a flicker of acknowledgement passed between the sisters.
‘What I feel bad about,’ Jeff announced, looking around their mother’s cluttered kitchen, ‘is the state of this place. How could she have lived like this? We really should have done something about it.’ He cast a derisory glance over the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with ancient cookbooks.
‘Mum liked it this way,’ Della pointed out. ‘You know that. She refused to throw anything away.’
‘But there’s so much stuff!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s oppressive, so dingy and dark. It can’t have been good for her.’
‘Clutter doesn’t make people ill, Jeff,’ Della countered, trying to soften the defensive edge to her voice. ‘Books don’t cause cancer. It was the way Mum wanted it, we couldn’t just barge in and take over.’
He exhaled loudly and peered at the shelves, running a manicured nail along the books’ spines. Their sheer volume lent Kitty’s kitchen the air of a second-hand bookshop. Perhaps, Della figured, the peeling whitewashed cottage did seem pretty chaotic when you visited so rarely. Like Jeff before her and Roxanne soon after, Della had been eager to escape Burley Bridge, the once-pretty, now rather shabby and beleaguered village which had formed the backdrop to their childhood. She had, too – albeit settling only seventeen miles away in the nearest sizeable town of Heathfield. However, as Kitty had become more dependent, she’d been the one to make frequent visits. To her, Rosemary Cottage with its vast collection of cookbooks and the enormous pine dresser crammed with chipped china knick-knacks, seemed normal.
Roxanne, too, was examining the books. ‘I’d forgotten how many of these she had. What was the point? I don’t ever remember her cooking much.’
‘She did when we were young,’ Della reminded her. ‘Not so much in later years, after Dad left. But, you know, they were important to her and for whatever reason she couldn’t let them go.’
Roxanne smiled, her eerily unlined face looking drawn and pale. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with all of this, Dell. You know I’d have come up more often if I could. It’s just, I’ve had crazy deadlines lately.’ Although Della knew nothing about the world of glossy fashion magazines – apart from the fact that they featured handbags covered in gold buckles and costing £3,000 – she did know that Roxanne’s came out monthly, suggesting that she wasn’t deluged by ‘crazy deadlines’ all the time.
Yet, while more support would have been appreciated, in some ways it was easier for Della just to get on with things on her own, without Jeff hectoring her and Roxanne fussing and dithering and never quite managing to get anything done. Living the closest to their mother, of course Della had been the one to step in. While Jeff could be patronising – making it plain it was a pity she worked in a shop rather than in the loftier professions of banking or journalism – he couldn’t find fault with the way she had managed their mother’s care. At least, he’d better not, Della thought darkly. Kitty’s doctors’ appointments had been dutifully marked on the wall chart in Della’s kitchen. She had taken to batch-cooking meals for her mother and, as Kitty had come to rely upon her, Della had noticed her prickliness ebbing away.
They had settled into a comfortable pattern, chatting about nothing much: the weather, their preferred biscuits, an antiques show on TV. The once-formidable Kitty had softened and, for the first time, Della could figure out how to be with her: calm, reassuring – like a mother, really. As a child, Della had always been rather afraid of her mother’s quick temper. However, towards the end of Kitty’s life, Della could tell that her mother liked her at last, or at least appreciated what she did. So did it really matter than the number 43 bus had been too slow today?
‘So,’ Jeff said, pacing around the kitchen, ‘I suppose we’d better get started.’
Della stared up at him. ‘What d’you mean, get started?’
He blinked at her. ‘I mean, figure out what needs to be done. Isn’t that why we’re here?’
‘Jeff,’ Roxanne said sharply, ‘Mum only passed away a few hours ago. Nothing needs to be done—’
‘And we’re here because …’ Della cut in, before tailing off. How could she put it: that it now seemed right for them to have gathered here in the very place where they’d forever complained that there was nothing to do, yet had somehow found infinite ways in which to amuse themselves? Long, lazy summers had seen them roaming through the undulating fields and rather scary woods, summonsed back for tea by Kitty’s shrill calls from the garden. Winters had featured endless games of Monopoly and copious reading by the crackling fire in the living room. Irritatingly, Jeff had had the best collection of books, all neatly ordered and catalogued in the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in his bedroom. It looked – and indeed functioned – like a library. Frequently, Della had been fined twenty-five pence for a late return.
‘Well, I’m glad we came here,’ Sophie said firmly. ‘What’ll happen to this place now, Mum?’
Della grimaced. ‘We’ll sell it, I guess.’
‘I’ll help with that,’ Roxanne cut in quickly, ‘but with the funeral, well … I’m sorry, I just wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘It’s okay,’ Della found herself saying. In fact, she knew precisely what to do, having arranged her father’s a decade ago, when Jeff had been too caught up with his newborn twins to get involved, and Roxanne had been rendered helpless by grief.
Roxanne squeezed her hand. ‘You’re amazing, you know? The way you just … get on with things.’ She swept back her long highlighted hair. ‘I’m sorry, though, I’d better think about getting back. Early start tomorrow, and the weather’s not looking too good tonight.’ A little light rain, was what she meant.
‘Me too,’ Jeff said, ‘but call me, okay, Dell? If there’s anything at all I can help with. It’s going to be a hell of a job, I’ll do whatever I can.’
‘Of course I will,’ Della said unconvincingly. Minutes later Jeff was preparing to head back to his wife, their boys and fancy detached home in Manchester, while Roxanne was itching to return to London, to write about hemline lengths and the ‘silhouette of the season’, whatever that meant.
They hugged, the three of them, despite their differences, as they had never hugged before: the only ones who knew what Kitty was really like. But as he climbed into his gleaming BMW, Jeff cast Della a quick, disapproving look, as if he still suspected she had stopped off for a sly steak bake instead of catching their mother’s last breath.
In fact, it wasn’t a hell of a job for Jeff or Roxanne because, despite their reassurances that they’d be readily available – ‘I’m only a phone call away!’ Roxanne had trilled before zooming away in her convertible – Della had organised everything. There had been a short service at the crematorium, then all back to Rosemary Cottage where the villagers had been invited for tea.
Mark hadn’t involved himself in the preparations. ‘You seemed to be handling everything so well yourself,’ he remarked, when Della mentioned that a little help would have been appreciated. So she was immensely grateful to Freda when it came to sprucing up Kitty’s place in readiness for the surge of guests. Della’s friend since they had fallen into companionable chat while their daughters played together in Heathfield
