baby-G watch. “I do now.” She handed the phone over to her mother with a saccharine smile.

Frantically, Susan dialled Gram’s mobile number and waited.

“Hello. You have reached the mobile number of Graeme Finch,” said the pre-recorded, personalised message in his ‘formal’ voice, using his ‘official’ name. “I’m afraid I can’t come to the phone right now. If you would like to leave a message, please do so after the beep.”

“Gram, it’s Sue. Please come home, I’m worried about you.”

She hung up and searched for Amaranth’s business card in her purse. There it was, hidden between her Waitrose and library card. She slid it out and dialled the number. Success.

“Hello, this is Amaranth M. speaking, how can I help you?”

“Um, hi. It’s Susan. From this afternoon.”

“Susan Finch? Good evening! Was your wish successfully granted?”

“Yes. They did a lovely job. But I’m afraid I need your help again.”

“Whatever’s wrong?”

“Amaranth, I need another wish. It’s about my husband. I need him to come home, I’m worried and I just wish he could get back safely.”

The clock struck ten in the background.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be over in five minutes.”

“Thank you so much.”

He was. A knock at the door (he always seemed to knock) revealed a cleaner, more refreshed Amaranth.

“Would you like to come in and have a cup of tea this time?”

“That is the nicest thing anyone has said to me today. You are an utter saviour.”

“I believe you’re the one who’s saving me at the moment,” Susan chuckled in spite of everything, heading towards the kitchen while Amaranth shut the door behind him, like a gentleman.

Susan nursed her mug of English Breakfast, while Amaranth stirred an unhealthy amount of sugar into his, pulling documents out of his briefcase.

“I did some investigative work into the whereabouts of your husband and I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.”

Susan feared for the worst, starting to sip her rapidly cooling tea.

“The seven-twenty to Weymouth got into the hands of a real nutjob of a driver, who will be promptly arrested if he doesn’t die soon. He drove the train too quickly, spiralled out of control just between Southampton and Southampton Airport Parkway. Local news is all over the story, eating it up like, well… like a thing that gets eaten up. Your husband is – or was – on that train until he got sent to hospital. He fainted.”

“Oh… oh God, that’s terrible.” Susan reached for a crumpled hanky in her jeans pocket, took off her glasses, rested her head in her hands. “Amaranth…”

“I can fix it for you, this whole mess, it’ll be over in a flash. Back to normal. Just make the wish.” He stared into Susan’s wet hazel eyes. “This time, it’s on the house.”

Amaranth snapped his fingers, finished his tea, then opened the door. Right behind it was Gram. Dishevelled, bedraggled, homesick but thankfully still in one piece Gram. He embraced Susan, head on her shoulder, hands around her waist.

Home. Back home, the place that Gram thought he might never see again. He had returned there in a matter of minutes, away from the chaos, the reporters, the gawping bystanders at the site, the too-sterile too-depressing too-corporate hospital. He had no idea how he had got back, but he was grateful now, grateful for everything his wife had done for him, whatever that was – she refused to tell him. Grateful, thankful for his two girls, his job, his home.

As Gram held her in his arms, Susan couldn’t imagine that she had ever felt bored on that day.