it, is terribly soft. I glance over at Bea who gives me a dark look, full of blame.
Don’t tell Mammy.
Like it is all my fault.
My father used to sit in the kitchen watching telly until eleven o’clock, with the newspaper adrift in his lap. After the news he would fold the paper, get out of the chair, switch the telly off (no matter who was watching it) and make his way to bed. The milk bottles were rinsed and put on the step. One of the twins might be lifted on to a potty and tucked back into sleep. Then he would go into the room where he slept with my mother. She would already be in bed, reading and sighing since half past nine. There would be some muted talk, the sound of his keys and coins as he left them down. The rattle of his belt buckle. One shoe hitting the floor.
Silence.
There were girls at school whose families grew to a robust five or six. There were girls with seven or eight–which was thought a little enthusiastic–and then there were the pathetic ones like me, who had parents that were just helpless to it, and bred as naturally as they might shit.
Instead of turning left outside Mammy’s, I turn right for the airport road. I don’t think about where I am going, I think about the rain, the indicator, the drag of the rubber wiper against the glass. I think about nothing–there is nothing to think about. And then I think about a drink. Nothing messy. A fierce little naggin of whiskey, maybe, or gin. I float towards it in my nice Saab 9.3–towards the idea of it, flowering in my mouth.
I am always thirsty when I leave that house–something to do with the unfairness of the place. But I won’t drink. Not yet. Kitty was so slammed when she rang earlier that all I could hear down the line was a stupid yowling.
‘Owjz. Hizz,’ she said. ‘Hizz. Hizj im. Ohsfs. Hi.’ By which I was supposed to gather that a policewoman had just called to her door too. And, yes it was a bad wait; though not such a long one. The trick being, I wanted to say to her down the line, the trick being to get drunk after the news and not before. It is a thin line, Kitty, but we think it is important. Out here, in the real world, we think it makes a difference. Fact / Conjecture. Dead / Alive. Drunk / Sober. Out in the world that is not the world of the Hegarty family, we think these things are Not The Same Thing.
I didn’t say any of this, of course. I said, ‘Huh huh ho God.’
And she said, ‘Ay ghai Ay Hizj.’
And I said, ‘Ho ho ho oh ho God.’
And this went on until a man took the receiver and said, ‘Is that Kitty’s sister?’ in a nice South London accent. And I had to be polite to him, and apologise a little that my brother had died all over his Thursday afternoon.
I realise that I am driving the wrong way for home, so I stop and ring my husband Tom at the traffic lights and say I won’t be back tonight. I don’t want the girls to see me, or worry about me, until I have got this thing done.
He says everything will be fine, just fine. Everything will be fine. His voice is trembling a little and I realise that if I do not end the call he will tell me that he loves me, that this is the next thing he is going to say.
‘It’s all right,’ I say. ‘Bye bye. Bye bye.’ And I pull back into the traffic and the airport road.
There is something wonderful about a death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important. Your husband can feed the kids, he can work the new oven, he can find the sausages in the fridge, after all. And his important meeting was not important, not in the slightest. And the girls will be picked up from school, and dropped off again in the morning. Your eldest daughter can remember her inhaler, and your youngest will take her gym kit with her, and it is just as you suspected–most of the stuff that you do is just stupid, really stupid, most of the stuff you do is just nagging and whining and picking up for