The world below smelled of regret.
“Blocked outside drain?” he repeated. “From the kitchen sink?”
A pause. “I’ll send my man. But he’s not cheap, and if it’s fat and scraps, that’s on you. Drain’s not a bin, Olive.”
A grayish-brown rope of congealed fat, tangled with hair (hers, probably), a fish-shaped plastic toy she didn’t recognize (had that come from a niece’s visit three years ago?), a bramble of parsley stems, rice grains preserved like fossils, and something that might once have been a tea bag, now pressed into a greasy lozenge.
