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9. SPRING 2013

“Mum, what do you want me to do with this stuff?” Catherine finishes her glass of wine and closes her eyes in irritation. Drinking at lunchtime is never a good idea but Robert had opened two bottles of their best wine, and she had been determined to join him and Nicholas in drinking it.

“Just take what you want and I’ll sort the rest,” she shouts back. Silence. She hears the thump of books and files being dumped on the floor of the spare room. She pushes her chair back, the impatient grind of its legs on the stone setting her teeth on edge.

“Coffee?” she hears Robert call to her retreating back.

Nicholas is sitting on the floor in the same position Catherine had been in at dawn.

“I don’t know what to take.” He looks bewildered.

“Well, just whatever you don’t want thrown out. We haven’t got the space anymore, Nick.” He nods, as if understanding, but she can tell he doesn’t quite get it.

“Don’t you want any of it?” And she hears the hurt in his voice. She has done it again. She has hurt him with her impatience and her brisk efficiency.

“Well,” she says gently, sitting down next to him, “let’s see.” She picks up a large manila envelope and peers inside. It’s full of Nicholas’s primary school reports, bound together with an elastic band. Should she take one out and read it? Would he like that? Nicholas’s school reports had always left her with a sinking feeling. What does it matter now though? He is twenty-five. Maybe now they can laugh about it, and she overcomes her resistance and reads a comment from Miss Charles. How well she remembers the permed head and thin lips of Nicholas’s form teacher. It was his last year at primary school and Catherine chooses the comment carefully.

“‘Nicholas is a popular member of the class, with both sexes,’” she says and smiles, leaving out the end of Miss Charles’s sentence: “… but he struggles to settle down to his tasks and his work suffers as a result.” For years, always the same story. Disappointing; more effort needed; he struggles to stay focused. Still, at least back then he had friends. There seem to have been fewer and fewer of them as the years have gone by.

“I’ll keep these,” and she hugs the reports to her chest as if she is fond of them. “How’s the flat?”

He shrugs. “All right.”

“Flatmates okay?”

He shrugs again. “Bit nerdy.”

“What, all of them?”

He shrugs again.

“Oh dear.” Catherine makes an effort to sound as if she is giving Nicholas the benefit of the doubt but she imagines his flatmates are bright, engaged, focused. They probably read, and that’s what will make them nerdy in his eyes.

“They’re all students,” he says.

“You’re still enjoying work though?” She struggles to cover the awkwardness between them.

“It’s fine.” He shrugs. “You know.” She doesn’t know. How can she know if he doesn’t tell her? Nicholas is working in the electrical department at John Lewis — it’s not quite what she and Robert had imagined for their son, but as he’d left school at sixteen with a handful of GCSEs it now seems a godsend. There was a time when they were unable to imagine him ever being able to commit to any kind of job. She remembers how hurt she had been by the phone calls from other mothers, even close friends, who couldn’t wait to tell her about their children’s results, asking the cursory question about Nicholas but knowing damn well he’d be lucky to come away with any passes. It was a long time ago, but she’s never quite forgiven them. It wasn’t sisterly — it was cruel. Anyway, Nicholas has stuck it out at John Lewis, so there must be something he likes about it.

“I’ll take this with me,” he says, and pulls out a mobile. Aeroplanes. Delicately made from balsa wood and paper, wings a little torn, strings tangled.

“And Sandy?” He shakes his head at the balding dog Catherine holds in her hand. Her turn to be hurt now. She is trying to coax him back to boyhood memories: to the time when he couldn’t sleep without his cheek resting on Sandy; when he couldn’t sleep without her tucking him in. It’s so bloody complicated. She wants him to be a grown-up but she also wants him to remember how much he loved her once. How much he needed her. But she is nervous too that he still needs her more than is good for him and it makes her tougher and it makes her relieved, in the end, that he is leaving Sandy behind. She stops at the door and turns to him.

“You do understand, Nick, don’t you?”

He has hooked the mobile on the corner of a shelf, and is trying to untangle the strings.

“What?”

“About us moving. You know. We just didn’t need such a big place anymore.”

He doesn’t answer, and she knows she should resist pushing it but she can’t.

“Don’t you want to be independent? We’re here if you’re ever in real trouble, but it’s time, Nick. Isn’t it?”

He shrugs.

“If that’s what you want to tell yourself, Mum.”

“The match is about to start,” Robert calls from the sitting room and Nicholas brushes past her to join his father, leaving her with the sting of his words.

Catherine returns to the kitchen and pours the rest of the bottle into her glass and slides open the door on to the terrace. She lights a cigarette, alternating between dragging on it and slugging wine from her glass. She thinks it calms her down, but it doesn’t. It jangles her nerves. Makes her twitchy. She wants to punish herself. The cigarette is part of that, a slow self-destruction, and the book is another. She goes back into the kitchen and takes it out from under the Sunday papers, where she had buried it earlier, and opens the first page. No, there’s not a hint here of what is to come. It is gentle. Soft. She flicks ahead to the part she knows will hurt her. She is lost in it, sinking beneath its weight. Its injustice. Her eyes close, the words washing over her, to the sound of a roar from the TV. A goal. Then silence.

She must have fallen asleep. She doesn’t know for how long. It’s getting dark outside. She is groggy. The TV has been turned off and she hears whispering in the hallway, by the front door. Then footsteps coming into the kitchen.

“I’m off now.” Nicholas raises his hand in good-bye and then comes towards her. He’s going to kiss her, and she leans forward, standing up to meet him halfway. His lips brush past her ear. “Oh, I’ve read that.” Her heart stops. Her throat closes. “I enjoyed it.” Sweat pricks her top lip.

Robert smiles. “Your mum’s struggling with it.”

“Really? Not like you, Mum.” She feels the book leaving her hand and moving into her son’s. He misreads her face. “Yes, I did finish it. I do read, you know.”

“No, no, I didn’t… Is this your copy then? Did you send it to me?”

“No.”

“But maybe you left it here?”

“No. I didn’t. Mine’s in the flat.”

“How come you’ve read it?”

“Catherine.” Robert thinks she’s being unnecessarily provocative.

“No, no, I just meant it’s a weird coincidence. It was sent to me when we moved and I’m not sure who…”

“Well, mine was a present.”

“A present? Who from?” she cracks.

He looks at her, surprised, shrugging. “A grateful customer. Someone I helped, I think. I can’t remember — they left it at the till with my name on it. No big deal.”

“But who was it?” she asks again.

“I don’t know, Mum. I told you. What’s the problem? Why does it matter?”

She turns away, frightened of what he might read in her face, and mumbles her reply: “It doesn’t. No, it’s fine,” but then she can’t let go. “So, you liked it?” she says.

“Yeah, I did. Don’t want to spoil it for you though.”

She waits. “It’s okay, I probably won’t finish it.”

“Well, I’ll see you. I’ll call you during the week,” and he makes his way to the front door with Robert at his heels. She follows them.

“So what happens?” She is desperate. “I probably won’t finish it,” she repeats. He opens the front door and turns round.

“She dies. Sticky end. She deserves it though.” And then he hugs his father and with a grin wiggles his fingers in farewell to his mother.