am I now?’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
She adjusted the starched white net curtain. ‘Nobody needs me any more.’
‘Oh, Mum, I need you. We all need you.’
‘But you’re not here, are you? None of you is. Not even Thom. You’re all miles away.’
Dad and I exchanged a look.
‘Doesn’t mean we don’t need you.’
‘Granddad was the only one who relied on me. Even you, Bernard, you’d be fine with a pie and a pint up the road every evening. What am I supposed to do now? I’m fifty-eight years old and I’m good for nothing. I’ve spent my whole life looking after someone else and now there’s nobody left who even needs me.’
Her eyes brimmed with tears. I thought, for one terrifying minute, that she was about to howl.
‘We’ll always need you, Mum. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here. It’s like you’re like the foundations of a building. I might not see you all the time, but I know you’re there. Supporting me. All of us. I bet you Treena would say the same.’
She looked at me, her eyes troubled, as if she weren’t sure what to believe.
‘You are. And this – this is a weird time. It’s going to take a while to adjust. But remember what happened when you started your night classes? How excited you felt? Like you were discovering bits of yourself? Well, that’s going to happen again. It’s not about who needs you – it’s about finally devoting some time to you.’
‘Josie,’ said Dad, softly, ‘we’ll travel. Do all those things we thought we couldn’t do because it would have meant leaving him. Maybe we’ll come and see you, Lou. A trip to New York! See, love, it’s not that your life is over, just that it’s going to be a different sort of life.’
‘New York?’ said Mum.
‘Oh, my God, I’d love that,’ I said, pulling a piece of toast from the rack. ‘I could find you a nice hotel and we could do all the sights.’
‘You would?’
‘Perhaps we can meet that millionaire fella you work for,’ said Dad. ‘He can give us a few tips, right?’
I’d never actually told them about my change in circumstances. I kept eating my toast, my face blank.
‘Us? Go to New York?’ said Mum.
Dad reached for a box of tissues and handed them to her. ‘Well, why not? We have savings. You can’t take it with you. The old man knew that at least. Don’t be expecting any expensive bequests, eh, Louisa? I’m frightened to pass the bookie in case he jumps out and says Granddad owes him a fiver.’
Mum straightened up, her cloth in her hand. She looked to one side.
‘You and me and Dad in New York City. Well, wouldn’t that be a thing?’
‘We can look up flights this evening, if you like.’ I wondered, briefly, if I could persuade Margot to say her surname was Gopnik.
Mum put a hand to her cheek. ‘Oh, gracious, listen to me making plans and Granddad not cold in his grave yet. What would he think?’
‘He’d think it was wonderful. Granddad would love the thought of you and Dad coming to America.’
‘You really think so?’
‘I know so.’ I reached across and hugged her. ‘He travelled the world in the navy, didn’t he? And I also know he’d like to think of you starting back at the adult education centre. No point wasting all that knowledge you’ve gained over the past year.’
‘Though I’m also pretty sure he’d like to think you were still leaving me some dinner in the oven before you went,’ said Dad.
‘C’mon, Mum. Just get through today and then we can start planning. You did everything you could for him, and I know Granddad would feel you deserved the next stage of your life to be an adventure.’
‘An adventure,’ Mum mused. She took a tissue from Dad and dabbed at the corner of her eye. ‘How did I raise daughters with so much wisdom, eh?’
Dad raised his eyebrows and, with a deft move, slid the toast off my plate.
‘Ah. Well, that would be the fatherly influence, you see.’ He yelped as Mum flicked her tea-towel at the back of his head and then, as she turned, he smiled at me with a look of utter relief.
The funeral passed, as funerals do, with varying degrees of sadness, some tears, and a sizeable percentage of the congregation wishing they knew the tunes to the hymns. It was not an excessive gathering, as the priest put it politely. Granddad