So then I just kept going, saying whatever came out of my head. Mommy was still on the phone and the nurses were moving around the room and that machine that Daddy is hooked up to all the time with the green lines on it kept on beeping, so no one was really noticing. I told him about Aristotle, my cat, about how he’s started to get really fat because while we haven’t been at home the whole time Noda – that’s our housekeeper; she’s from the Philippines – just leaves food out for him, like a whole tin at once!! And then he just goes over and nibbles on it all day like a cow eating the grass. I told Daddy about how last time me and Elaine took him to the vet, the vet said that he needed to lose weight otherwise he might get ill, and so we bought him this cat food they only sell at the vet called Seniors, which is meant for older cats – which he kind of is, too, even though he’s younger than me, six and a half, but you have to times it by ten, so that makes him sixty-five (which is way old, but still quite a lot younger than Daddy) – but it’s good for fat cats because it’s got less protein and stuff in it and that helps to make them thin. But all that’s like a waste of time now because Noda just opens the tin of FancyFeast and pours it all out for him to nosh at all day.
I felt a bit silly talking about Aristotle like this, because I didn’t know if it was the right kind of thing to talk about. I thought maybe I should be talking about something more grown up, but I couldn’t think of anything. I started to feel sad, because I haven’t seen Aristotle that much since we’ve been going to the hospital all the time, and I really miss him. He’s a really sweet cat, with black and white fur and a really cute little pink nose, who always purrs when you stroke him. I think he misses me, too, because he always comes right up to me when we do get to go home, and nuzzles my leg for ages. So because I was thinking about him and about how he wasn’t getting to eat the Seniors that he’s supposed to, I started to cry. Then, I felt really silly, standing there, getting that funny tickle between the corner of your eye and your nose when the tear comes out – I mean not like blubbing crazy, not even sniffling, just one or two tears coming out – but Mommy quickly stopped her phone call and came over, knelt down and gave me the biggest hug, squeezing me so, so tight.
‘Colette! Darling! It’s OK …’ she said. ‘Cry if you want to. Cry. It’s OK.’ She was patting me on the back at the same time, like Elaine sometimes used to do when I was little and had swallowed something bad. ‘It’s OK.’ I was still holding Daddy’s hand. Mommy was smiling, that smile she does when she looks at Daddy sleeping in his bed, or sometimes when she picks up one of his books. Sort of sad and pleased at the same time. ‘We all feel like crying at the moment.’
‘But you don’t cry …’ I said.
She did one of her smiles. ‘I want to. Really. But sometimes when you’re grown up you have to be strong.’ She pulled a tissue from her sleeve and wiped my eyes. ‘Do you need to blow your nose?’
I shook my head. ‘When I say strong I don’t mean like when someone who lifts something really heavy.’ I knew she didn’t mean that. ‘I mean when bad things happen – when the worst things happen – you have to try and keep going. With a smile on your face. To make sure everyone else doesn’t get more upset.’ She touched my cheek. ‘I have to be strong for you.’
I thought about this for a bit.
‘OK. But if you want to cry it’s OK, too, Mommy,’ I said. ‘Maybe when you cry, I can be strong for you.’
Mommy looked so pleased that I said this. But she also looked a bit like she was going to cry there and then. She gave me another really big hug, and then said, in her softest voice:
‘Thank you, Colette. Thank you.’
I wasn’t sure whether or not to say anything about how much I missed Aristotle. Instead I said: ‘Mommy. Is Daddy in a comma?’
She blinked, and moved her head back a bit. ‘I’m sorry, darling?’
‘I heard Dr Ghundkhali say that that’s what Daddy is in. A comma. At first I thought they meant like that little thing you write in a sentence when you want the person reading it to stop, but not for as long as when you do a full stop – I thought maybe it was something to do with Daddy being a writer? – but then I realized it must be a word that sounds the same but means two different things. Like pair. Or been.’
Mommy looked at me. She was making a weird face, all frowny. Then, behind me, I heard one of the nurses – I think it was the one with the curly hair and the banana nose – laugh. I could feel my face going red, because I knew straight away that I must have said something stupid or kid-like, and I hate doing that – I hate doing it in front of anyone, and I especially hate doing it in front of Mommy. I am Colette Gold, and I do not say stupid eight-year-old kiddie things that grown-ups laugh at because they’re so cute. I got so cross that I started to feel another little tear come out, which only made it worse.
‘Colette, darling,’ said Mommy. ‘Don’t get upset. That’s a very good question. You just slightly misheard Dr Gundkhali. He would have said that Daddy was in a “coma”. You see, it sounds a bit like comma, doesn’t it? But it has an extended – like a longer – “o”. Coama.’
‘Oh,’ I said. Then, like I was saying it in slow motion: ‘Coa … ma.’ She nodded, one of her slow nods which makes her fringe move like a little curtain in front of her eyes. No one said anything for a bit. So then I said: ‘Yes, but what does it mean?’
Mommy opened her mouth to speak, but then the hospital door banged really loudly, and a man came in. He was fat, and sweaty, and his suit was too tight for him. Mommy got up, and looked at him for quite a long time without saying anything.
‘Hello, Freda,’ he said.
‘Colette,’ she said. ‘Come and meet your half-brother Harvey.’
* * *
This is too much rain, thinks Violet. She means too much rain to go for her walk, but is aware as she thinks it of a sense that, for some summers now, there has been too much rain. It used to be funny, the unpredictability of British summer, something that she might have commented on with a resigned shrug to her neighbours if they bumped into each other buttoned-up in July, and the neighbours would nod and smile resignedly back, and it was a nice, reassuring, confirmation that they shared the same mock-weary national expectation. But that was just about the way the sun used to stand the country up. It was not about rain like this, like a monsoon, hitting the pavement so hard that filthy fat globules of dust-water fly up from the cracks.
She has opened the frosted fire-glass front door, and is standing on the top step, looking out at Redcliffe Square. She already knows from looking out of her room window – and from the way the stuck branch trembled, like it was freezing – that the weather was probably too bad to venture outside, but she thought it might look better at ground level. It does not. If anything, standing here brings home the problem more clearly, which is not so much the weather as the ground itself,