The morning is without event. Trudy and Claude’s exchange of muted acrimony falters then yields to hours of sleep, after which she leaves him in bed and takes a shower. In the thrumming warmth of speeding droplets and the sound of my mother’s tuneful humming, I experience an unaccountable mood of joy and excitement. I can’t help myself, I can’t hold the happiness back. Are these borrowed hormones? It hardly matters. I see the world as golden, even though the shade is no more than a name. I know it’s along the scale near yellow, also just a word. But golden sounds right, I sense it, I taste it where hot water cascades across the back of my skull. I don’t remember such carefree delight. I’m ready, I’m coming, the world will catch me, tend to me because it can’t resist me. Wine by the glass rather than the placenta, books direct by lamplight, music by Bach, walks along the shore, kissing by moonlight. Everything I’ve learned so far says all these delights are inexpensive, achievable, ahead of me. Even when the roaring water ceases, when we step into colder air and I’m shaken to a blur by Trudy’s towel, I have the impression of singing in my head. Choirs of angels!
Another hot day, another floating confection, so I dream, of printed cotton, yesterday’s sandals, no scent because her soap, if it’s the bar Claude gave her, is perfumed with gardenia and patchouli. She doesn’t braid today. Instead, two plastic devices, highly coloured, I’m sure, attached above her ears hold her hair back on each side. I feel my spirits begin to droop as we descend the familiar stairs. Just now, to have forgotten my father for minutes on end! We enter a clean kitchen, whose unnatural order is my mother’s night tribute to him. Her exequy. The acoustic is altered, the floor no longer sticks to her sandals. The flies have moved to other heavens. As she goes towards the coffee machine she must be thinking, as I am, that Elodie will have finished her interview. The officers of the law will be confirming or abandoning their first impressions. In effect, for now, for us, both are true at once. Ahead of us the path seems to fork, but it’s forked already. In any event, there will be a visit.
She reaches up to a cupboard for the tin of ground coffee and the filter papers, runs the cold-water tap, fills a jug, fetches a spoon. Most of the cups are clean. She sets out two. There’s pathos in this familiar routine, in the sounds of homely objects touching surfaces. And in the little sigh she makes when she turns or slightly bends our unwieldy form. It’s already clear to me how much of life is forgotten even as it happens. Most of it. The unregarded present spooling away from us, the soft tumble of unremarkable thoughts, the long-neglected miracle of existence. When she’s no longer twenty-eight and pregnant and beautiful, or even free, she won’t remember the way she set down the spoon and the sound it made on slate, the frock she wore today, the touch of her sandal’s thong between her toes, the summer’s warmth, the white noise of the city beyond the house walls, a short burst of birdsong by a closed window. All gone, already.
But today is special. If she forgets the present it’s because her heart is in the future, the one that’s closing in. She’s thinking of the lies she’ll have to tell, how they need to cohere, and be consistent with Claude’s. This is pressure, this is the feeling she used to have before an exam. A little chill in the gut, some weakness below the knees, a tendency to yawn. She must remember her lines. Cost of failure being higher, more interesting than any routine school test. She could try an old assurance from childhood – no one will actually die. That won’t do. I feel for her. I love her.
Now I’m feeling protective. I can’t quite dispel the worthless notion that the very beautiful should live by other codes. For such a face as I’ve imagined for her there should be special respect. Prison for her would be an outrage. Against nature. There’s already nostalgia in this domestic moment. It’s a treasure, a gem for the memory store. I’ve got her to myself, here in the ordered kitchen, in sunshine and peace, while Claude sleeps away the morning. We should be close, she and I, closer than lovers. There’s something we should be whispering to each other.
Perhaps it’s goodbye.
EIGHTEEN
IN THE EARLY afternoon the phone rings and the future introduces herself. Chief Inspector Clare Allison, now attached to the case. The voice sounds friendly, no hint of accusation. That may be a bad sign.
We’re in the kitchen again, Claude has the phone. His first coffee of the day is in his other hand. Trudy stands close and we hear both sides. Case? The word packs a threat. Chief inspector? Also unhelpful.
I gauge my uncle’s anxiety by his zeal to accommodate. ‘Oh yes. Yes! Of course. Please do.’
Chief Inspector Allison intends to visit us. Normal practice would be for both to come to the station for a chat. Or to make statements, if appropriate. However, due to Trudy’s advanced condition, the family’s grief, the chief inspector and a sergeant will come by within the hour. She’d like to take a look at the site of the deceased’s last contacts.
This last, innocent and reasonable to my ears, puts Claude into a frenzy of welcome. ‘Please come. Marvellous. Do. Take us as you find us. Can’t wait. You’ll—’
She hangs up. He turns towards us, probably ashen, and says in a tone of disappointment, ‘Ah.’
Trudy can’t resist mimicry. ‘All … fine, is it?’
‘What’s this case? It’s not a criminal matter.’ He appeals to an imaginary audience, a council of elders. A jury.
‘I hate it,’ my mother murmurs, more to herself. Or to me, I’d like to believe. ‘I hate it, I hate it.’
‘This is supposed to be for the coroner.’ Claude walks away from us, aggrieved, takes a turn around the kitchen and comes back to us, outraged. Now his complaint is to Trudy. ‘This is not a police matter.’
‘Oh really?’ she says. ‘Better phone the inspector and put her straight.’
‘That poet woman. I knew we couldn’t trust her.’
We understand that somehow Elodie is my mother’s charge, that this is an accusation.
‘You fancied her.’
‘You said she’d be useful.’
‘You fancied her.’
But the deadpan reiteration doesn’t needle him.
‘Who wouldn’t? Who cares?’
‘I do.’
I ask myself once more what I gain by their falling out. It could bring them down. Then I’ll keep Trudy. I’ve heard her say that in prison nursing mothers have a better life. But I’ll lose my birthright, the dream of all humanity, my freedom. Whereas together, as a team, they might scrape through. Then give me away. No mother, but I’ll be free. So which? I’ve been round this before, always returning to the same hallowed place, the only principled decision. I’ll risk material comfort and take my chances in the wider world. I’ve been confined too long. My vote’s for liberty. The murderers must escape. This is a good moment then, before the Elodie argument goes too far, for me to give my mother another kick, distract her from squabbling with the interesting fact of my existence. Not once, not twice, but the magic number of all the best old stories. Three times, like Peter’s denial of Jesus.
‘Oh, oh, oh!’ She almost sings it. Claude pulls out a chair for her and brings a glass of water.
‘You’re sweating.’
‘Well I’m hot.’
He tries the windows. They haven’t budged in years. He looks in the fridge for ice. The trays are empty in the recent cause of three rounds of gin and tonics. So he sits across from her and extends his cooling sympathies.
‘It’ll be all right.’
‘No, it won’t.’
His silence agrees. I was considering a fourth strike, but Trudy’s mood is dangerous. She might go on the attack and invite a dangerous response.
After a pause, in mollifying mode, he says, ‘We should run through it one last time.’
‘What about a lawyer?’
‘Bit late now.’
‘Tell them we won’t talk without one.’
‘Won’t look good when they’re only coming round for a chat.’
‘I hate this.’
‘We should run through it one last time.’
But they don’t. Stupefied, they contemplate Chief Inspector Allison’s approach. By now, within the hour could mean within the minute. Knowing everything, almost everything, I’m party to the crime, safe, obviously, from questioning, but fearful. And curious, impatient to witness the inspector’s skills. An open mind could peel these two apart in minutes. Trudy betrayed by nerves, Claude by stupidity.
I’m trying to place them, the morning coffee cups from my father’s visit. Transferred, I now think, to wait unwashed by the kitchen sink. DNA on one cup will prove my mother and uncle to be telling the truth. The Danish debris must be close by.
‘Quickly,’ says Claude at last. ‘Let’s do this. Where did the row start?’
‘In the kitchen.’
‘No. On the doorstep. What was it about?’
‘Money.’
‘No. Throwing you out. How long was he depressed?’
‘Years.’
‘Months. How much did I lend him?’
‘A thousand.’
‘Five. Christ. Trudy.’