“I’m not sure, but the art college wants to exhibit them at their show. It’s in three weeks and they want Tess to have a special display.”
They’d phoned me a couple of days earlier and I’d readily agreed.
“They’re not going to pay for them though, are they?” asked Mum. “I mean, what did she think the point of all of this was, exactly?”
“She wanted to be a painter.”
“You mean like a decorator?” asked Mum, astonished.
“No, it’s the word they use for artist now.”
“Painting pictures all day is what children do at playgroup,” Mum continued. “I didn’t mind her doing it as a subject at school. I thought it was nice for her to have a break from real subjects. But to call it further education is ridiculous.”
“She was just pursuing her talent.”
Yes, I know. It was a little weak.
“It was infantile,” snapped Mum. “A waste of all her academic achievements.”
She was so angry with you for dying.
I hadn’t told Mum about my arrangements for Xavier to be buried with you, fearful of the confrontation, but I couldn’t put it off any longer.
“Mum, I really think that she’d want Xavier—”
Mum interrupted. “Xavier?”
“Her baby, she would want—”
“She used Leo’s name?”
Her voice was horrified. I’m sorry.
She went back into the sitting room and started shoving clothes into a black bin liner.
“Tess wouldn’t want it all just thrown away, Mum; she recycled everything.”
“These aren’t fit for anyone.”
“She mentioned a textile recycling place once; I’ll see—” But Mum had turned away and was pulling out the drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe. She took a tiny cashmere cardigan out of its tissue paper. She turned to me, her voice soft. “It’s beautiful.”
I remembered my astonishment too when I first arrived at finding such exquisite baby things among the poverty of the rest of your flat.
“Who gave them to her?” Mum asked.
“I don’t know. Amias just said she had a spree.”
“But with what? Did the father give her money?”
I braced myself; she had a right to this information. “He’s married.”
“I know.”
Mum must have seen my confusion; the softness in her voice had gone. “You asked me if I wanted to ‘put an
“I’m sorry. And it was a cruel thing to say.”
“You girls thought that once you got to A levels you’d left me behind. That all I ever thought about was the menu for a dull supper party three weeks away.”
“I’ve just never seen you read, that’s all.”
She was still holding Xavier’s tiny cardigan, her fingers stroking it as she spoke. “I used to. I’d stay up with my bedside light on while your father wanted to go to sleep. It irritated him but I couldn’t stop. It was like a compulsion. Then Leo was ill. I didn’t have the time anymore. Anyway, I’d realized that books were full of trivia and tripe. Who cares about someone else’s love affair, what a sunrise looks like for page after page? Who cares?”
She put down the tiny cardigan and resumed shoving your clothes into a bin liner. She hadn’t taken off the wire hangers, and the hooks tore the flimsy black plastic. As I watched her clumsily anguished movements I thought of the kiln at school and our trayload of soft clay pots being put inside. They would bake harder and harder until the ones that were imperfectly thrown would break into pieces. Your death had thrown Mum way off center and I knew, as I watched her tie the bin liner into a knot, that when she finally faced your death, grief was a kiln that would shatter her.
An hour later, I drove Mum to the station. When I returned, I put your clothes from her frantically crammed bin liners back into your wardrobe; Granny’s clock back onto the mantelpiece. Even your toiletries were left untouched in the bathroom cupboard, with mine kept in my toiletries bag on a stool. Who knows, maybe that’s the real reason I’ve stayed in your flat all this time. It’s meant I’ve been able to avoid packing you away.
