Click.
Colette held the phone. Daughter-in-law of fourteen months, spurned by his mother. She replaced the receiver, and walked into the kitchen. She stood by the double sink, mastering herself. ‘Gavin,’ she called, ‘do you want peas or green beans?’
There was no answer. She stalked into the sitting room. Gavin, his bare feet on the sofa arm, was reading What Car? ‘Peas or green beans?’ she asked.
No reply. ‘Gavin!!!!’ she said.
‘With wot?’
‘Cutlets.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Lamb. Lamb chops.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Whatever. Both.’
‘You can’t.’ Her voice shook. ‘Two green veg, you can’t.’
‘Who says?’
‘Your mother,’ she said; she felt she could say anything, as he never listened.
‘When?’
‘Just now on the phone.’
‘My mother was on the phone?’
‘Just now.’
‘Bloody amazing.’ He shook his head, and flicked over a page.
‘Why? Why should it be?’
‘Because she’s dead.’
‘What? Renee?’ Colette sat down on the sofa arm: later, when she told the story, she would say, well, at that point, my legs went from under me. But she would never be able to recapture the sudden fright, the weakness that ran through her body, her anger, her indignation, the violent exasperation that possessed her. She said, ‘What the hell do you mean, she’s dead?’
‘It happened this morning. My sis rang. Carole. ’
‘Is this a joke? I need to know. Is this a joke? Because if it is, Gavin, I’ll kneecap you. ’
Gavin raised his eyebrows, as if to say, why would it be funny? ‘I didn’t suggest it was,’ she said at once: why wait for him to speak? I asked if it was your idea of a joke.’
‘God help anybody who made a joke around here.’
Colette laid her hand on her ribcage, behind which something persistently fluttered. She stood up. She walked into the kitchen. She stared at the ceiling. She took a deep breath. She came back. ‘Gavin?’
‘Mm?’
‘She’s really dead?’
‘Mm.’
She wanted to hit him. ‘How?’
‘Heart.’
‘Oh God! Have you no feeling? You can sit there, going peas or beans – ’
‘You went that,’ he said reasonably.
‘Weren’t you going to tell me? If I hadn’t said, your mother was on the phone – ’
Gavin yawned. ‘What’s the hurry? I’d have told you.’
‘You mean you might just have mentioned it? When you got around to it? When would that have been?’
‘After the food.’
She gaped at him. He said, with some dignity, ‘I can’t mention when I’m hungry.’
Colette bunched her fingers into fists, and held them at chest height. She was short of breath, and the flutter inside her chest had subdued to a steady thump. At the same time an uneasy feeling filled her, that anything she could do was inadequate; that she was performing someone else’s gestures, perhaps from an equivalent TV moment where news of a sudden death is received. But what are the proper gestures when a ghost’s been on the phone? She didn’t know. ‘Please. Gavin,’ she said. ‘Put down What Car?. Just…look at me, will you? Now tell me what happened.’
‘Nothing.’ He threw the magazine down. ‘Nothing happened.’
‘But where was she? Was she at home?’
‘No. Getting her shopping. In Safeway. Apparently.’
‘And?’
Gavin rubbed his forehead. He seemed to be making an honest effort. ‘I suppose she was pushing her trolley.’
‘Was she on her own?’
‘Dunno. Yes.’
‘And then?’
‘She fell over.’
‘She didn’t die there, did she? In the aisle?’
‘Nah, they got her to the hospital. So no worries about the death certificate.’
‘What a relief,’ she said grimly.
Carole, it seemed, was proposing to get the bungalow on the market as soon as possible, with Sidgewick & Staff, who for sole agency charged 2 per cent on completion, and promised unlimited colour advertising and national tie-ins. ‘There should be a good payout,’ he said, ‘the place is worth a few quid.’
That was why, he explained, he was reading the new edition of What Car? ; Renee’s will would bring him nearer to what he most coveted in life, which was a Porsche 911.
‘Aren’t you upset?’ she asked him.
He shrugged. ‘We’ve all got to go, haven’t we? What’s it to you? It’s not as if you ever bothered with her.’
‘And she lived in a bungalow, Renee?’
‘Course she did.’ Gavin picked up his magazine and rolled it up in his hand, as if she were a wasp and he were going to swat her. ‘We went over for our lunch, that Sunday.’
‘No we didn’t. We never went.’
‘Only because you kept cancelling us.’
It was true. She’d hoped she could keep Renee at arm’s length: the wedding reception had proved her to have a coarse joke habit, and slipping false teeth. The teeth weren’t all that was false. ‘She told me,’ she said to Gavin, ‘that she had a stairlift installed. Which, if she lived in a bungalow, she couldn’t have.’
‘When? When did she tell you that?’
‘On the phone just now.’
‘Hello? Hello? Anyone at home?’ Gavin asked. ‘Are you ever stupid? I told you she’s dead.’
Alerted by the mutiny on her face, he rose from the sofa and slapped her with What Car?. She picked up the Yellow Pages and threatened to take out his eye. After he had slunk off to bed, hugging his expectations, she went back into the kitchen and grilled the cutlets. The peas and green beans she fed to the waste disposal; she hated vegetables. She ate the lamb with her fingers, her teeth scraping the bone. Her tongue came out, and licked the last sweetness from the meat. She couldn’t work out what was worst, that Renee had answered the phone after she was dead, or that she had answered the phone on purpose to lie to her and tell her to bugger off. She threw the bones down the waste disposal too, and rejoiced as the grinder laboured. She rinsed her fingers and wiped them on a kitchen roll.
In the bedroom, she inspected Gavin, spreadeagled across the available space. He was naked and snoring; his mag, rolled, was thrust under his pillow. That, that, she thought, is how much it means to him, the death of his only mother. She stood frowning down at him; her toe touched something hard and cold. It was a glass tumbler, lolling on its side, melted ice dribbling from its mouth on to the carpet. She picked it up. The breath of spirits hit her nostrils, and made her flinch. She walked into the kitchen and clicked the tumbler down on to the draining board. In the dark, tiny hall, she hauled Gavin’s laptop