to swell on the base of it, turning gradually to thick yellow globules and I felt a drip and I knew that any minute, with a crash of plaster, and a flood of water, the ceiling would fall. The fear, the dreadful anticipation, woke me and I touched the wall above the bed and for a second the coldness of it felt like damp, and I felt quite sick at the thought of telling Mother, until I remembered she was dead. I remembered she was dead before I remembered it was a dream, and the relief of the first outweighed the relief of the second.
The next day, I watched Bea and Max leave for school. I knocked on her door, but no one answered. I texted ‘Hello? Fancy a walk?’ No reply. I tried to distract myself with work, but I stared at the screen, reading without reading, searching without digesting any of the answers. The area where I keep my computer needs a clear-out, but I collected a pile from one place and put it down in another. I stared out of the window.
I went for another walk, down to Lidl, where I bought some of the hazelnut chocolate she’d told me she liked, and up and down the long wide streets on the far side of the high road in the area estate agents call the Heaver Estate. When I was growing up, the wide red-brick terraces were divided into bedsits but now they’re in the second or even third wave of re-gentrification, and I wasn’t surprised, halfway up Louisville, to come across a small yellow skip, insecurely covered with tarpaulin. A basement was being dug out and the homeowners had used the building work as a spur for a clear-out.
Normally, a discovery like that has a positive effect on my mood; the satisfaction sits in my chest, settles there and expands, rolling around the nerve endings, cauterising any pain. Not that day. When I got home, I stood in the doorway to Mother’s room and imagined myself collecting clothes, finding bags and boxes, without moving. I looked down at my top and noticed I’d picked up a mark from the rung of a garden chair I’d carried back: the scythe-shaped streak of rust looked like blood.
When the doorbell rang, I assumed it was my Amazon delivery. I was expecting Walter Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci, a tome too hefty for the letter box. The chain was on, and with the new stiffness in my forefinger and thumb it takes me a minute, reaching up, to unhitch the knobbly end from its slotted corral. Then I turned the latch and opened the door.
It was Ailsa.
She looked at me without smiling. ‘Can I come in?’
Chapter Ten
Folding wooden dish drainer from Habitat, hinge broken
Tsundoku, noun. The act or habit of piling up newly
acquired books. From the Japanese ‘tsumu’, to
pile up, and ‘doku’, to read.
‘It’s not a good time.’ I stepped out into the porch, closing the door behind me. On the other side, the dog had started barking, jumping up, her nails scratching at the wood. The air was warm out, warmer than in the house; the light seemed suddenly different, bright and clear, like when you arrive at the beach. Ailsa had been fixed in my mind as I’d last seen her: pale, blotchy around the eyes. It was a shock to see she looked well. She’d had her hair cut and it bounced just above her jawline. She was wearing cowboy boots, and a cream dress with broderie anglaise and other fussiness across the chest.
‘Are you working?’ she said.
‘No. No I’m not. But I . . . it’s not a good time,’ I said again.
‘It’s just I’ve been so busy. Just one thing after another this week. I’ve been meaning to come round for a chat. I feel terrible that I haven’t come sooner so I thought I’d just invite myself in for a cup of tea. We’re having a party and I wanted to talk it through with you.’
There was a drop in the traffic. On the other side of the road, the street cleaner rolled noisily past.
‘Or do you have people?’ she said. Her eyes landed on the stain on my top, and then rested on one corner of my mouth. I raised my thumb before I could stop myself and felt stickiness there, a tiny bit of toast in the crease.
‘Do I have people?’ I tried to make sense of her words. Did I