Anna kneels on the carpet and pulls open the bottom drawer of the desk. It comes out with more force than she expects and she falls back, the drawer on her lap. I see Laura look up to check she’s okay; watch Anna laugh at her own clumsiness. Laura goes back to the pile of my diaries, and Anna lifts the drawer to slot it back into the desk, but something stops her. She’s seen something.
Anna sets the drawer to one side and reaches a hand into the base of the pedestal. I see her glance at Laura to check she isn’t watching, and as Anna’s eyes widen I know, as clearly as if I could see it, that her hand has closed around the smooth glass of a vodka bottle.
There’s disappointment on her face.
I know that feeling, too.
She pulls out her hand, empty. Pushes the drawer back into the desk and leaves the bottle in its hiding place. She says nothing to Laura, and the feeling of exclusion disappears, thanks to this small complicity Anna isn’t even aware of. Some secrets shouldn’t be shared outside the family.
Others shouldn’t be shared at all.
TEN
ANNA
I catch Laura looking at her watch. She’s working her way through a stack of papers, heaping half of them onto a pile for the shredder. It’s making me itch. Anything relating to work should be in the showroom, but what if she accidentally destroys something important? I’m a director of the business – albeit a somewhat passive one. I can’t just throw paperwork away without checking what it’s for.
The weight of my gaze makes Laura look up. ‘All right?’
‘You should get off. Mark’ll be back soon.’
‘I promised I’d stay till he got back.’ She puts another sheaf of papers on the shredding pile.
‘Blame me.’ I haul myself to my feet and hold out a hand to help Laura up.
‘We haven’t finished sorting this lot.’
‘We’ve done loads. It’s practically finished.’ It’s a gross exaggeration. Laura’s piles of ‘things to keep’ and ‘things to throw’ have merged, and I’m no longer sure whether I’m keeping a giant ball of rubber bands because I’m sentimental, or because they’re useful, or because they’ve slid from one pile to the other.
‘It’s a mess!’
‘That’s easily solved.’ I pick up Ella, usher Laura out of the room, and shut the study door. ‘Ta da!’
‘Anna! I thought we agreed that wasn’t the way to deal with things?’
You agreed, I think, then immediately feel unfair. It was my idea to sort through my parents’ study. Me who asked Laura to help. ‘I’m not ignoring it because it’s upsetting, though. I’m ignoring it because I don’t want to tidy any more. Completely different.’
Laura narrows her eyes at me, unconvinced by my breezy tone. ‘What are you going to do about the card?’
‘You’re probably right. Some sick joker with an axe to grind.’
‘Right.’ She’s still not sure if she should leave me.
‘I’m fine, I promise. I’ll call you tomorrow.’ I find her coat and wait patiently while she looks for her keys.
‘If you’re sure …’
‘I am.’ We hug, and as she walks to her car I stand at the door, one hand on Rita’s collar to stop her running after phantom squirrels.
Laura’s car gives a splutter, then cuts out. She grimaces. Tries again, revving hard to keep it from cutting out, and backs out of the driveway, waving from the open window.
When I can no longer hear the sound of her car, I return to the study. I survey the piles of papers, the birthday cards, the pens and paperclips and Post-it notes. There are no answers here, only memories.
Memories I want to keep.
I take the lid off a box of photographs and sift through them. On top are six or seven photos of Mum and Laura’s mum, Alicia. In one they’re in a sunny pub garden; in another a café, having a cream tea. In another the photo has been taken from an angle, as though the camera was propped up and slipping to one side. Mum and Alicia lie on their stomachs on a bed, Laura between them. She’s perhaps two years old, which makes Mum and Alicia no more than eighteen. Just kids themselves.
There are dozens more photos in the box, but all – as far as I can tell – of Dad, the showroom, me as a baby.
I have lots of photos of Dad, but hardly any of Mum. Always behind the lens, never in front of it – like so many women once they have a family. So intent on documenting their children’s lives before they grow too old, it doesn’t occur to them to document their own. That one day, their children will want to pore over photos of a time they were too young to remember.
In the short time between Mum going missing and her suicide being established, I gave the police the only clear photo I had of her, which lived in a silver frame on the mantelpiece in the siting room. They circulated it immediately, and when news of her death broke, the papers used the same photo to accompany the story. The police gave me back the framed picture, but every time I looked at it, I saw the headlines. Eventually I had to put it away.
Apart from their wedding photo, where she’s hardly visible beneath the floppy hat that was all the rage at the time, there are no other photos of Mum on display. I put the ones of Mum and Alicia to one side so I can have a couple framed.
I open Mum’s 2016 appointment diary. It’s a fat A4 book, with each day over two pages: appointments on the left and space for notes on the opposite side. It’s nothing fancy – a corporate gift from a car manufacturer – but I run my fingers over the gilt-embossed logo, and feel the weight of the pages as it falls open in my hands. The diary is filled with Mum’s writing, and the words are illegible until I blink hard to stop them swimming. Every day is full. Meetings with suppliers. Repair visits booked for the photocopier, the coffee machine, the water cooler. On the right-hand side, that day’s to-do list, with items neatly scored through when complete. If you want something done, ask a busy person – wasn’t that what they said? Mum couldn’t have fitted more into her life if she’d tried, yet I never heard her complain she had too much on her plate. When her own mother – a crotchety woman who rationed her affection like wartime sugar – was admitted to a hospice, Mum drove each day from Eastbourne to Essex, returning only once Granny was sleeping. It was only afterwards Dad and I found out about the lump Mum had found in her own breast; the anxious wait she’d had for the all-clear.
‘I didn’t want to worry you,’ was all she’d say.
The mix of work and home in the diary blindsides me. Adele tickets for A’s birthday? is sandwiched between a reminder to call a Katie Clements back about a test drive, and the phone number for the local radio station. I press the heels of my palms into my eyes. I wish I’d looked through Mum and Dad’s things earlier; I wish I’d known on my birthday what she’d thought of as a present.
I can’t help myself – I turn to 21 December and look at the day she died. There are two appointments and a list of tasks left incomplete. Tucked into the back of the diary are a handful of business cards, leaflets and scribbled notes. The diary is a cross-section of Mum’s life, as illuminating as an autobiography and as personal as a journal. I slip the photos inside and hug the book to my chest for a moment, and then I start to put everything back where it came from.
I replace the desk tidy, and with it the paperweight I made from clay and painted when I was in primary school. It used to live on the dresser in the kitchen, holding down the myriad classroom letters.
I run my finger over the superglued crack that divides it neatly in two, and I have a sudden, sharp memory of the sound it made when it hit the wall.
There were apologies.
Tears. Mine. Mum’s.
‘Good as new,’ Dad said, once the glue had dried. But it wasn’t, and nor was the patch of wall where he filled the dent and painted over it in a shade that didn’t quite match what had gone before. I wouldn’t talk to him for days.