Coming Home (6 page)

I reached out for her arm, but she jumped away.

‘It’s not Graham,’ I said gently. ‘It’s Dad who’s died. Robert. Not Graham.’

Mum stared at me, her eyes wide. Then she shook her head. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Good God, I may be old but I don’t have dementia. What kind of idiot do you take me for?’

‘I …’

Mum turned for the stairs. ‘Cup of tea?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m fine.’

I
yanked the wool from the tip of my knitting needles, unravelling a row of uneven stitches. ‘Please could you help me with my knitting?’ I asked Miss Dawson. She’d been waiting for me to say something for several minutes, but the knitting was taking up all my concentration. It hadn’t been going right for a few days now and the work I’d produced was full of telltale holes
.

‘Here.’ Miss Dawson took the wool and needles from me, unravelled a couple more rows, cast on and knitted a couple of neat rows for me. ‘There you go.’ She passed it back
.

‘Thanks.’

‘Are you sleeping all right now?’ she asked. ‘You said you have sleeping tablets? Are they working?’

‘Hmph.’

Nights were bad. I couldn’t stop thinking about the accident. Mum had taken me to the doctor and, after that, I got half a tiny purple sleeping pill at bedtime
.

The pills tasted bitter and dragged me into sleep but, in my dreams, I met Graham. All night we played, we argued, we messed around. I woke feeling happy. And then I had to remember all over again that he was dead. During the
day, I felt like I was walking through melted toffee, my head enclosed in a glass jar
.

‘I stopped taking them. I don’t feel much like myself with them,’ I said
.

‘And are you managing to get to sleep without them?’

‘S’pose,’ I said
.

I’d never tell Miss Dawson, but I’d started talking to Graham instead. Each night, I lay down and told him about my day. I imagined that he could hear me; I imagined his replies. I slept better now—but my dreams were still of Graham
.

A
fter Mum had settled downstairs with her tea, I took Dad’s address book upstairs. After the scene on the landing, I thought it was better that I make the calls. The address book was faded and worn and, when I lifted it to my nose, I could catch the scent of my father impregnated in the leather. I imagined him sitting in his study, his long fingers thumbing through the pages crammed with carefully written names, numbers and addresses.

I made the calls from my bedroom, not wanting Mum to hear me repeat the same things over and over. ‘Yes, died in his sleep … very peaceful … yes, she’s fine, thank you … I’m here to help … yes, funeral’s on Friday at eleven … no flowers, money to charity …’

It made for a wearing afternoon’s work. Dad was one of the first in his peer group to pass away, and many people were so shocked I ended up consoling them rather than the other way around. It was tedious, but I was keen to get it over with; happy that I was able to do it for Mum.

Under ‘D’ I found the number for Miss Dawson, my old grief counsellor. I chewed my pen and stared out of the window. Would she want to know? She’d seen a lot of
me after Graham had died, had almost become a friend. I wondered what she was up to now. I’d have thought she was in her late thirties when she was helping me, so she must be nearly sixty now. I added her number to my phone, clicked ‘Call’ and waited while it rang.

‘Hello?’ Her voice sounded muffled, as if she were talking from a previous century.

‘Hello. I’m looking for … umm …’ I realised I didn’t know her Christian name. ‘Miss Dawson?’

‘Yes, speaking. Who’s calling?’

‘Miss Dawson! It’s Evie. Evie Stevens.’

Not even a pause. ‘Evie! How lovely to hear from you. What are you up to now? Still knitting?’

‘And some!’ I laughed. ‘I knit for charity these days. Let’s just say there are a lot of sailors in the world wearing warm hats thanks to you.’

She laughed. ‘It wasn’t as random as you think.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I had a theory that you were stopping yourself from talking. I wondered if getting you to focus with all your consciousness on small repetitive tasks might allow thoughts from your subconscious to surface. You were my guinea pig. It was a technique I went on to use on many of my other clients.’

‘Wow! I had no idea. I thought you were just trying to fill the time.’

We chatted about Dubai, what I was doing; I told her why I was back. She was touched to be invited to the funeral.

‘But how’s your mother?’ she asked. ‘How’s she taking it?’

‘She’s OK, I think. She seems very organised. Together.’

‘Well, I’m glad to hear that.’ She sighed. ‘Look, I probably shouldn’t say this, but you know it was her we were worried about most back then.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. You were a resilient little thing. A tough cookie. Devastated, obviously, but your grief ran through the natural stages.’

‘And Mum’s didn’t?’ I was talking quietly, scared that Mum would come upstairs and overhear.

‘Well. It was very—how to say it?—extreme. Wasn’t it? It was what we’d call a “complicated grief”—a grief dysfunction, of sorts. Your mother found it exceptionally difficult to accept the loss of Graham. Even when she appeared to start functioning more normally, we were worried she was suppressing it. I tell you this because an event such as this, such as your father passing away, could bring it all back.’

‘Hmm.’ Just what I was thinking. ‘I’m trying to help … you know: be there for her.’

‘Evie, you always have been there for her. You can only do your best—and I know your best is very good. But, if you’re worried about anything or need to speak to me at any time, please don’t hesitate. I’m sure she’ll be fine, but keep an eye on her. It’s a difficult time.’ She gave me her email address.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I hope I don’t need it.’

As the afternoon wore on, I made good progress through the address book. Luca had been out when I’d called his house, but I left a message and my number. I didn’t know, though, what to do about my uncle—Mum’s brother—the black sheep of the family. Would he want to know that his brother-in-law had passed away? Did I have the right to tell him if Mum didn’t want to contact him?

‘How are you getting on?’ asked Mum, surprising me, long after I’d had to click on the light.

‘Fine,’ I said, sighing. I flicked through the remaining pages of the address book. ‘Probably only five or six more and I’ll be done.’

‘We must remember to invite the headmaster,’ she said. ‘It’s probably the “done thing”.’ She made the little quote marks in the air.

‘What headmaster? You mean of the university?’

‘Doh, Evie, don’t be silly. Of the school!’

I froze. Twice now. ‘University,’ I said, treading on eggshells. ‘Dad worked at the university.’

Mum bent down to pick up a tissue that had missed the bin, placed it in. Then she looked up at me. ‘Of course. What did you think I meant! Silly girl. Yes, the chancellor, or whatever, of the university where Robert taught. It’s probably only polite to invite him. Will you do that? Anyway. Look. There’s one more thing I wonder if you can help me with before you disappear back to Dubai?’

‘Sure.’ I wasn’t paying attention one hundred per cent. I was flicking through the address book, pretending to look
at names while Miss Dawson’s words circled in my head:
extreme reaction … complicated grief … we were worried she was suppressing it … your father passing away could bring it all back
.

Mum’s voice broke into my thoughts. ‘I’d like you to help me clear out the attic. All your brother’s stuff is up there—’ I stared at the address book, unable meet her eye ‘—and I don’t think I can face it. But …’—and I do wonder if she paused here for dramatic effect, or if she was nervous of my reaction—‘I’m planning on selling the house. In fact, I’ve just made an offer on a new one.’

W
ell, after that bombshell, I begged Mum not to rush into anything, but she seemed adamant that she wanted to sell the house—apparently she and Dad had been planning to do it before he died and had already put in the offer. If I’d learned anything about bereavement from my sessions with Miss Dawson, it was that you shouldn’t rush into making any major changes. Such as selling your house.

‘The new place is just around the corner,’ Mum said, batting away my concerns like lazy bluebottles circling her face. ‘Your father liked it a lot and I don’t want to lose it. It’s a much smaller house—more manageable and cheaper to run, especially now I’ll be on my own—but it’s in a better location? In the conservation area?’ Her intonation rose at the end of each sentence, as if she were asking my approval. ‘I’ll show you tomorrow, if you like? We can take a walk by. House prices there are just going up and up, and they do say “location, location, location”, don’t they?’

She stopped talking and I didn’t fill the silence.

‘Anyway, they haven’t accepted my offer yet,’ she said eventually. She wasn’t looking at me; she was examining the paintwork of the doorframe intently, running a finger over it.

I thought of the £22,000 debit from Dad’s account. That must be what it was for. ‘So had you and Dad put money aside for the deposit?’

Mum looked at me. ‘No …’

‘Oh … how about legal fees? Have you had to pay anything yet? For surveys?’

‘Why do you ask?’ Something in Mum’s voice warned me not to go further.

‘Oh … no reason.’

There was another silence. To be honest, I was too tired and too shell-shocked by the events of the last forty-eight hours—not to mention by the lack of sleep—to be in a position to talk further about it. Mum and Dad had lived in our house for nearly thirty years; it was the home into which I’d been born. I couldn’t understand how or why Mum would want to move so fast. But exhaustion rendered me incapable of expressing even that much.

‘Can we talk about it in the morning?’ I yawned, looking pointedly towards my bedroom door.

I woke the next day with Dad on my mind. I’d dreamed about him in the night, knowing in the dream that something was vaguely wrong, but not understanding what it was. For a few seconds, in that hazy state between sleep and wakefulness, I was unable to place where I was, or why. There was something I needed to do for Dad but where was he? Then, as the morning sun streaked through my curtains, it all came back. I resolved to spend the day
clearing out the attic and going through Dad’s papers. The missing £22,000 made me feel uneasy and I was determined to get to the bottom of it.

Downstairs, I found a note from Mum saying she’d popped up to the High Street, so I grilled the life back into a couple of croissants I found in the freezer, made myself a coffee and heaved the first of Dad’s box files onto the dining table, where I spent the best part of the morning painstakingly matching up each receipt from the ‘Receipts’ file with each debit from the account, credit card bill or cheque stub.

Kudos to my father, every single one matched—except the most important one; the one that had piqued my curiosity. I could tell the missing £22,000 had been transferred to another bank account—the logical assumption was that it was a savings account—but I couldn’t find a record of the recipient bank account in any of the files. I slammed my fist against the table in frustration, figures dancing in front of my eyes. Dad had receipts for new windscreen wipers at £14.99 a pair, for heaven’s sake. How could he forget to document where £22,000 went?

Furthermore, I was now in an even worse position than I had been when I started. Instead of finding a solution, going through the papers like a penny-pinching accountant had thrown up a new problem: I’d now found a payment of £1,000 that had gone to the same bank account every single month as far back as Dad’s statements went. It, too, was lacking receipts; unexplained. There was a printed screenshot to show that Dad had stopped the payment just before he died, but I couldn’t find any further details
about it. ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ I said, staring at the statements, as if burning the digits onto my retinas might yield an explanation.

If it wasn’t for a home deposit, what could it be? A deposit on a new car? A holiday? Garden landscaping? Some sort of investment? A shudder ran through me. James had always been telling me about the dodgy investment scams that people—especially the elderly—fell for: Ponzi schemes, non-existent companies, prime banks and so on. Had Dad been conned into handing over money for something like that? I’d almost rather not know.

Mid-morning, my thoughts were interrupted by Mum bustling back into the house with bags of shopping.

‘Morning, darling!’ she said. ‘It’s a gorgeous day! Sorry I took so long! I bumped into Lily and we stopped for a coffee. What have you been up to?’ She peered at the table, barely pausing for a reply. ‘Ooh, the files. Thank you! Do you think you’ll be able to go up to the attic today? I dread to think what’s up there—I haven’t been up since …’ Finally, she tailed off, her attention focused intently on the marmalade jar that still sat on the dining table—the same cut-glass jar I remembered from my childhood. A tiny shake of the head, then, ‘Do you have any other plans for today?’

I shook my head.

‘You should go out while you’re here,’ Mum said. ‘You haven’t seen your friends for so long. Whatever happened to that nice girl who was at junior school with you? You know, the one you shared a room with on the school trip to France?’

‘Oh … goodness knows. We were never really friends.’

The phone rang.

‘Who’s that?’ Mum leant over to pick up the clunky handset of her new retro phone. ‘Oh hello!’ she chirped. I listened as she made plans to meet whoever it was on the phone that evening.

‘That was Richard,’ she said when she hung up. ‘He’s got a voucher for a free curry down the road and he’s just noticed it runs out today. He’s asked me to go out for dinner with him. You don’t mind, do you?’

Did I mind? With my father not even buried, I didn’t really know what to think. I shook my head, confused. Mum smiled.