at work, Mum.’
‘Are you sure that’s all it is?’
‘Yep.’
There was a pause.
‘You know, if you don’t want to talk to me you only need to say so . . .’ Anne let the sentence trail off.
Charlotte held her breath.
‘It’s absolutely not that,’ she said, with as much cheerfulness as she could manage. ‘How are you?’
‘Oh, I’m all right. Bearing up. The hospital visits are rather wearing, I must say. I think it’s the driving there and back that takes it out of me and, of course, Janet and I had to cancel our Paris trip so that’s something else to deal with on top of everything.’
Charlotte twisted the phone cord in one hand, mentally zoning out. Her stomach rumbled and she began thinking about what to have for lunch – there was a café she had recently noticed nearby and she wanted to try it out. It was a traditional London greasy spoon, of the sort that she thought had ceased to exist with the advent of coffee-shop chains and oversized bookstores with ‘break-out’ armchair areas. She started imagining a jacket potato with melted cheese and cheap mugs of strong tea and then she realised her mother was still talking.
‘. . . no idea about the prognosis. I always told him to wear that blasted cycling helmet. Always. But he was so stubborn. He’d never listen to me. Or to anyone, for that matter. Not an easy person, your father.’ She let the comment filter though and then added: ‘But then you know that already.’
They lapsed into a short silence. Anne’s conversations normally led this way – no matter what she began talking about, the subject matter would slide inexorably towards Charles. Charlotte was fed-up of hearing about her father’s shortcomings, partly because she was only too aware of them herself, but also because she thought that if her mother genuinely felt this strongly then she should have walked out years ago. It was as if the constant examination of Charles’s faults fed into Anne’s sense of self, enabling her to ignore her own. The familiar nit-picking seemed to have become integral to Anne’s own identity, as though she would cease to exist without being able to define herself in opposition to something. And while she clearly sought Charlotte’s sympathy for all that she had to put up with, the truth was that Anne was fuelled by her own unhappiness. She relied on it. Charlotte was pretty sure her mother wasn’t the easiest person to live with either.
She had never voiced these thoughts to Anne, but they skulked beneath everything Charlotte said; a shadowy, irresistible undertow that pulled her words out of shape and twisted her sentences so that nothing that came out of her mouth seemed able to convey how she genuinely felt. She tried to quell the frustration she felt tighten in her chest.
‘Mum,’ she said, as pleasantly as she could, ‘he’s lying comatose in a hospital bed.’
‘I know that,’ said Anne sharply. ‘I’m just saying, it’s been an exhausting few days.’
‘Yes, I know. But he didn’t have the accident just to annoy you.’
There was a lethal quiet on the end of the line.
‘Right, well,’ Anne said crisply, ‘there was a reason I was ringing you.’
‘OK.’
‘I’m clearing out the house and I notice there are still boxes of your stuff in your old room.’
Charlotte thought of her childhood bedroom, the single bed in the corner with the pink-and-blue duvet patterned with dancing figurines, the small cabinet piled high with books and the motley assortment of patched-up teddy-bears. She could smell it: the instantly recognisable aroma of lavender pillows and sharpened pencils and toast being made in the kitchen below. She felt her throat constrict with an inexplicable sadness.
‘Is there anything you want to hold on to?’ Anne asked. ‘If not, then I can take a load to the Red Cross, but there might be some things in there that you’d like.’
Charlotte dragged her mind back to the conversation. She knew she should be aghast that her mother was clearing out the house when her father was in a coma, teetering between life and death, but she wasn’t, not really. Anne had a curious capacity for detachment and Charlotte knew, from years of experience, that there was little point in trying to penetrate the carapace of her coolness. It was her way of coping. Charlotte held her breath. She sensed that Anne was issuing her with a challenge, was seeking to push her to the brink of something, to goad her into a reaction. She did not want to give into it.
‘No, don’t throw anything out. I’ll come round and sort it out.’
‘When?’
‘As soon as I can manage it.’
‘Well, it would be nice to know in advance.’
‘I’ll let you know,’ Charlotte replied brusquely. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go.’
‘Yes, yes, I’ve taken up enough of your time.’
Don’t rise to it, Charlotte thought. Just don’t do it.
‘Bye, Mum. Nice to chat.’
‘Bye, Charlotte. Do let me know when you’re coming round, won’t you?’
Anne hung up. Charlotte stayed motionless with the receiver pressed to her ear and listened to the reassuring crackle of the dialling tone for several minutes.
The rest of the day turned out to be an accumulation of petty irritations. She found that she could not shake the discomfort of her conversation with her mother or the thought that the family home was being disembowelled of memories, that Anne was somehow preparing herself for Charles’s permanent absence. She tried to talk herself out of such a fanciful notion, but once it had taken hold, she found that it coloured her mood so that every subsequent thought that passed through her mind disquieted her.
On the way back, she snapped at someone on the Tube for accidentally standing on her foot. She felt at once too hot and too cold, and when she walked down the stairs at East Putney station, she found that she could barely summon up enough energy to get to the bottom.
Charlotte was already dreading the evening: she was going to a private view with Gabriel and she could feel herself slipping helplessly into fractiousness.
She was determined not to have a row. As she got ready, she made a series of increasingly ludicrous bargains with herself: she would restrict herself to two drinks; she would let anything hurtful that was said skim over the surface of her consciousness; she would be mature and thoughtful and wise and she would tackle any issues that arose in the sobriety of the following morning. Above all, she thought to herself as she dabbed at her lips with a gloss that tasted like burnt caramel, she would rise above it – the whispered criticisms, the implied insults, the cold shoulders and the knowing half-stares from Gabriel’s disapproving friends – because she, Charlotte Redfern, knew that he loved her above all else.
‘Nothing else matters,’ he told her, sensing her unease as they climbed into the back of a black cab. ‘Stuff happens. People have to get used to it. Besides, it’s nothing to do with them.’ He took her hand in his and drew her over to his side of the seat. She noticed that he smelled faintly of toothpaste.
