his place on the newsprint with a buttery thumb while his attention drifted. Afterwards he took his plate to the kitchen. Curtis had filled one sink with hot foamy water and one with cold rinsing water. Mr Morland was confused by the science of this arrangement, so he slid his eggy plate and knife into the clean rinsing water.
On his way out, his moonbag securely belted around his waist, Mr Morland passed Curtis in the garden with Pia. Pia was sweeping the shed while Curtis sorted through Margot’s old garden implements and DIY debris. A rusty pair of clippers seemed to hold Curtis’s attention.
“Going to do some gardening?” asked Mr Morland.
“I might. Do you have lots of clients today?”
“Lots,” said Mr Morland. “There’s great curiosity about the spirit world.”
“I suppose everybody wants to know what will happen next in their lives.”
“They usually have a specific problem,” said Mr Morland. “You know, health issues or money worries.”
“Which they could sort out themselves instead of plaguing their ancestors. Why don’t people just eat less and work harder? I hope no one troubles me when I’m dead. Surely these ghosts don’t appreciate being called out? Surely only the mischievous ones make themselves available?”
“And on a Sunday, too,” added Pia, who had stopped playing to listen when she’d heard the word “ghosts”. “Don’t the dead like to sleep late on a Sunday?”
“Oh, the spirits are willing enough, it’s just the flesh that’s weak.” Mr Morland went off chortling at his own joke. He did not mind sceptics and mockers. Everything would be revealed in the end.
It was nine in the morning and Margot hadn’t had anything near enough sleep, but she’d get up anyway. Curtis and Mr Morland had done their share of looking after Zoe: it was her turn.
The sheet cracked and rolled like a sail. Margot was mistress of her linens. She smoothed the sheet across the corners of the mattress and covered both mattress and sheet with loose cotton blankets. Unless you are running a Holiday Inn, don’t for heaven’s sake make up a bed as though it were a leg splint. Old, worn sheets are the softest, so keep up the cycle of sleeping and washing. When the surface was pleasingly arranged, she stacked her pillows and imagined her head lying there once more. Every day, making it, Margot promised her bed that she would return. They would try again. They could make this work, she and the bed. It was only a question of getting through the day, and the covenant between sleeper and sleep could be fulfilled.
Since Curtis was not there to watch her, she stood in her underwear and wondered what to wear. She would like them taken away from her: the decision what to wear every morning and the decision what to cook every evening. Why not wear a uniform and shuffle your plastic tray along the canteen counter? What she really wanted to do was climb back into bed and stay there all Sunday like an eighteen-year-old. She remembered lying in bed all day, reading until she felt queasy.
The brass doorhandle rattled. Margot sighed. Now what? Now who? She was so tired of being looked at. The cat, the dog, everyone looked at her, wondering where their next meal or reassurance or caress was coming from.
It was Zoe, holding on to Margot’s bedroom door and peeping round it suspiciously.
“What’s wrong, Ma? What are you looking for?” Margot asked.
“I am all alone. Who is supposed to be looking after me?”
Margot shepherded her mother back down to her room on the first landing and helped her dress. Each shirt she took from its hanger was stained or dirty. She fetched a laundry basket.
“Why are you putting that perfectly good shirt in the wash?”
“Because it’s filthy. You should put your clothes in the wash basket when they’re dirty. Though I suppose that’s hard for you now that your eyesight’s not good.”
Sadness pulled Zoe’s mouth down. “I’m going mad, aren’t I? You should put me in a cave for geriatrics.”
“No, Ma. It’s just your eyesight. And anxiety.”
“Ash flutters by all the time. All I see is falling ash. The sun never shines any more.”
“I’ll take you for a drive. We’ll find a sunny road.”
“When is my next eye appointment? The left one feels as though it has a rusty spade inside it.”
“Monday week,” said Margot. She brought out a smart navy blazer, once her father’s, for Zoe to wear. “But you know the doctor can’t fix it. It’s gone – that eye is gone. The optic nerve exploded from the ocular pressure or whatever it is that happens. You should’ve had regular eye checkups when you were younger.”
Margot’s words disappeared into Zoe’s pedal-bin memory. “When is my next eye appointment?” she asked.
“Not this Monday but next,” repeated Margot.
“The problem with my eyes is that they don’t water any more. I wish the Queen would die.”
“Why do you want the poor Queen to die?”
“I need a good cry. My eyes need a good cry.”
“And the Queen’s dying would set you off, would it?”
“It’s the gun carriage. And the slow march to St Paul’s.”
“Thank heavens for televised funerals.”
It was her mother’s fault, really, leaving her eyes till glaucoma set in. In Homemaking for the Down-at-Heart, Zoe had written in the chapter on health that one should stay away from the medical profession. Most ailments are caused by constipation or liverishness. Clear the blockage. Try twenty-four hours without alcohol (offer it up) and take a spoon or two of stewed prunes or castor oil. Before venturing into a waiting room full of germ carriers, ask yourself whether this ailment could not perhaps be helped with Jamaica ginger, camomile lotion, friar’s balsam, a salt-water rinse or Chamberlain’s Colic Remedy.
When Zoe was dressed, Margot led her downstairs, holding her mother with the arm that wasn’t clutching the laundry basket. To add to the balancing act, Linus twined himself in and out of Margot’s footsteps. He was rounding her up, lassoing her so that she would feed him. The kitten bought for the child becomes the mother’s cat.
“Is this our cat?” asked Zoe.
“Yes,” said Margot, pushing the creature aside as she filled his bowl.
“They didn’t look like that in my day.”
“Like what?”
“So large and with so much white fur. Cats used to be black, or occasionally ginger. They used to be very sweet.”
Margot didn’t want an absurd discussion about cat evolution. “You sit in the front room while I put your dirty clothes in the machine.”
“Where is the front room?” asked Zoe.
Margot took her mother by the arm again and led her to the bay window. “You
