I don’t take her bait, though she’s right to be confused, upset. My voice sounds childish as I say, ‘No, of course not, but I’m here, aren’t I? I just have to go back early.’
‘It’s bad enough Oli not being here as well,’ my mother says. ‘Now you’re racing off as soon as you possibly can, and—’ She drops her hands by her sides, as if to say, This daughter of mine, what can I do with her?
There is a pain in my heart. I wish I could tell her. I wish she was the kind of mother I could tell.
‘Help me, Archie,’ Arvind tells his son, and this creates a diversion, as Uncle Archie gently helps him down from the car. They walk behind us, slowly, Jay following in silence, and we walk towards the open front door. The wind creaks around us, but there is no rustling sound from the bare trees.
Mum is still staring at me. She says slowly, ‘You know, Natasha, I’m really very upset with you.’
I nod, unable to speak suddenly as we walk across the threshold. The lovely fifties Ercol sideboard has flowers on it, white lilies that are just starting to die; the smell is cloying. Granny must have bought them. Her presence is still here, the last tasks she performed still evident.
There are clanging sounds as we turn left into the kitchen;
Louisa is already in residence, assisted by Mary Beth and Octavia, who are taking out trays, fetching glasses, spooning out hummus from plastic tubs into my grandmother’s favourite porridge bowls. Again, it looks all wrong, this activity. Normally it would be Granny, pottering slowly but surely about her kitchen, calmly putting things together, in her domain. This whirlwind of activity is for her, for her funeral. I close my eyes.
‘And there’s another thing.’ Mum is still talking furiously. I am the one who has ignited the smouldering grief and anger she has been suppressing all day. ‘While we’re on this subject, Natasha. How come your own husband can’t even be bothered to come to Mummy’s funeral, doesn’t even write or ring to apologise? Doesn’t he care at all?’ She turns and faces me, her cheeks flushing dark cherry, her green eyes huge in her lovely face. I stare, she is so like Granny, so beautiful, always has been. ‘At all?’ she repeats.
Louisa looks up. ‘Miranda,’ she says briskly. ‘Ah, you’re here at last,’ as if Mum had stopped off for a facial and a manicure on the way. ‘Can you please unpack the nibbles in those cartons there?’
Mum simply ignores her; if this were a different situation I would love how much my mother and her cousin loathe each other, really so much that sometimes it’s a wonder they don’t simply take their shoes off and wrestle on the floor. Mum turns to me again. ‘Really, darling. I mean, he’s your husband.’
There is a rushing sound in my head again. I look up to the ceiling.
‘He’s not any more,’ I hear myself say. ‘What?’ she says. ‘What?’
The rushing is louder and louder. ‘I’ve left him. Or rather he’s left me. That’s why he’s not here.’
They all turn to me. I feel myself going red, like a child caught doing something they shouldn’t. It’s weird. They look at me, Mum’s jaw drops open and the silence stretches out till it is overwhelming, until Mary Beth helpfully drops a glass on the floor. It shatters, which at least gives us all something to do.
Mum flattens herself against the wall, away from the path of glass which has splintered closest to her, and pushes shards towards the centre of the room with one velvet toecap. ‘Oh, my gosh,’ says poor Mary Beth, her hand flying to her mouth. ‘Darn it.’ She crouches on the ground and Louisa flies in with a dustpan and brush screeching, ‘Don’t touch the glass! Careful!’
There’s a brief moment’s silence. I watch them, watch the splinters and the stem of the glass, rolling slowly around the lino on its side.
‘Nat?’ Jay is still behind me, I hadn’t seen him. ‘You’ve left Oli? What? Why?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I say, and then helpfully, the floor feels liquid beneath my feet and is rising up to meet me. I step back, away from the glass, and shapes and colours swim before my eyes and it is almost a relief when gradually, everything goes black, and I sink to the ground in a dead faint.
Chapter Six
When I awake, I’m not sure where I am, or what’s going on. It’s dark. I sit up and look around me, blinking in confusion, and slowly, it all comes back to me.
The first thing I notice is that I’m in my old bedroom. The curtains are half drawn. They took me up here, Jay and the Bowler Hat lugging me up the wide staircase, and I fell into bed and fell fast asleep – a sort of narcolepsy, I could barely keep my eyes open.
I look at my watch; it is a quarter to five but I don’t know how long I’ve been up here. I stretch and yawn, running my hands through my hair. I have a throbbing feeling, as if I don’t have a headache but am about to get one. I run my fingers slowly, experimentally, over my skin. There is a plaster on my forehead, and underneath a swollen lump forming, hot to the touch. Perfect. A massive bruise should be there by tomorrow. Just in time.
Oh dear, I think again. I fainted like a lunatic. My elbow is very sore, from where I must have hit it on the way down. As is my thigh. I feel dreadful, as though I’m hungover and I’ve been beaten up, but more than that I am embarrassed, mortified, even.
I didn’t want to tell my mother my marriage was over, not like that. She didn’t deserve that – none of them did. At Granny’s funeral too – I wince; it’s awful.
There’s a soft tap at the oak door. ‘Come in,’ I say.
The door opens slowly, and Jay’s handsome face appears around it. ‘How are you?’ he says.
‘You want the truth? Pretty rotten,’ I tell him. I crane my head, to see him better. ‘And sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you to find out like that.’
‘What the hell, Nat? What’s going on with you?’ he says, advancing into the room. He sits down heavily on the bed next to mine and switches on the bedside lamp, his body casting a huge shadow on the opposite wall. ‘You’ve left Oli? But you guys were – he was your life!’
He is looking at me as if I’ve just killed his pet rabbit.
‘Yeah?’ I say. ‘Right.’
‘Yeah!’ Jay says, almost angrily. ‘What’s up with you?’
‘It’s not me,’ I say. I laugh. ‘Well, perhaps it is. He – he slept with someone else.’
It sounds so weird when you speak those words. They’re such a cliché but you never expect to be saying them out loud, and in relation to your own life.
‘He what?’ Jay looks blank, as though he doesn’t understand the words.
I swing my legs off the side of the bed. ‘She’s a client. It was after a conference.’ I am looking for my shoes. I can say it out loud if I just disassociate myself from it, completely pretend it’s not happening.
‘But . . .’ Jay is frowning. ‘But it’s you two. You’re like my perfect couple. You can’t split up.’
‘We’re
