taken a couple of weeks off from work but, well, if you could help me sort out Dad’s papers and make sure that everything’s in order in terms of bank accounts, the house, insurance policies, the mortgage, bills etcetera, that’d be very helpful? Dad took care of all of those things and I don’t know where to start.’
‘Are you still enjoying work? Do you think you’ll carry on?’ Mum was a part-time administrator at the local hospital.
‘Yes. Why wouldn’t I? Dr Goodman would be lost without me. You know how he depends on me. I might even go full-time!’
‘Really?’
‘Yes! Why not?’
I shook my head, lost for words, changed the subject back. ‘What about Dad’s computer? Do you want me to close down his email account and stuff?’ Mum’s fantastic ability at the hospital had never translated to her home life: she was rubbish on the home computer, a fact that even the PC seemed to sense, given it always seemed to shut down on her midway through an email to me, causing her to lose everything.
‘Oh, yes please, darling. Maybe you could ping any house-related emails over to my email so I can get the details changed to mine. Good idea.’
Ping?
She looked at her list again. There was more?
‘And then, depending on how long you’re here for, there’ll be the scattering of the ashes. If the crem can get them to us quickly, we could probably fit that in before you go back?’
She looked at me, maybe misinterpreting my silence as reluctance. ‘I don’t really want to do it on my own,’ she said. ‘And I couldn’t ever be one of those people who keep him in a pot on the mantelpiece. Can you imagine? He’d be home more now than he ever was when he was alive!’ She burst out laughing, a raucous sound that jarred.
‘I can stay as long as you need me to,’ I said, trying not to sound churlish. ‘Of course I’ll help with the ashes.’
Mum’s laughter stopped as abruptly as it started. She opened her mouth to say something then stopped. I waited, but she must have thought the better of it.
‘Right,’ she said, noticing I’d finished my toast. ‘Why don’t you unpack and freshen up? We could look at the paperwork later?’
I stared into the middle distance, slightly dazed. Despite, or perhaps because of, the conversation we’d just had, I still had no idea what was going on in Mum’s head, and that worried me. Over the years I’d learned how to read her moods; how to avoid her flashpoints; handle her unpredictability; but now I felt I’d lost that skill. I was back to square one, almost as nervous of Mum as I’d been when I was growing up.
Perhaps it was just the lack of sleep, or maybe it was just that peculiar feeling of arriving in a different country without having psychologically left the last one, but suddenly I felt drained. I stood up and turned for the stairs, hauling my suitcase with me.
They say every expat is running away from something. I don’t want to believe it about myself but somewhere, in a dark place where I try never to look, I know it’s probably true. I was never running away from Graham; I was running away from what had happened after Graham. I heaved my suitcase onto my bed with a grunt worthy of a championship tennis player then went to have a look at Graham’s old room. It was now a little-used guest room but, despite the fact that barely anything of his remained in there, I could still feel his essence as if it were ingrained in the walls.
Graham was a typical older brother. I’m not going to lie and say we got on like two members of the Brady Bunch when we were young. There was squabbling, of course there was, and there was hitting, pinching and hair-pulling. Once Graham drove me so mad I pushed him down the stairs and then watched, aghast, as he tumbled down. I thought he’d be dead at the bottom. He cried a lot, but he was fine—still alive, nothing broken—and, boy, was I in trouble.
No one could make me as angry as Graham could—but he was my brother and, when we got on well, he was my best friend. We’d spend hours inventing games in the garden; climbing trees, making ‘tree houses’ and cutting muddy tracks in the lawn as we raced our bikes up and down, skidding around the vegetable patch, dodging under the washing line and trying not to smash into the apple tree.
As was my ritual whenever I came home, I crouched down and peered under the bed. The box was still there. Lying flat on my tummy, I stretched my arm out as far under the bed as I could, trying not to breathe in the dust, and pedalled my fingers to get a hold on it: our old Mastermind set. Sliding it out along the carpet, I opened the box and touched my fingertips to the coloured pegs. They were still in the sequence they’d been in during the last game I’d played with Dad. Yellow, yellow, red, green.
My mind slipped back to that day. Dad and I usually played the Mastermind Challenge when Graham was out. Each time Dad won, I’d be torn between pride and disappointment: disappointed that I’d lost, but proud that Dad wasn’t humouring me—proud as punch that he hadn’t ‘allowed’ me to win simply because I was eight and his daughter.
On this particular day, Graham had been neither at band practice nor football training; he’d been outside, playing Red Arrows on his bike. He’d begged me to join in—Red Arrows weren’t as much fun without a fellow plane to swoop against in death-defying near-misses—but I’d lost the last four games to Dad and was desperate to win back at least one point before the weekend was over.
Yellow, yellow, red, green. I’d chosen carefully, trying to double bluff, to avoid any obvious patterns. Dad’s opening bet had been blue, yellow, green, red—he’d known I’d think ‘blue plus yellow equals green’ and then I’d have given it a red teacher’s tick. Not this time. I’d given him the white peg for the second yellow, and he’d raised his eyebrows and rubbed his chin before slowly placing red, yellow, green, blue.
I’d known what he was thinking there, too: colours of the rainbow. I’d sighed, acting as if he was right, then given him still only the one white peg for the yellow. There was nothing predictable about my colours this time. I’d spent the previous evening in my room, going through all my predictable patterns to come up with something that didn’t fit any of them. Who knew how difficult it was to be random?
‘Evie! C’mon! I need you!’ Graham had shouted through the open patio doors to the dining room where Dad and I were playing. ‘Stop being such a boring old fart!’
‘Just one more game and I’ll come!’ I’d shouted back. ‘Just let me beat Dad!’ I loved playing Red Arrows, too, but it wasn’t the same as winning at Mastermind.
‘It’ll never happen!’ Graham had shouted, zooming back down the garden on his bike. ‘I’ll be playing on my own forever!’
Nine guesses in and Dad had had three white pegs to mark the three colours he’d guessed correctly. But he was having trouble with the fourth—I never put doubles and he knew that. The whole game had hinged on his last guess. Blue, yellow, red, green, he guessed. I’d won!
‘Well done, sweetheart!’ Dad had said as I’d jumped onto his lap for a hug. He’d ruffled my hair. ‘I’m so proud of you! What a great combination, you completely out-guessed me by choosing that double yellow.’ He’d given me a big kiss. ‘You know? I think you
