‘Stella Ryman vs the Board’ by Mel Anastasiou

Fairmount Manor residents marked the arrival of spring more out of faith than observation. True, everybody could see out the windows, but the hedges around the care home needed trimming, so in most areas of Fairmount, residents had to imagine for themselves that the morning sun shone down outside the care home upon houses, streets, and alleyways.

A librarian who had for decades adjusted and inked her date stamp did not lightly suffer chronological uncertainty. Stella had grown tired of asking the Nameless Dear care workers what day it was, for even they often didn’t know, and then they made a meal out of finding it out. She had moved to a far better system. She lay in wait behind her bedroom door for Ollie to step out of the emergency exit into the garden for his first smoke break of the day. When she heard the door lever clack shut behind him, she crept out and checked the date on his task clipboard, which hung on the handle of his yellow cleaning trolley.

In this way she had learned it was the sixth of May, and furthermore that Fairmount’s Board of Governors was visiting this morning. Satisfying as this inside knowledge was, it couldn’t compare with living a real life outside Fairmount. She wished she might experience May’s spring sunshine directly by stepping outside the door of her own sweet house, which she had sold for the funds that, along with her teacher’s pension, paid her way here at the care home. Here, where she was not allowed to step outside the building on her own.

She shook herself. There was no time this morning for homesickness, longings for direct sunshine, or curiosity about the expected visit from the Board of Directors.