Margaret

Margaret Thatcher died when you were sleeping.
Thats what the note said; the one scrawled on the back of a brown envelope and propped up against the salt and pepper shakers on the kitchen counter. Lois picked the envelope up, held it close to her face and read the words again, slower this time and out loud. The dog twisted in her basket, smacked her lips with her tongue and sighed. Lois took the envelope, opened the knife and fork draw and slid it into one of the recesses made for the knife edges to sit inside. She ran her fingers through her tangled hair but otherwise stood still, her pink house coat tied loosely around her waist.
She remembered then, a time long ago, her mum and her dad, her, small in her pyjamas, sitting around a television as the country buckled under its own weight outside. She remembered the look on her mothers face, the quiet concern behind her eyes, hands filled with knitting and yarn. She remembered her father yelling campaign slogans at images of angry and outspoken workers fighting for rights she didn't fully understand on the TV set, the wind howling through winter-empty streets.
And then she thought of Margaret, swollen with age, her skin draping heavy like curtains over her shoulders.
The world kept turning.
It somehow grew bigger in the shadow.
Lois took a carton of fruit juice from the fridge, walked back upstairs and sat on the edge of her bed; her feet cold from walking barefoot on the kitchen tiles. She took a pair of striped socks from the chest of drawers underneath the window and put them on.
Later, Lois fell back into sleep again until the sun, a teardrop in the sky, was replaced by night time.