Sister

He sat down next to Mum on the sofa and did that man thing of spreading his legs wide, taking up twice as much room as was necessary, being masculine and large. His smile skidded over my closed-in face to Mum’s receptive one. He sounded almost hearty.

“The good thing is that now that the postmortem is over and done with we can organize her funeral.”

Mum nodded, looking gratefully at him, like a little girl. She clearly bought his big-man thing.

“Do you know where you’d like her laid to rest?” he asked.

Laid to rest, as if you would be put to bed and in the morning it would all be better. Poor Todd, not his fault that his euphemisms infuriated me. Mum clearly didn’t mind. “I’d like her buried in the churchyard in the village. Next to Leo.” In case you don’t know already, that’s where your body is. In my more vulnerable moments I fantasize about you and Leo being together somewhere, wherever that somewhere is. The thought of the two of you having each other makes me feel a little less desperate. But of course if there is a somewhere, a third person would be with you too.

I want to warn you that what’s coming will be painful. I took the photo out of the cardboard casing and handed it to Mum. “It’s a photo of Tess’s baby.”

Mum wouldn’t take the picture from me; she didn’t even look at it. “But it was dead.”

I’m sorry.

“The baby was a boy.”

“Why have a picture? It’s macabre.”

Todd tried to come to the rescue. “I think they now let people have photos when their babies die as part of the grieving process.” Mum gave Todd one of her looks that she normally reserves only for family. He shrugged as if to distance himself from such an outlandish and distasteful notion.

I carried on, alone. “Tess would want her baby buried with her.”

Mum’s voice was suddenly loud in the flat. “No. I won’t have it.”

“It’s what she’d want.”

“She’d want everyone to know about her illegitimate baby? That’s what she’d want? To have her shame made public?”

“She would never have found him shameful.”

“Well she should have.”

It was Mum on autopilot: forty years of being infected with middle England’s prejudices.

“Do you want to stick an A on her coffin for good measure?” I asked.

Todd butted in. “Darling, that’s uncalled for.”

I stood up. “I’m going out for a walk.”

“In the snow?”

The words were more critical than concerned. It was Todd who said it, but it could just as easily have been Mum. I’d never spent time with both of them together before and was only just realizing their similarities. I wondered if that was the real reason I was going to marry him; maybe familiarity, even negative familiarity, breeds feelings of security rather than contempt. I looked at Todd, was he coming?

“I’ll stay here with your mother then.”

I’d always thought that whatever worst-case scenario happened in my life, I’d have Todd to cling to. But now I realized why no one could be my safety rope. I’d been falling since you were found—plummeting—too fast and too far for anyone to break my fall. And what I needed was someone who would risk joining me now seven miles down in the dark.

Mr. Wright must see my puffy face as I walk in. “Are you all right to carry on?”

“Absolutely fine.” My voice sounds brisk. He senses that this is the style that I want and continues, “Did you ask DS Finborough for a copy of the postmortem?”

“Not then, no. I accepted DS Finborough’s word that nothing else had been found in the postmortem apart from the cuts to her arms.”

“And then you went to the park?”

“Yes. On my own.”

I’m not sure why I added that. My feeling of being let down by Todd must still survive, even now, in all its irrelevancy.

I glance at the clock, almost one.

“Would it be okay if we break for lunch?” I ask. I’m meeting Mum at ten past in a restaurant round the corner.

“Of course.”

I said I’d tell you the story as I found out myself—no jumping forward—but it’s not fair on you or Mum to keep back what she feels now. And as I set the rules, I’m allowed to curve them a little now and then.

I arrive at the restaurant a few minutes early and through a window see Mum already sitting at a table. She no longer has her “hair done” and without the scaffolding of a perm it hangs straight and limp around her face.

When she sees me, her taut face relaxes. She hugs me in the middle of the restaurant, only mildly concerned that she is holding up a waiter en route to the kitchen. She strokes my hair (now longer) away from my face. I know, not Mum at all. But grief has pressed out of her all that we thought of as Mumish, leaving exposed someone who felt deeply familiar, connected to the rustle of a dressing gown in the dark and a feeling of warm arms before I could talk.

I order a half bottle of Rioja and Mum looks at me with concern. “Are you sure you should be drinking?”

“It’s only half a bottle, Mum. Between two of us.”

“But even a little alcohol can be a depressive. I read about it somewhere.”