something. But then yes, the smell of stale smoke got to me. I looked over the worktops for signs of an ashtray. Nothing. I looked in the kitchen bin. I did more than look. I dug around in the rubbish. And sure enough, hidden inside a yoghurt pot under a crisp packet that had been stuffed inside, were two fag butts. The bugger. That’d be him and bloody weeping willow Ingrid, I thought. And then I wondered if it was her when Mark’s clothes smelled too, if what I’d thought was just the pub was in fact him going to meet her rather than Roy. The idea didn’t bother me as much as it should have done. I was numb to it.
And don’t ask me why I did this next thing – maybe because I was thinking I would confront him later – but I took the dog ends out, put them in one of the bread bags I keep back to save on using new plastic bags, went through the side door to the garage and stuffed it in the drawer where I’d found Mark’s knife months earlier. I couldn’t face asking him about them now. I was tired. I’d had my first good day in a long time.
‘So that was it?’ Amanda asks. ‘Your only concern was the cigarette ends?’
I think back, really think. ‘No. There was something else. I rummaged to the back of the drawer. There were some charger cables, an adaptor plug, a packet of paper napkins, but the knife wasn’t in there – and now I think about that, I’m thinking, why would I check? What was in my subconscious that would make me do that? I tried to think when I’d last seen it. I thought I remembered putting it back in its sleeve and into the cutlery drawer… ages ago. I hadn’t taken it with me on my walkabouts. I hadn’t dared. I was sure I’d seen it in there the other day. Almost sure. I went back into the kitchen and straight to the drawer.’
‘And did you find it?’
‘No. There was only the potato peeler, serving spoons, salad tongs. A chopping knife, a meat knife, a cheese knife with the curly end, you know? The hunting knife wasn’t there.’
‘And how did you feel?’
‘Nothing. Other than a bit bamboozled. I should have worried. I mean, I should have panicked. But at that point, don’t forget, I had no idea what had happened to poor Anne-Marie, I only knew that meeting her had, for a few precious minutes, made me almost happy.’
On the Friday morning, I didn’t check the iPad. I didn’t know why at the time, but now I think that maybe a tiny chink of light had entered my world and that tiny chink had been enough to let me almost forget my routine. I even shared a joke with Katie, something about Dave and what an arse he is, how I’d put rat poison in his tea one day, and it seems to me, remembering, that Mark even smiled at me that morning, and I at him.
By the time I set off to see Dad, I felt almost cheerful. The September sun was on my face and I’m sure I caught the first fresh smells of autumn. It had been a couple of weeks since I’d last stolen a packet of sweets or a can of pop or anything at all. I walked. I breathed the air, took it into my lungs. I didn’t know if I could see a future, but maybe I could sense one, just out of reach. Whatever, for that brief period, I felt more all right than I had in a long while.
At the home, Dad was agitated, as per. The weather was warm that day and he couldn’t be doing with the heat.
‘Linda, love,’ he wheezed at me no sooner than my foot was in the door of his room. ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ Linda was my mother. Who’s dead, as I think I said. And I know I was used to him saying it, but whatever fleeting good mood I’d felt on the way here evaporated.
‘It’s not…’ I began, but then I thought, what’s the point? I wasn’t his daughter, not anymore. I hadn’t been his daughter for a year or two. I was his wife, my mother. Linda. I was standing in front of him like an old photograph of the woman he used to love, the woman he