Clare was dying. Slowly, there was plenty of time yet, but it was the inescapable conclusion. She could feel it, a lifting at the edges of her mind, something indefinable leaving with the moisture from her skin. When, she wondered, did your skin begin to change? Such an insidious process, creeping up when you least expected it.

Years ago she wallowed in the bath for hours, with bubbles and a book in hand, forgetting the world completely for a while. When she emerged it was in someone else's skin, wrinkled and fragile, needing to be pampered back into youthfulness. Now the bath has no effect, her skin has become submarine in its own right, like a creature left too long in the dark.

She spends her mornings sat at her dressing table, staring into the mirror intently. She would like to be able to see beyond it, imagining her younger self waiting there. If only, she thinks, she could peel back the layers of silvered glass until the final paper-thin sheet reveals a smooth, unlined face, still pert and elastic.

The wrinkles resolutely refuse to vanish and so she sits, framed in the mirror by a confusion of tiny pots and bottles. They come in a rainbow of pastel colours: pale, minty green, summer-sky blue, clotted cream yellow and, of course, rose pink. Each one accompanied by advertisements parading youthful-faced models in their fifties with skinbotoxed into submission.

She does not believe the claims they make, prides herself on having more sense than that but even so, the lure is strong. She could, she supposes, easily afford to pay for the injections that will smooth her skin flat, but a smile still has its uses, even at her age, and she has no desire for that dull witless look that characterises many of the models. The pursuit of eternal youth has, to her mind, stolen the beautiful,statuesque women they were and replaced them with lifeless mannequins, blank and featureless.

She sighs as she opens bottle after bottle, smoothing a little bit of each onto her face. An intricate pattern of layers to moisturise and renew, brighten and lift, stimulate and invigorate. Ritual done, she pats her skin gently with a tissue to remove the greasy sheen her expensive ointments have left behind them. She stares, dissatisfied, at a face which seems little different and opens the drawer in front of her, grunting at its stiffness.

The drawer stretches the width of the dressing table and is filled with stationery. Biro's, fountain pens, pencils, glow-in-the-dark roller-balls , paper of all sizes and colours. She collects compulsively: notelets and tiny cards, cheap glitter-coated monstrosities and expensive handmade concoctions.

She has the correct card or paper for every occasion, it would never do to send the wrong type of letter to the wrong type of person. She takes her time, deliberating over handmade lavender-scented paper and crisp, cream, hallmarked paper, almost as thick as card.

In the end it is the lavender she chooses, for reasons she would feel need no explanation, and a ballpoint pen, smooth and black. No false starts, she knows exactly what she wants to write to a daughter who does not know her mother.

Dear Katherine,

She can hear her daughter talking in her head, 'It's Kate, Mum. Kate.' but Katherine she named her and Katherine she will be in this last communication.

I am dying. I expect you know that by now if you are reading this but, at the time of writing, I am dying and you do not know. We know so little about each other, you and I. It's a shame, but then we are both of us too selfish to ask, too narrow minded to care perhaps.

I may never get the chance to find out who you are; it's too late and I am too stubborn to ask you now, but I have some things to tell you. So I write this, in the knowledge that you cannot answer back and in the hope that you will understand me better. I do not ask for forgiveness. In truth I do not want forgiveness, do not, in fact, feel that there is anything much to forgive.

I have never talked to you about my own parents but now, when I am close to death myself, my thoughts turn to them and the circumstances of their deaths. Morbid perhaps. I doubt you care but I will write of them, for my own satisfaction at least, and perhaps it will interest you.

My mother died on a summer day, full of damp, dead heat. We had been fractious all day, as children are when it is hot, sticky and grumpy, yearning for cold ice-cream and a swimming pool. Instead, we had put on our Sunday best and yawned through a church service that seemed to last forever. A family lunch followed and we bickered through that, the older children vicious, the younger fragile. Then it was home for tea on the patio and more adult gossip.

Eventually, tired of our squabbling and whinging mother gave me a little money and sent the whole tribe down the road, chasing after the ice cream van. We ran, helter-skelter, colliding with each other as I chose and paid. Then we wandered back home, quiet now, kicking at stones and dust in the road, absorbed in sweet coolness running down chins and fingers.

The ambulance had arrived by the time we got back. My mother was lying sprawled on the patio, a grotesque, beached whale, thighs lolling, legs open, revealing rolls of fat and hair sprouting where I did not know hair should grow. I asked the ambulance man about that but he just smiled at me, patted my head and closed mother's legs, before covering her.

I heard snatches of conversation and condolences from family and friends, confusion from the other children, dry tears from my father. I did not know why he was crying. I had seen him rolling around on his bed with my aunt so I had supposed he would not miss my mother much. I kept sneaking peeks at my aunt, wondering why she did not comfort him. But she was crying too, red-faced and did not approach him, did not even catch his eye.

I was allowed to take a week off school afterwards and we went shopping to buy black dresses for my sister and I, to go to the funeral they said. I did not understand that. Why should black be the only colour to be sad in? To my mind, grey would have been the saddest colour, a mixture of nothings. I asked my father if I could buy a grey dress instead but he went red in the face, shouted at me, shaking me by the shoulders. I supposed that a grey dress must be a bad thing indeed, so I let it be.

We were still wearing black most of the time when Maureen moved in. Maureen was not at all like mother. She had darker skin. She had slimmer legs. And she had a bigger ass. That's what father said anyway. I was not sure at that time what an ass was but the way father said it, it sounded like a good thing.

Maureen was kind to us children. Father said she had come to help out around the house, to do some cleaning and cooking and iron his shirts. He said we weren't to bother her, that she was going to be very busy helping him. I wanted to ask him why Maureen slept over and why she sometimes crept down the hall into his room late at night but didn't dare. I supposed that he had trouble sleeping, missing mother, and that Maureen was helping him with that as well.

Maureen read us children stories in the afternoon, when she had finished her chores. Sometimes she played games with us and she always let us help her in the kitchen. I learnt to cook by watching Maureen and helping from time to time, stirring when I was told to stir, adding what I was told to add, making sure each time that I measured everything exactly. I made the evening meal one day and father was so proud he hugged me. He had never done that before, and he never did again, but I remembered.

I was sixteen when he died. Old enough to understand Maureen's terrible grief. And her anger. I had just discovered boys or, to be more accurate, boys had just discovered me. One of them had taken me to the cinema and tried to feel me up on the back row, but I wasn't really interested. I liked being taken out though so she hinted that he might get lucky another time.

We had a drink on the way home and father smelt it on my breath when I got in. I had never seen him turn purple before. Maureen stood at the top of the stairs and watched him rant himself hoarse. When he stopped I crawled upstairs to bed, not caring about anything much. I heard him shouting at Maureen and a series of thuds, then silence.

The next morning Maureen woke up next to a corpse, with bruises darkening her face. She blamed me.

I do not wish to write about the times that followed that day and, as you are not here to gainsay me, I shall not. There are other people you can access if you want that information, you are clever enough, at least, to find them. I very much doubt that you will choose to do so but it is at least a choice that you have.

They say that, when you die, the whole of your life flashes before your eyes. I very much hope that is not the case. I would prefer edited highlights. I believe I will rehearse them and then, when the time comes, perhaps I will see only what I wish to remember.

As a child, I always dreamed about marrying a rich man, a glass slipper on a dainty foot that would transport me into a world of luxury and leisure. But in the real world glass slippers do not come in size 9 and I met your father instead. Maureen would have said that he was just what I deserved, but Maureen was long gone by then and nobody was there to tell me that Prince Charming came with a price tag.

The price of security: marriage to a man who could buy whatever he wanted, and did. I wonder sometimes whether you noticed the stream of girlfriends that he paraded through our home? I suppose you must have done. I know you did not approve when I divorced him but you were grown by then and I had had enough of men. The divorce lawyers saw to it that I would never need to rely on one again.

I suppose that, if you are interested in anything, it is India that you would wish to hear about. I am afraid you will be disappointed, my dear. I could tell you of the heat and the colours, of tainted water and illness, of beautiful gardens and palaces but, selfishly, I shall keep those delights to myself for now. I have enough memories left, so vivid. I revisit them often.

When I sit in my garden in the English summer, I am dreaming of India. When I dream of India I dream of her as well. I dream of ochre robes, of tiny bells and ribbons, wiry black hair and a piercing stare. And, of course, I dream of black velvet. I dream of black velvet laid over turquoise silk.

You will not understand that now but I am leaving the box to you, with this letter and some other things. You may choose not to read the letter. You may discard everything that I leave to you. But you will keep the box. I know you will and soon you too will dream of black velvet.

Goodbye Katherine. I know you will not believe me if I tell you I love you and you are, perhaps, right. I think I love the idea of loving you. It does not matter.

I shall simply say congratulations. I know you think I do not know that you are pregnant but I do. So congratulations.

Yours in honesty at least,

Clare

Clare looked at the letter, admiring her own script. Then, she folded it once, twice and slid it into an envelope. She wrote Katherine's name on the front and then the envelope went into the black velvet box sitting in front of her. She hoped there was enough time left to collect the other objects that belonged in the box with the letter.