or a burn-off. You made a decision and everything followed from that, and the older you got the more impossible it was to see through the Vaseline lens of time back into the past, your alternative lives, the ones you never now would lead.
Nathan had won at cards. He pulled the bedcovers over his shoulder and turned on his side, wuffling through his mouth. At about three in the morning Louisa stood in their doorway and said, ‘I’ve wet the bed,’ and Evelyn listened in the darkness as Nathan got out of bed, took Louisa to the bathroom, cleaned her up, dressed her in fresh pyjama pants, brought her in to sleep between them, crossed the landing, stripped her bed, took the sheets down to the laundry and came back up the stairs to land heavily in bed again. Evelyn fell asleep to the soft rumble and slosh below them of the washing machine spinning round.
The secretary rang to find out why she hadn’t sent in the questionnaire.
‘But I did. Days ago. Oh, damn. It must have got lost in the post. That seems crazy.’
‘Oh.’ The woman exhaled sharply. ‘What a pain. We’re trying to file all these positions now, we want to finalise it today, it’s a waste of time for HR to do them individually.’
‘Yes. I understand, of course, I’m so sorry to muck you around. Look, I don’t want to mess up your systems, perhaps the best thing is just to forget about it.’
‘Forget about it?’
‘Yes, perhaps it’s best if I just withdraw my application, just scratch me off the list.’
‘Well do you want the job or not?’
‘Yes, well I do, I think he’s brilliant, it’s a great cause, I’m sure you’ll have every success, it would be a wonderful thing to be involved in but I don’t want to hold you up, not on my account, maybe you should just – just don’t consider me.’
‘Are you withdrawing your application?’
‘The thing is my mother-in-law isn’t well.’
A pause.
‘Actually, she’s dead.’
‘Right. Goodbye.’
Evelyn put the phone down, liberated and ashamed. Then she pulled the White Pages towards her, opened it at the folded-over triangle marking Hicks to Hills, found the first number and began to press the buttons.
9. Family Room
Dorothy and Andrew were in Cornwall Park with the kids when the call came through. The toddler, Donald, clutched at a length of banana with his fists, and squelches of creamy fruit bulged through his fingers. Shadows from the latticed leaves flitted over the tartan rug. The big roll of kitchen towel unravelled when Dorothy tried to tear off a sheet, not enough perforation, and Donald dropped the banana to grab at the soft white cone of a flower. She took him by the wrists and wiped his hands back and forth over the grass. At the sharp ringing of the cell phone, a wedding party posing for photos looked over from the ginkgo trees. Dorothy called out, ‘Sorry!’ Andrew liked to keep up with technology; it was a guy thing. One day that groom would understand.
Finally Andrew found the persistent phone and answered the call, taking it away from the rest of them, by the russet-winged paradise ducks. Those birds, stalking the paths, gawkily big. Reggae music started from a boom box at someone else’s picnic and Amy jumped along off the beat, around and under the picnic table, and Grace read a book on her stomach on the grass, her hair so long and falling into the clover.
Dorothy watched Andrew nod and listen. There was, in the air around his head, a sort of pulsing that she could feel too. Amy yelped sharply and emerged from under the table. She stood in front of her mother, face pruned-up with pain, tears in her eyes, rubbing her forehead. At last Dorothy saw the child, she came into focus, and she drew Amy into her arms and kissed her hair. The phone call ended – Andrew reached the handset out towards Dot across the metres of grass, as though he was showing her something on the screen or wanted her to take this contaminated object from him, and he gestured clumsily for her to come, past the children, through the bright afternoon, his nose wrinkled, his face helpless. One duck charged another, chests up, wings pointed to the ground, and a small terrier barked at them, straining at the leash.
10. Masculinity Studies
The High Dependency Unit smelled like an old folks’ home, which smelled like stale flower water, which smelled stagnant, like