Coming Home (14 page)

‘Oh, sorry!’

I smiled and we waited, suspended in the pause, while the waitress replenished her load and left. The sounds of the party faded as the door closed behind her.

‘Well?’

‘Oh. Oh, darling. This is hardly the time and the place.’

‘Well, if that’s so, how come half of Woodside is currently discussing Dad’s decision to end his life at Dignitas in our living room? It wasn’t a nice way for me to find out.’

‘Sweetheart, please. I’m sorry you found out like this. But it wasn’t an issue. If it had been, I would have told you.’ Mum turned back to the fridge; she was speaking not to me, but to the butter. ‘Can we talk about it later? It’s kind of irrelevant now, anyhow.’

My head throbbed. I shut my eyes and pressed my fingers onto my temples.

She stood up, the Kalamatas in her hand. ‘Now. If you don’t mind, I need to get back to our guests.’

Turning my back on the door, I stood at the sink and stared out at the garden. What had become of my life? I was supposed to be sunning myself in Dubai not standing at my father’s funeral worried that my mother was going mad.

Despite Richard’s protestations that Mum was doing all right, I was desperately worried about her. Miss Dawson had replied to my email, mentioning the possibility—
unconfirmed without her having seen Mum, of course—that Mum was suffering from some sort of long-term grief dysfunction. She’d said it was quite possible that Mum had suppressed her grief after Graham died and that Dad’s death had triggered all those unresolved issues. ‘Ultimately, Evie, she blamed your father,’ Miss Dawson had written. ‘While he was present in her life, she was unable to move on. Now he’s gone, she’s able—for the first time—to grieve properly for Graham. There’s a lot hidden under the surface. It’s bound to come out somehow.’

It sounded credible, but was it possible, too, I wondered, that Mum was simply knocked sideways by the loss of her partner of thirty-odd years? People acted strangely when they were bereaved, didn’t they? Sold houses and hooked up with inappropriate people? That didn’t have to mean she was mentally ill. I thought about Richard. Although he appeared to be a pillar of support to Mum, he was too protective, too familiar. Mum had denied there was anything going on, but I wasn’t convinced. Were they a couple? So soon?

When everyone had gone and the pub staff had cleared up the mess, Mum and I sat down in the living room. The air was laced with perfume mixed with the acrid tang of the cigars some of the men had smoked in the garden; it reminded me, strangely, of Christmas. After taking my socks and shoes off, I rested my feet on the coffee table and circled my ankles. My Dubai pedicure looked obscenely bright in the flatness of the northern European light.

‘That went well, didn’t it? I think everyone had a nice time,’ Mum said brightly.

‘So what was all that about Dignitas?’

She picked up a magazine and stared at it. ‘Evie. It was nothing. It never came to anything. Had it done so, we would have talked to you about it. Of course we would. But Robert died suddenly. He had an underlying heart condition and his heart failed. The Dignitas talk was nothing more than bravado after a few too many mulled wines at the church Christmas party.’

‘So it really was that quick? Just, like, one day he was fine, the next …’ My voice trailed off.

Mum put down the magazine again. ‘Robert had suspected something was wrong with his heart and he’d been to the doctor, I don’t know … Ten days before he died? As I said, when I “found” him, I called the doctor and he confirmed it was heart failure. There wasn’t even a need for an autopsy.’

I shook my head. ‘That fast.’

‘It’s the best way, Evie.’

‘You too!’ I snorted.

‘It could have been worse, darling. Cancer, for example. That can take months. It’s a horrible way to go.’ Mum looked at me. ‘To be honest, we were lucky. Robert had had a problem with his prostate …’

‘What? Cancer?’

‘Well. We didn’t know if he had cancer. He’d been going to the loo a lot at night so he had some blood tests done. They’d found enough whatever it is in his blood to
recommend he go for a biopsy. He’d just done that. We were waiting for the results when he died. All I’m saying is, heart’s a much better way to go.’

‘How can you say that? Even if it was cancer, it could have been early stages. It’s treatable, isn’t it? If you catch it early enough?’

‘Well, it’s all academic at this stage anyway. But, honestly, both your father and I knew he would have made a terrible patient.’ Mum shook her head. ‘Trust me. It turned out for the best.’

I chewed my lip, looked at the floor then at the window, anywhere but at my mother. ‘I know. It’s just … I’d have liked to say goodbye.’

‘Oh, darling. I’m sorry you didn’t get to do that. But no one could have predicted what happened. The heart thing was like a shotgun. Not even the doctor spotted it.’

We sat in silence for some time.

‘Anyway,’ Mum said, eventually, ‘I think the funeral went well. People seemed glad to have come and the food was nice.’

‘The pub did a good job,’ I said. ‘I’m glad we got them in. I hadn’t realised Dad knew so many people. There must have been, what, two hundred people back here? Five hundred at the church?’

‘Well, he met a lot of people through his work. And there were probably some there who didn’t even know him, but who enjoyed his books and felt moved to come.’

‘Oh, I meant to ask you,’ I said. ‘Do you know who that elegant woman with the pale blue scarf was? Dark hair?
Forty-ish? I talked to her at the church, but I didn’t see her at the house? She seemed really nice.’

Mum didn’t reply and, when I looked up from my pedicure, I saw that she was halfway to the kitchen. ‘I’m gasping for a cup of tea,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘Do you want one?’

‘Did you hear me?’ I called. ‘Did you know who that woman was in the blue scarf?’

‘No idea who you’re talking about, dear. No idea. Was that yes to tea?’

‘Since you’re the creative one,’ Mum said when she returned with the tea, ‘have you any ideas where we could scatter the ashes? They should be ready by Monday if not tomorrow.’

I had no idea where you could scatter human ashes. Were you allowed to just throw them into the atmosphere? Anywhere? I’d managed to connect my iPad to the Wi-Fi Mum had denied that she had, so I grabbed it now and did a quick search.

‘“The law on scattering ashes in the UK is fairly relaxed”,’ I read out to Mum. ‘“You can even scatter or bury ashes in your garden if you wish. There is nothing explicit in the legislation to restrict people in disposing of cremated ashes.”’

I looked up from the iPad. ‘He loved the sea. Maybe we could go to the coast and throw them out to sea? What do you think?’

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Mum. ‘Remember how he used to drag us down to the seaside when you were little? Sandy sandwiches, weak orange squash and a windbreak? Maybe we could have a little ceremony on the beach, just you and me? When shall we do it?’

‘As soon as we get them?’

Mum nodded. ‘It’d be weird to sleep in the house with Dad on the mantelpiece.’

I couldn’t have agreed more. There were enough ghosts in this house already.

‘Y
our mum’s back at home now, isn’t she? ‘Miss Dawson asked. ‘Is it nice to have her back?’ It was the first real day of spring and I could see my classmates playing leapfrog and kiss-chase on the field outside. The trees were full of cherry blossom; some of the girls had put sprigs in their hair. Optimism bubbled all around me; I was an island of misery
.

‘It’s not like it was before.’ I started to knit, my lips twitching as I tried to work out how to say what I wanted to say
.

It had started well. On the day Dad brought Mum home, I’d sat, a bag of nerves, on the stairs waiting for the scrunch of the gravel, the turn of the key in the lock. Lily, who’d been looking after me while Dad went to the Unit, hovered in the living room. I’d watched the silhouettes of my parents behind the bobbled glass panel of the front door; held my breath as the door slowly opened—then Mum had held out her arms to me
.

‘Evie!’ she’d said. ‘Come ‘ere!’ and I’d cannoned into her, squeezing my arms around her waist as she knelt on the floor and inhaling the scent of her, while she’d hugged
me so tight it was as if she wanted to eat me. I’d thought, then, that it was over. That we’d survived
.

But Dad had told me it would be difficult for a while when Mum got back. He’d taken me out for an ice cream and asked me to be patient with her; to try and make life easy for her by taking care of my own things and helping out around the house. It was because of that that I’d decided to do the cleaning
.

After school the next day, I’d changed into jogging bottoms and a sweatshirt then I’d done the dusting. After that, I’d vacuumed the living room and dining room, sucking up every last crumb that had been dropped. It wasn’t easy because the Hoover was heavy. I’d struggled, but it was satisfying to see the stripes of clean carpet appear under me. I’d had a quick rest, then I’d cleaned the bathrooms, wiping over the sinks, the bath and the loo seats with a sponge and a squirt of Jif
.

Happy with my handiwork, I’d moved to the kitchen, where I’d squirted more Jif all over the surfaces before wiping it off with a cloth. Then I’d filled a bucket with hot water and bleach and mopped the floor, taking with it the splits and splats. I couldn’t bear for Mum to notice the squalor in which Dad and I had been living while she was away
.

It was when I was wiping over dirty marks around the light switches that Mum had appeared from her afternoon nap
.

‘What are you doing? ‘Her voice was sharp, but I was deaf to the danger. Maybe she was confused to see her daughter
doing the cleaning. I stood tall by my handiwork, a proud smile on my face, the cloth in my hand
.

‘Just doing a bit of cleaning?’ I said
.

The silence could have stung a bee
.

‘To help?’ I added. ‘I’m old enough now.’

Mum walked over to the light switch, examined it closely, then screamed like a wild animal having its guts torn out. She ripped the cloth from my hands then collapsed on the floor, smelling the cloth, rubbing it against her face
.

‘How dare you?’ she screamed. ‘How dare you take him out of my life like this? Do you think you can wipe him out of this house just like that?’

Jumping up, she picked me up by my arms and shook me violently. Dad—having heard the commotion from the office—came crashing down the stairs and grabbed me from her. He shoved me, hard, out of the kitchen. ‘Leave her, Carole. She didn’t mean it. She didn’t know. Leave it.’

I listened through the door as Dad calmed her down, like a horse-whisperer handling a wild stallion. It was only then that I realised what I’d done: I’d wiped Graham’s greasy fingerprints off the light switch. The last physical reminder Mum had had of her son was gone
.

‘I don’t know how to make her happy again,’ I told Miss Dawson
.

T
he front of Richard’s house was neat and well kept. I marched up the driveway to the front door and rapped smartly on it. I heard Richard’s voice behind the door.

‘Coming!’ The door opened and Richard was there in his customary brown cords. ‘Oh hello, Evie. What can I do for you?’

We stood in the doorway. I glanced over my shoulder, paranoid that Mum, still across the road in our house, would spot me talking to Richard.

‘Would you like to come in?’ he asked, opening the door wider.

‘Just for a second,’ I said. ‘Won’t take long.’

‘Come through. I’m afraid it’s not much, but, hey, what do I need? A man alone?’ He laughed a little, rubbed his hands together.

Richard was apologising for the humbleness of his home, I understood that, but I saw nothing that deemed apology necessary. I was focused one hundred per cent on what I wanted to say to him. I suddenly felt less brave now: it seemed outrageous that I should march into this widower’s home and ask him about his personal life.

I took a deep breath and fixed my eyes on the wallpaper behind him. ‘I just wanted to ask …’ I began. ‘About you and Mum.’

‘Yes?’

‘Is there … is there anything I should know?’

‘This is a conversation you should have with your mother.’

‘I tried. But she said nothing. As if she would tell me. So I thought I’d ask you.’

Richard sighed. ‘Would you like to sit down, Evie?’ He pointed to an armchair.

‘I don’t need to sit down. I just want to know. Is there anything going on between you and my mother?’

Richard paced the room. ‘Carole is a friend,’ he said gently. ‘Your mother has many friends, through golf, through the church, and I am one of them. One of many friends.’ He stopped and turned, faced me. ‘But I happen to live very close by and, well, when Robert was away so much, I …’ He started again. ‘Since my wife died …’ He sighed. ‘Look. Carole and I aren’t spring chickens, and we look out for each other, Evie. Do you know what I mean by that?’

My insides sagged. What had I expected him to say: ‘I’ve had the hots for your mother for years. The day your father died was the happiest day of my life’?

I nodded. ‘Sure. Of course. That’s all it is?’

‘I care about your mother, Evie.’

I felt monstrous for insinuating anything different. I turned to leave.

‘I know your mum very well, Evie,’ said Richard. ‘I look
after her. That’s something I think you should be pleased about, given you live overseas.’

If I hadn’t been in such a rush to leave, I might have thought more about what he meant by that. As it was, I bundled myself out of the door, apologising for having disturbed him and it wasn’t until much later that I realised he hadn’t really answered my question at all.

Later that evening I went up to the room that my parents called ‘the office’. It was small and chilly, with just a single radiator to warm it and a small window overlooking the garden. With its walls lined with shelves of dusty history books, the room looked like a relic itself.