AS SOON AS THE POLICE left, I phoned my parents. I didn’t want them to read in the paper next morning that a body had been found within a hundred metres or so of the home of their unsatisfactory daughter. Not that they have ever so much as hinted that they find me unsatisfactory, but my post-divorce anxieties make me fear they do. I don’t think they had really cared much for Simon, though they were far too tactful to say so, and they adore the boys, but I know they worry about me and where I am going with my life. Answer: nowhere. That’s the problem. And knowing they worry makes me think maybe they have a reason. One of life’s vicious circles.
Dad, a retired GP and a practical man, immediately offered to come over. Then they said I should come and stay with them: they only live a kilometre or so away. But they are in a townhouse complex that doesn’t allow pets and I couldn’t leave Grumpy alone. I said I would be fine, not to worry, and eventually they calmed down.
Then I thought I had better let the boys know. I was about to phone Rory when the doorbell rang again. This time it was Charlie and Philippa Botha from further up the cul-de-sac. They are good friends, and Phil, who is also a teacher, and I often walk our dogs together in the afternoons after school. They had seen the police cars and all the to-ing and fro-ing and inevitably wanted the low down on what was promising to be a neighbourhood drama. They were horrified, of course, and said that if I was worried about anything, I should just phone them. Their offer made me feel a little better. I didn’t want to go anywhere, but to know there were friends nearby, just a phone call away, was certainly a comfort.
After the inevitable cups of tea, they left and I phoned Rory, who took the news in his stride. He said it must have been awful for Dan, and was I okay? I could always go to Gran and Grandad. I pointed out that Grumpy couldn’t, and assured him I was absolutely fine. Please not to worry. I spoke to Mike as well, but neither of them seemed unduly bothered by the idea of a corpse on their regular dog walk.
By now it was after six, and a large whisky was beckoning. I’m not much of a spirits drinker; beer or white wine are more in my line, but today I felt a whisky might dilute, or at least dull, the strains of the afternoon. I poured myself a generous tot, added ice and water and headed back into the studio, flopping down on the sofa with a sigh. I had hardly taken a sip when the phone rang again. I groaned loudly enough for Grumpy to flex an ear.
“Hello?”
“Laura. It’s Bob here. My dear, are you all right? I just phoned Rory and he told us what happened. What a terrible thing for you. Are you alone?”
Bob is my ex-father-in-law. I often think that if I could have married him and left Simon to his mother, we might all have been a lot happier. Bob is charming, kind and sensible and there have been moments when the thought has crossed my mind that he may well have been the reason I married Simon in the first place. Maybe I thought Simon would turn out like his father. Instead, he is all too similar to Joan, his mother. Mean-minded, carping, insensitive and crass. Both of them.
“I’m fine, Bob. Really. It was horrible, but worse for poor Daniel. He was walking the dog, and they found the body. He ran back here, and we called the police. They’ve been around all afternoon, but they’ve gone now.”
“Is Daniel still with you?”
“No, no. But it’s really okay.”
“I don’t like to think of you there alone. I wish the boys were home.”
“I could go to Mum and Dad if I wanted, but really, there’s no problem.”
Bob talked for a bit and while we were chatting – mainly about how Rory was doing at university, and what Mike was likely to do next year – my cellphone rang. I just left it. I could have a look and see who it was after Bob had rung off, and after I had some more of my whisky. This was all getting to be a bit much.
Bob said he had got the feeling Mike didn’t want to go to the University of Cape Town. He thought perhaps he didn’t want to be in Rory’s shadow – as he had been, to some extent anyway, at school. I felt the same, though my view was that part of the problem was that he didn’t want to be in the same town as Simon and Ms Tits. Mike’s relationship with his father was still a little tense. Obviously I didn’t say that to Bob, merely agreed and said I wasn’t putting on too much pressure at the moment, and had suggested Mike might like some kind of gap year. Eventually, after reiterating his shock, asking again if there was anything he could do, and saying, presumably mendaciously, that Joan sent her love, he rang off.
I picked up the cellphone. Oh my God. Simon. I supposed I had better phone him back. Otherwise he’d call at some other totally inconvenient moment. And he was the father of my children, so he was probably entitled to be concerned if their home was being overrun by corpses and, by extension, murderers.
Of course, Simon’s first remark, delivered in the accusatory mood, was to say that he had tried to phone the landline but it had been engaged. I pointed out that it had been his father. Then he went off into a riff about how the house, which I had insisted upon, was in an unsafe area, too near the plantations where all kinds of undesirables and criminals lurked. So, ran Simon’s subtext, it had been my inconsiderate and stupid behaviour that had put the lives of his sons at risk.
Inevitably, I lost my temper. That’s the effect Simon has on me these days. “Hang on, hang on. You were the one who insisted, for example, that we had to have a fucking swimming pool. The boys were used to one, you said, so they must continue to have one. So we have this bloody pool, which is the biggest bone of contention in our lives because no one wants to clean it. And it hardly gets used. Rory isn’t here during the term, and even when he was, he did his serious swimming at school. Mike has never been a keen swimmer. And nor am I. It was the only house, with a pool, and the other things we needed, in your price range when we got divorced. So don’t blame me! And, anyway, it’s bullshit that it’s not safe. This is the only incident we’ve had here in five years. And the cops said the body was dumped there, not killed there. Butt out, Simon.”
He then had the grace to back down, even if only a little. His reason for phoning was supposedly to see if I was okay, and did I want the boys up there with me? He could put Mike on a plane home early, and stand Rory a round trip, if I needed them. It was a generous offer, although the ungenerous thought did cross my mind that Ms Tits was probably finding two young males in her love nest a bit much. So I did my best to refuse graciously, claiming it would be a shame for Mike to have to cut his holiday short and that the boys seemed to be having a great time together. But over all, it was not a happy conversation. I did not send regards to Sonia. She was the ostensible reason for the break-up of our marriage, though things had been going badly long before she undulated onto the scene.