Sissy stopped scraping hopelessly at the wallpaper, which was several layers deep and mostly stuck solid, resistant to home improvement, as she heard the trill of her mobile. Dried-up bits of paper littered the living-room carpet like worn-out confetti. She pulled out the phone from her jeans pocket and, seeing who it was, answered on the sixth ring.
‘Hello,’ she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes and heading out to the hallway, which was still grimly dark green, where the children wouldn’t hear. ‘Yes, yes, I know, it’s just so awful, I just can’t believe it … OK, I agree, it’s our only option … Yes, I think we should go in together. If the others want to deny it then that’s up to them … All right, I’ll wait to hear from you then … Yes, I’m OK (sob), I just feel so terrible for her … OK, bye.’
‘Who was that, Mummy?’ said Conor, looking up from playing with the cat as she re-entered the lounge, which was looking worse than ever. Sissy hadn’t known why she’d attacked the wallpaper like that, but she’d felt she had to do something, had to keep busy instead of sitting around feeling helpless and distraught, scared out of her mind. She kept replaying events from three evenings before, and it was driving her insane. If only I’d trusted my instincts, gone home when I’d wanted to, before everyone started arguing, maybe nothing would have been said, maybe she wouldn’t have run off. If only we’d gone back when we heard the splash. If only she wasn’t dead.
‘Who was it on the phone, Mummy?’ Conor repeated, and he sounded fearful now. His little brow was furrowed under his sandy hair, and he reminded her of his father, and the pain was acute. He tickled the cat’s tummy as he stared at her.
‘Oh, no-one, darling,’ Sissy replied.
‘Was it the hospital? Are you going to die, Mummy?’
‘Oh, darling, of course not,’ said Sissy, horrified.
‘Well, who is then?’
‘No-one darling, no-one’s going to die,’ and as she said it she comforted herself that she wasn’t actually lying, the dying bit had already happened. ‘I just have to go out a bit later, there’s been a little accident.’ And as she said the word accident, she kicked herself, wished she’d chosen a different, less emotive word.
‘Will Auntie Siobhan look after us?’ asked Nell, who’d stopped playing on her 3DS and was stood facing her mother, blocking the kitchen door, her stance taut and unbearably adult.
‘No, darling,’ said Sissy, suppressing a sob.
‘Who will then?’ she persisted.
‘I’m not sure yet, darling. Someone nice.’
‘I don’t want someone nice. I want Auntie Siobhan,’ said Nell.
‘I want Daddy,’ said Conor, and he pulled the cat to him and hugged the hell out of it (which Coco rather stoically put up with, she was used to it), and then he burst into noisy tears.