‘Daniel!’ Mona yelled. ‘Have you done your maths homework?’
Silence. If you could call the drone of computer-generated gunfire and the grinding gears of video-game tanks, silence.
‘Daniel!’
Silence, literal this time.
‘What?’
‘Homework? Have you done it?’
‘Yes, Mum. Ages ago.’
‘When, ages ago?’
Dan, all five foot ten and counting, filled the doorway. The flat was too small for them now. Too small for him, certainly. Barely fourteen and already four inches taller than Mona. Every inch his father’s son. Physically, at least.
‘After tea and before now. Maths and physics. Do you want to see it?’
It was a dare, not a question. He knew she wouldn’t; especially not physics. English or history she might have taken him up on. Funny how his homework was never English or history.
She shook her head and watched his back – spookily familiar and scarily alien – return to his boxroom.
Once Coronation Street was finished, Lizzie dabbled with a documentary about obese babies on Channel 4 and now she was trying to care about University Challenge.
When Jo first volunteered to talk to David, Lizzie had to admit she’d been relieved. But now . . . she felt . . . what did she feel? Guilty, she supposed, for copping out. But also a bit excluded. This affected her too. All right, so Nicci had left her a patch of land (albeit right outside David’s kitchen window). But still, it wasn’t the same. The others had been left people.
‘Picasso,’ Lizzie guessed. Just as the boy onscreen said, ‘Van Gogh.’
‘No, it’s Picasso.’
Lizzie high-fived the air. Still got it.
No matter how many times Lizzie looked at her mobile, balanced on the arm of the sofa, it refused to ring. Jo should be there by now. She’d promised to call as soon as she could, but that might not be for ages.
Idly, Lizzie flicked through the channels, ending back at University Challenge.
Gerry had gone straight to squash from a late meeting; he wouldn’t be back until gone ten, maybe eleven. Perhaps if she texted Jo now she could go with her, be her wing woman. Lizzie could be at David’s in ten minutes if she left now. Snatching up her mobile, she found Jo’s number and clumsily typed, Want some moral support? She pressed Send, before she could think better of it.
Eight ten p.m.
David wouldn’t mind Jo being ten minutes late. Since Jo hadn’t warned him she was coming, he wouldn’t even know. She hadn’t told him because that way she could still chicken out. And he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t convenient.
She’d come straight from Capsule Wardrobe’s offices, taking advantage of Parents’ Evening at Si’s school to get in some extra hours. She was knackered, and worried about last month’s profits. The new season had been in full swing for two months now, but business was still slow. Part of her wanted to put it down to the weather, but who was she kidding? They’d had a sub-zero spring before; it hadn’t affected sales then.
Smoothing down her sweater dress and tucking the hems of her skinny jeans into her ankle boots, Jo tried to gauge her reflection in the door’s glass panel. Her hair had been thrown into a ponytail hours ago, her roots were long overdue and, apart from red lipstick reapplied in the rear-view mirror two minutes earlier, her makeup hadn’t been retouched since breakfast. She knew she didn’t look great.
It was now or never, she decided. Do it, or go home and beat yourself up for the rest of the evening. As she raised her hand to ring David’s old-fashioned bell, Jo felt her mobile vibrate in her pocket. Damn. She was tempted to ignore it, but just in case it was Si she turned away from the front door and checked her screen.
Want some moral support?
Jo sighed. She didn’t know which was worse, Mona not attempting to disguise her relief when Jo volunteered, or Lizzie’s indecision. Come or don’t come, she had wanted to say, but make your bloody mind up. The fact was, Lizzie didn’t want to be there. She just didn’t want to not be there either.
It had to be a charity, the local MP canvassing or a neighbour looking for a lost cat/apologising for noisy teenagers/ wanting to borrow a parking permit. Nobody else knocked unannounced at quarter-past eight on a Monday night around here. If he ignored them, David decided, they’d probably go away. He couldn’t be bothered with being neigh-bourly tonight. It had been one of those days. Another one of those days. He just wanted to sit in the dark and wait for it to end.
The doorbell rang again. Its ancient chords hitting precisely the right note to pierce his low-level headache. Another ring like that and the girls would be awake.
‘Fuck off,’ David groaned aloud.
Could his day get any worse? The girls had taken for ever to go down tonight, demanding story after story and then complaining in unison that he didn’t do the voices the way Mummy did.
To which there was no answer. Parent fail.
David knew they weren’t saying it to hurt him. They weren’t even three years old, for God’s sake. And they were hurting too. They didn’t understand where Mummy had gone. Even though, as coached by the child psychologist his mother had insisted he consult (‘She’s an expert on child bereavement, you’re not’), he’d taken Harrie and Charlie to the funeral. And, to be honest, he didn’t understand why Mummy had gone away either.
The bell rang again. Whoever it was had no plans to go away. It was a miracle it hadn’t woken Charlie and Harrie already.
‘All right,’ he muttered as he dragged himself from the kitchen table. ‘You win. I’m coming.’
‘Look, just—’
David was in full flight as he flung open the front door. He stopped, as if looking for someone else behind Jo. ‘Jo . . . I . . . you didn’t . . . I wasn’t expecting you.’
He didn’t exactly look thrilled to see her.
From the far end of the hall she could hear the low buzz of voices competing for airspace. Someone in the kitchen. She strained to hear . . . someone in the living room, too.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jo said. ‘I haven’t seen you for a week or so. I dropped by on the off-chance. I should have called first, to check you didn’t have visitors.’
‘Visitors? I don’t . . . ?’
Pushing gently past him, Jo went to investigate. The door to the living room was open and a documentary was on the TV. In the kitchen a poet was saying something she clearly thought profound on Radio Four. An iPod played softly from the dining table.
The kitchen was a mess again. One of the spotlights over the sink had blown since her last visit. It looked like the washing-up hadn’t been done in days. And there were still bunches of dead flowers from relatives David claimed not even to know on the windowsill.
‘Oh God.’ She turned to him. She wanted to take him in her arms and hug him, but everything about his manner said no.
‘That bad?’ she said.
‘Worse.’
Shoulders sagging, David shoved his hands in his pockets. He looked about twelve. Boyishly handsome, utterly lost.