The radio blared on as Barbara cried - an explosion of misery that interrupted her morning routine. She sat in the doorway of her one-room dwelling, the prattle of her children all around her, weeping unheedingly, her back turned to the chaos in the house.

It was the dress: a royal purple, silk, three-tiered outfit she had borrowed and worn to the funeral. The dress was the last thing they had shared: he, hurriedly unzipping it in the back room of his grandmother's house, she, giggling like a girl as he fumbled with the frills and lace, the noise of his family all around them. Watching it fall to the ground in purple folds as he next unzipped his pants and channelled his grief through her.

The noises of the neighbour rousing her children across the fence shook her out of her reverie.

'Get up out deh bed! No bada wid it dis mawning!' The barking dog and the splashing of water punctuated Sandra's angry yells. Sandra, her neighbour of five years, a mother of two, and her on-again, off-again nemesis. There was a time when they had been friends. That was in the time before Danny.

It was odd how she measured her life now: before Danny, and after Danny.

'Nickeisha, yah go mek everybody hear mi mouth?'

Barbara leaned into the door jamb and felt the tears drying on her face. She looked at the dress again, blowing in the early morning breeze.

Sandra and her brood:

'Mummy, weh mi next foot a socks?'

'De dresser, Marlon! ... Nickeisha, nuh mek a beat yuh dis mawning! Get up!'

Sandra's voice grated on her nerves.

Her own children tumbled out of the house past her. Ignoring her own state of mind, she fixed buttons here, adjusted epaulets there, and sent them on their way.

'Marlon, yuh sista get up? Hear Marsha dem a leave deh!'

Sandra always knew what was going on in Barbara's yard. She always ready to drop word or throw a basin-worth of dirty water across the fence. She was always digging up the past and spilling secrets from the time of their friendship. Sandra and her devices.

Barbara got up and began straightening up the room, cleaning up the clutter the children had left behind. Three high-strung children in a one-room house; it was like trying to hold lightning in a bottle. A shoe here, a shoe there, the dresser a mess, her son's makeshift bookshelf an unruly clutter in the corner.

She went over to pick up the books and papers that had fallen when he had hastily packed his bag for school, and there it was sticking out: the funeral programme.

She remembered the usher hastily pushing it into her hand and seating her across from the family, and she, squeezing herself in between two elderly ladies with satellite dish hats and smelling of bay rum, the lively colour of her dress in sharp contrast to the faded patterns of theirs. She watched them, their yellowing dentures clomping, their lopsided wigs peeking out from under their hats.

But it was Danny who had her attention. She watched him between the up-and-down movements of her complimentaryJesus fan.

Their eyes finally met in the middle of the preacher's exegesis. She felt instantly hot, a heat that started somewhere in her solar plexus and slowly spread throughout her body.

At the graveside his gaze followed her every move. His hands rescued her when her heels sank in the soggy red dirt; his hand on the small of her back burned through the silky material of the dress as he helped her manoeuvre the uneven road to the dead yard, his grandmother's house. There he took her aside, to 'talk'; without a pause, they went at each other.

When they left his grandmother's room, he had simply walked away, leaving her standing with a cup of mannish water. His back straight, he had walked right back to his family and out of her life again.

She remembered how she had felt, standing there, her skin still tingling, and sore in places that had not been explored since their earlier affair. A little later, she had had to watch him with them: Danny, the doting father and devoted boyfriend, his girlfriend looking from her to him with a hint of suspicion in her eyes. She had felt herself sinking into the dirt, slipping into a crater of shame.

'Nickeisha!'

Sandra's yell jerked her back to the present. Barbara sat on the bed, the door ajar, the dog-eared programme in her hand, hearing the sound of rustling as Sandra prepared to make good on her promise and properly 'rouse' Nickeisha, the dog barking - and, finally, hearing Danny's voice, the voice of the man of the yard, silencing all others.

She took a final look at the dress on Sandra's line, then rose and doggedly went about her day.

- Natalee Grant