A level glance met my furious one. ‘I realise it’s affected yours.’
So she acknowledged it. Something snapped inside me. ‘Then what,’ I heard myself explode, ‘do you intend doing about it?’
Throughout the exchange, Flora had scarcely moved a muscle. Now she slowly lifted Columbus from her lap and deposited him on the floor. Then she leaned forward, forearms on the table. The knitted cat nestled into the dip between her breasts.
‘So is that why you came?’
Taken aback, I glared at her. ‘How do you mean? No, of course not. It was just –’ I shrugged – ‘a figure of speech.’
‘Was it?’ She sat back again, fixing me with eyes that seemed to bore deep inside me.
‘If anything –’ I cast around for a more acceptable explanation – ‘it was curiosity.’
She nodded. ‘That, too, I can well believe.’
The conversation was again becoming intolerable. I swallowed the last of the soup, stood up and moved over to the window. The sky had darkened and a deep crimson, interlaced with streaks of purple, had replaced the earlier, lighter colouring. There were no shadows; just shades of grey.
I turned back, my hands grasping the edge of the sink behind me for support. Flora was still seated, immobile. In the subdued light, she no longer looked quite so formidable.
‘Have some more coffee.’ She rose to fetch it.
I sat down at the table again, aware of fiddling with my bracelet. It was the gold one my parents had given me on my twelfth birthday.
‘Your father chose it,’ my mother had said. ‘I’m not sure it’s really suitable for someone your age.’
Father had winked at me over her shoulder.
‘I’ll look after it,’ I’d promised.
I had. Most of the time it sat in the brocade box I’d rather grandly, when I was younger, called my jewel case. It contained only a couple of other items of value. I seldom wore any of them. My decision today, to clasp Father’s gift – I always thought of it as his – around my wrist, had been an impulsive one.
‘Yes, I suppose possibly I was curious,’ I admitted.
Flora had, I was sure, heard me, but she said nothing, merely returning with freshly filled mugs. Her chair scraped lightly on the tiled floor as she resumed her place. Then there was silence. As my ears accustomed themselves to it, I became aware of a clock ticking. I wasn’t sure whether the sound came from within the room or somewhere outside it. I didn’t care to raise my head to discover which.
I ran my fingers over the hard circle on my arm – and began to remember.
I remembered the taste of trout.
I remembered the time, long before Father’s fishing days, when he used to joggle me around the garden piggyback style. I remembered visits to the zoo and clutching his hand as a lion raised its head and yawned, baring ferocious fangs; I saw him down on his hands and knees on wet sand enthusiastically constructing forts which he then pretended to defend from the incoming tide with Canute-like imperatives; I heard again his ostentatious applause when, having ignored my mother’s remonstrations, he’d urged me up on to the pantomime stage and I returned to my seat beside him, flushed with pleasure. I recalled … oh, I recalled so many little incidents – delicious moments of companionship and laughter when I revelled in the certainty that my father found me the most wonderful little girl in the world.
‘He did love me,’ I murmured.
And he’d loved my mother, too. Or I’d thought he did. They used to sit side by side watching television, he with his arm draped over her shoulders as she knitted, or crocheted, or sewed. Sometimes I would try to squeeze in between them; then my father would lift me on to his lap and, as I snuggled against the warmth of his vast chest, his spare arm would slip back to rest around my mother.
He was, altogether, a big man, my mother slim and neat. They made a handsome pair. And I was their princess.
‘But then everything changed.’ I realised I’d spoken aloud.
Slowly, carefully, hesitating over my words, I began to slot the jigsaw pieces of my experience together.
‘It wasn’t as if he just upped and left us. I could have understood that. Not why, but at least the fact of it. But he hadn’t gone. Not physically anyway. Even when he was … away, his coat still hung in the hall; his razor stared at me from the bathroom shelf; his favourite biscuits were always there in the tin; Saturday’s post stood propped on the bureau all weekend.
‘But he had gone. Once he knew that I knew – what little I did know – he never quite seemed to meet my eye again. Oh, he tried to behave normally during those weekday evenings. Sometimes he helped me with my homework, occasionally we even played a game of chess or draughts. But he never … we were never … close again; never did things together any more, not in the way we used to. It was as though he’d handed me over to my mother.
‘She was marvellous, so brave about it all. She never complained. Just got on with the business of running the house and looking after me.’
I paused. Columbus materialised as if from nowhere, and sprang on to my knee. I stroked his fur and he snuggled down.
‘It was as though my father had died, yet I couldn’t tell anyone, talk to anyone about it; I had to go on pretending he was still there. But he wasn’t. Not my real father. The man who called himself my father was a weekday lodger, a stranger.’
Columbus was kneading my thigh with his paws in a slow, steady rhythm. I sat there, allowing my thoughts to tumble over one another.
‘And now he really is gone.’ The words seemed to float towards me across the table. They were spoken so quietly that if there had been any other sound I might not have heard them.
My control shattered. Great sobs, starting way down in the pit of my stomach, forced their way up through my chest, constricted as though by a steel band, and exploded outwards. My elbows involuntarily moved forward on to the table to support my head as it fell forward into my hands. I was vaguely aware of a scrabbling in my lap as Columbus, alarmed, leapt down.
‘There, there. It’s all right.’ I neither knew nor cared whether it was me or the cat Flora was reassuring.
Eventually as the racking subsided, I raised my head. The room was in virtual darkness. Flora’s shape loomed upwards. ‘You need a brandy,’ she said.
The alcohol calmed my shivering. Flora had switched on the lamps as she fetched it, and the glow they cast harmonised with the warmth spreading inside me. As I drained the tumbler, she stretched out a hand to the bottle and raised an eyebrow in query.
‘I’d better not,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to drive.’
‘There’s a spare bed made up if you’d prefer to wait and make the journey in daylight.’ There was nothing in her tone to persuade me one way or the other.
I didn’t need to turn my head to be aware of the blackness outside. I hesitated only momentarily; then nodded. ‘Thanks.’ I drowned the waves of unease at my decision in a second generous tot.
It was all becoming increasingly unreal somehow – and Flora’s down-to-earth practicality did nothing to dispel that feeling. It was as though I’d strayed into another world; one in which I was neither approved nor disapproved of – merely accepted; where I was neither guest nor intruder. My mind, hazed at least in part by alcohol, struggled with the problem of how to behave and gave up. It was simpler to sit back and let fate take over.
And