searching under the sofa, at the bottom of cupboards, on top of the fridge, wondering if I had put the folder somewhere absentmindedly. When it finally dawned on me that it might have been personal – though Christ knew what they were looking for – I abandoned my search and bolted round to see if my mother’s house was all right.
The place looked okay. Well, it seemed secure. Yet it felt wrong. It wasn’t just Mum’s passing that had subdued the atmosphere. Some of the rooms felt disturbed, as if contaminated by an outside presence. Or maybe it was just that they seemed so untouched. Unloved. I thought about phoning Joe and seeing if he could come round at some point and check it, but didn’t, because I wasn’t sure if my motives were pure or whether it was just that I wanted to see him again. And I knew that he was busy today with work, then packing, then off on his course until Wednesday. I would just have to be a big girl about it all and do it myself.
Perhaps, I wondered, maybe I should start dealing with Mum’s stuff. I hadn’t wanted to since she went, yet it was a process I had to go through. If I didn’t do it then it would remain there, on my list; a chore no less, but still a connection to Mum. I’d known for a while that this avoidance technique was impractical and made no financial sense, yet I was prepared to suffer the consequences. However that afternoon, when I had a proper look at the neglected living room, with Mum’s trinkets collecting dust, it struck me that she would have wanted me to sort through them, knowing only I would treat them with the required care and loving concern. It made me feel like I’d betrayed her all over again: I had been self-centred and selfish.
But no more.
I resolved to make a start and began with the pictures and photos that she so loved; a framed snap of her and Dan on a mountain top in the Peak District, an embarrassing portrait of me – all teeth, tits and mortar board – at my graduation, an old map of Essex detailing the various ‘hundreds’. I didn’t know when it was produced but it referred to the North Sea as the German Ocean so I was guessing it was pretty ancient.
Beside that was a print of Colchester Castle, drawn in coloured inks from a south-easterly perspective. I was so
accustomed to seeing it hang over the sofa I’d never questioned its significance or wondered how it had come into Mum’s possession.
But I did now. I read the text underneath: a neat description of the state of the castle. The ‘s’s were written like ‘f’s. She’d visited there then, I thought, and bought this as a souvenir. Must have had been a while ago – the picture had been on the wall forever and left a darker space behind it when I stood on the sofa and unhooked it from the nail. As I did I glimpsed, in the glass reflection, the face of a woman staring over my shoulder.
My eyes clamped shut reflexively and I tensed, waiting for the voice to come, the temperature to drop or something nasty to suck out my mind.
But nothing happened.
Slowly I peeked at the glass. She was still there, but with a gulp of relief I saw who it was – Circe the witch, peering out from Mum’s favourite painting. No passive victim or gnarled old woman but a beauty and a force to be reckoned with. Circe transformed her enemies into animals; Odysseus’ men she turned into pigs. There she was, head bowed, pouring her enchanted potion into the sea. I had always liked this picture. I remembered when Mum brought it
home, recounting how the owner of the shop struck up a conversation. He said he could see a resemblance there and had insisted it should be hers – she had protested poverty but he let her have it at a fraction of the price. Dad lost his rag when he heard that story and had a rant about bourgeois values and the vulgarity of the reproduction. But I think he might have been a little jealous. Anyway, the painting remained upstairs in the loft until Dad left. Then it took pride of place in the living room.
Circe Invidiosa, Colchester Castle and an old map of Essex. For a second I wondered if