It is a long drive to his mother’s house but Andrew has always rather liked the journey. He enjoys the cocooned sense of being in a car on his own, going somewhere, moving steadily towards his destination with nowhere else to be and nothing else to do apart from shift gears and turn the steering wheel. He likes not having to speak to someone in the passenger seat, not having to feel responsible for their safety as well as his own and being able to take risks, go faster, brake more quickly than he would if there were other people in the car. He likes the comforting wide expanse of motorway, the tarmac smooth against the tyres and the soothing regularity of service stations, each one looking the same as the last with their coffee bars and amusement arcade machines and Cellophane-wrapped bunches of flowers limply propped up in buckets only to be ignored by the motorists passing through.
He stops off at one of these at the halfway point, about two hours into the journey from Malvern to Grantchester. It is only 10am and yet Andrew feels his stomach grumbling with hunger. He had been in a hurry to leave this morning and had not had time for a proper breakfast, choosing instead to butter a piece of bread and take it with him to the car, the crumbs falling messily on to his fleece top as he ate.
Caroline used to make his breakfast every morning before he left for work: a bowl of shop-bought muesli to which she added her own mixture of brazil nuts and raisins, two slices of wholemeal toast accompanied by butter on a dish and a jar of home-made marmalade with a long spoon so that the handle didn’t get sticky. She would get up when his alarm went off, kiss him good morning and then put on her dressing gown and go straight downstairs to get things ready while he took a shower. Andrew had loved the routine of it, the quiet but thoughtful ways in which their affection was expressed. He would dry himself off in the bathroom and the smell of toast would waft up from the kitchen. When he came downstairs, freshly shaven and in his shirt and tie, Caroline would put the kettle on and, after it boiled, she would warm the teapot before making the tea. Every weekday morning would be just the same, consoling in its familiarity. Andrew liked knowing what to expect.
She seemed to take pride in being his wife, in looking after him. He remembers the morning after their wedding day, when she had turned to him in the hotel room bed and said, blue eyes unblinking and wide: ‘You saved me.’
He had been so startled by that, so unsure of what it meant. ‘No I haven’t,’ he said, trying to brush the intensity of her words aside. ‘I love you. I want to be with you.’
But she shook her head. ‘No, you don’t understand. I . . . I . . .’
She had been shy back then, nervous about expressing herself. ‘I don’t feel worthy of you,’ she said finally, hiding her mouth with the tips of her fingers as though trying to put the words back in.
He had held her tightly to him and kissed her then, trying to dissipate her anxieties, to make her feel safe. He sensed that he held something terribly fragile in his arms, a damaged girl who wanted more than anything to be loved. Through the years, she had spoken to him only vaguely of her parents, but it was enough for him to get cross every time she mentioned them, to insist that she never had to see them again if she didn’t want to. It sounded as if she had grown up in a household bereft of love, as though her parents saw her as an inconvenience, an obstacle to their own enjoyment. She told him that they had ignored her, treating her as little more than a domestic encumbrance as they carried on with their lives. Both of them had worked long hours – leaving the house early in the morning and returning late at night, by which stage Caroline was expected to have walked home from school and to have fed herself. It was too much for a young, sensitive girl. Little wonder, he thought, that she had yearned to escape, that what she had craved all these years was a kind of acceptance.
He wanted, more than anything, to protect her. And he loved her, desperately, but he was aware that he had to be gentle, consistent, soft so as not to scare her off. She had grown to trust him and then, as the years passed, he noticed her beginning to change, to acquire the gloss of social ease. At first, it was almost imperceptible, those tiny accents of conversation that had once given her away – she started to use ‘sofa’ rather than ‘settee’, to ask where the ‘lavatory’ was, rather than the ‘ladies’, to say ‘How do you do?’ not ‘Pleased to meet you.’ The change accelerated in the early years of their marriage. She started ordering her clothes from the same shop as his mother – knee-length shift dresses and neatly buttoned cardigans, when he had always rather liked the mismatched, wayward way she used to dress. She cut her long hair so that it curled under, just beneath the ears, and dyed it so that it was flecked through with lighter, caramel streaks. She learned to cook. She sent Elsa carefully worded birthday cards, written in the round, simple writing that remained ineradicably hers. Her accent lost its rougher edges. Then, she had Max and, in many ways, her transformation was complete.
Perhaps he should have been happier for her, Andrew thinks, flicking up the indicator and hearing the familiar tick-tick-tick before turning carefully into the slip-road. He wonders why he wasn’t more supportive of Caroline’s obvious attempts to better herself but he thinks, deep down, it is because he never wanted her to change. He had loved her as she was: unvarnished; real. He had loved her because she wasn’t his mother.
She had loved him too, of course. Of that he was certain. But now, he isn’t sure how she feels about him. All her energies, all of her emotions seem to have been swamped by grief. It is as if, yet again, she doesn’t have room in her life for anyone but Max.
He parks the car, carefully checking each of his mirrors as he reverses into a space. He is a precise, sensible driver and an excellent parker. Although Caroline had passed her test just before Max was born, she tended to leave most of the driving to him, which was a source of secret pride. Andrew liked the idea of protecting his woman, of delivering her safely to her chosen destination. But recently, he had started to wish that she took more of an initiative. He desperately wanted Caroline to get out of the house more, to visit some friends or go to that yoga class she had taken up when Max was sent abroad. Anything, really, to take her mind off things. Instead, she spent all day in her pyjamas, moping around in bed or on the sofa, watching daytime television and eating out of cans. And any time Andrew suggested doing something, she gave him that look, the one that left him feeling both ignorant and pathetic, as if he were incapable of knowing what she was going through. It would surprise Caroline to know how clearly Andrew sees what she thinks of him. But he can read her very easily. The merest movement of her eyebrow or the tiniest curl of her lip – these are the things one notices after almost thirty years of married life.
He switches off the ignition and un-clicks his seatbelt, stepping out of the car into the drizzly morning air. He breathes in deeply, stretching his legs and arms and groaning as he does so. It is a habit he has. Caroline used to poke fun at him for stretching every morning but he is convinced it kept his limbs supple. When they first met, Caroline had been charmed by what she called his ‘old man ways’. But now, at 62, his physical age has caught up with him.
He walks into the service station, the automatic doors parting with a whirr as he approaches. Inside, there is a cacophonous noise of screaming children and the pinging of cashier tills, all somehow intensified by the unforgiving strip lighting that tinged everyone’s face with green-grey shadows. He makes straight for the gents’ toilets, which are being cleaned by a delicately boned Chinese man who is pushing around a trolley and a mop with a desultory expression on his face. Andrew never knows what to do in this sort of situation: should he acknowledge the cleaner with a smile and a nod of the head or would the man think it patronising? In the end, he can’t decide and so settles for a curious half-grimace that makes the cleaner frown and leaves Andrew feeling uncomfortable. He has always been socially awkward. His mother, by contrast, had excelled at small-talk. Andrew is shy, gauche and finds it difficult to chatter away meaninglessly to put someone at ease. He is not sure why this is. Partly because of his height and his smoothly handsome appearance, people expect him to be charming and silken-tongued, to possess a certain sort of presence or arrogance, but Andrew has neither.
In many ways, Max had been unlike either of his parents. He seemed to have been born with an innate, quiet confidence that his way of doing things was the right way. At school, he had been popular without ever appearing to try. And yet he had still been able to see things from another person’s point of view. Not many young men had that quality.
But he had his faults too, Andrew thinks as he puts his hands in one of those ergonomic hand dryers that never work as well as a towel. He is not as blinded to his son’s weaknesses of character as Caroline is.
He thinks it is probably this that has been the source of much of the recent tension. There was that awful drinks party the night before the funeral, where Caroline had stood, stiff with disapproval, as Adam delivered his speech. Andrew shudders now to think of it: the sour way she had twisted her lips and crossed her arms in front of her chest; her utter refusal to accept any offer of comfort; her total ignorance of the fact that anyone looking at her could see quite clearly what was going on. She truly believed she had masked her real emotions, but afterwards Adam had come up to Andrew and apologised, saying he hoped he hadn’t offended her. Andrew hadn’t passed the sentiments on to Caroline because he knew she would pretend not to know what he was talking about. And, underneath, it would only make her feel worse. She prided herself on having such a good relationship with all of Max’s friends, almost as though she were one of them.
She had been so convinced she knew every detail of Max’s life but of course she hadn’t. He was a young man and he did all the things that spirited young men do. Caroline tried to be too close to him, too much his equal, and Andrew knew that Max found it cloying.
That summer after his A-Levels, when Max had spent so much time at the house with his friends, he had spoken about it to his father. It was a hazy evening of dappled sunlight, the air tangy with the scent of freshly mown grass and the two of them had decided to walk to the pub after supper. There were two local pubs that they liked – one of them was up a steep hill in the centre of Malvern; the other was downhill towards Barnard’s Green, a place that was effectively little more than an optimistically named roundabout, ringed with estate agents, off-licences and a fish and chip shop. Feeling lazy, they opted for the latter and strolled down to The George and Dragon. Andrew had bought the first round – a pint of ale for him; a pint of Guinness for Max – and when he laid them down carefully on the dark oak table in the corner that was their regular spot, Max had fiddled for several minutes with a soggy beer-mat and Andrew had known there was something on his mind.
‘Anything bothering you?’ he enquired, taking a long swig from his pint glass.
‘Um, not really.’ Max eased into his chair, rubbing the back of his neck with his right hand as he always did when he was trying to work out a problem.
Andrew left it for a few minutes, hoping that a companionable silence would tease out whatever it was he wanted to say. Andrew was good at silence. He had a placid, relaxing air of stillness about him and was quite capable of sitting for hours on the edge of a mountainside simply taking things in, contentedly alone with his thoughts. A friend had once told him he would make a good fisherman, but for some reason he had never taken up the hobby. Occasionally, at work, an employee would mistake his detached manner for aloofness or absent-mindedness but really it was neither of these things; it was simply that most of the time, he did not see the point in talking unless he had something important to say.
‘It’s Mum.’
Andrew waited.
‘She’s driving me mad,’ said Max, looking his father straight in the eye. ‘Can you have a word with her, Dad?’
‘In what way is she driving you mad?’
‘She’s always . . . around. I just want to hang out with my mates before we all go off, you know, to uni or me to the army and Mum is just always there. She says I can bring people home, that she won’t bother us and she’ll “leave us to our own devices –” ’ he made a quotation mark sign with his hands, ‘but then she sits down with us and tries to be part of what we’re saying or doing and . . .’ He dropped his voice. ‘It’s embarrassing, Dad. She keeps asking us for cigarettes. She doesn’t even smoke!’
‘Well, she used to.’
‘Yeah, exactly, she used to. She used to be young. She used to be my age. She isn’t any more. My mates take the piss out of her as soon as she walks out the door.’
‘That’s not very fair of them,’ said Andrew. ‘Given how kind she is to them and how tolerant she is of having them around. Goodness knows, she’s far more tolerant than me about that sort of thing.’
Max hung his head, a trace of shame colouring his features.
‘It’s a very hard time for her, Max. You’re about to leave home and she’s going to miss you terribly, as well as being worried about you going into the army.’
‘It’s only training.’
‘Yes, but then you’ll be sent away goodness knows where. You’re her child, her little boy. Of course she’s going to want to see as much of you as possible while she still can. You can understand that, surely?’
Max nodded.
‘She would be awfully hurt if she knew we were having this conversation, let alone if I tried to talk to her about it.’ Andrew paused. ‘But I can see that you and your friends might want your own space, so I suggest you start spending time somewhere else, away from the house.’
He tapped gently on the edge of the table, his fingers making a soft thudding sound against the wood. ‘Can’t you go to Adam’s house or, well, I don’t know, go for a walk or something?’
Max snorted at the prospect of something so mundane and then, after a few minutes, said: ‘You’re right. Don’t say anything to Mum. We can go somewhere else.’
‘I know . . .’ Andrew started and then pondered the wisdom of what he was about to say. He did not want to be disloyal to his wife but, at the same time, he wanted Max to feel that he understood. ‘I know that Caroline can be quite . . .’ he searched for the right word, ‘intense, but it’s only because she loves you so very deeply. You can see that, can’t you?’
‘It just feels like a bit of a pressure sometimes,’ Max said, after a while. ‘Being an only child.’
‘Mmmm, I can see that,’ replied Andrew, thinking sadly of how hard they had tried for more children when Max was young. ‘Of course, I’m one myself. I know what it’s like.’
He glanced at Max sitting across the table from him, fiddling intently with a beer-mat and not quite meeting his father’s gaze. Andrew leaned forward so that he was in his eyeline. ‘It’s tough, feeling you’re the receptacle for all your parents’ hopes and fears, it is. I’m sorry about that, truly. But, look, Max, it won’t be too long until you’re leaving for Bulford and you won’t have to worry about it any more. Now,’ he said, draining his beer. ‘Your round, I believe?’
Max laughed and sloped off to the bar and Andrew felt quietly pleased that his son had confided in him. And he had taken his advice too – from then on, Max and his friends spent far less time at the house. If Caroline had noticed, she had not said anything – deliberately, Andrew suspected, so that she would not lose face. She had always needed to be close to Max. Of course, all mothers cherish their children but he thinks it went deeper than that. It was almost as if she needed Max to love her to the exclusion of anyone else.
There had been all that business at Christmas – Max’s last, as it turned out – when Elsa had come to stay. They had been gathered around the tree in the drawing room, Max sprawled out on a large floor cushion, Andrew and Elsa sitting in armchairs on opposite sides of the hearth and Caroline handing out the brightly wrapped parcels.
Caroline loved Christmas. There were many things about his wife that would always remain unexplained, unknowable, but he knew beyond doubt that she adored the festive period. She threw herself into the preparations, decking out the house in tinsel and holly boughs, making batches of mince pies and chocolate truffles, sending out the cards with meticulous precision (that year, she had even used an Excel spreadsheet to print the addresses). She liked the family being together and delighted in her role as hostess, accepting compliments with a beaming smile.
She put pressure on herself, each year, to come up with the perfectly judged Christmas present for Max. Most of the time, she got it right. Sometimes, Andrew could see, Max would disguise his own disappointment so convincingly that Caroline never knew. But this particular year, he could tell that Caroline was especially pleased with the camera that they had bought him. She had spent hours researching the best model online, after Max had let slip one evening at supper that he would quite like to get into photography more seriously.
Andrew had left her to it. He had an inkling it might have made more sense to give Max the money and tell him to spend it on the camera he most wanted, but Caroline thought that giving cash was unimaginative and – this was her word – ‘common’.
Traditionally, on Christmas Day, Caroline would give their present last, as if all of Max’s other gifts were simply a build-up to the real event. So, when she handed over Elsa’s neatly packaged box, at first nothing had seemed amiss. Caroline, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed, had complimented Elsa on the wrapping paper.
‘It’s beautiful, Elsa,’ she said, turning the gift over in her hands, admiring the curlicues of silver ribbon. ‘Where do you find the time?’
Andrew braced himself, his ears finely attuned to detecting the subtle fragrance of implied criticism in any conversation between his wife and mother. He glanced across at Elsa, who looked unperturbed, sitting upright on the sofa, her hand clasping a small glass of sherry. Caroline, a purple paper crown perched on her hair, was smiling broadly. Perhaps he had imagined it.
Max took the present from his mother and brought the box up to his ear, shaking it lightly. There was a rattling noise. ‘A-ha. Granny. Is it a CD?’ he asked, and everyone laughed. Elsa shook her head. ‘A pair of socks?’ he asked waggishly. ‘Lavender-scented bath salts?’
‘I’m afraid not, Maximilian,’ she said, drily, ‘I’ve let you down again.’ She took a sip of her sherry, leaving a crimson imprint of lipstick on the rim of the glass. Caroline’s smile grew tired. She hated Elsa calling him Maximilian. They had christened him plain old Max, she often reminded Andrew, with no longer version available to fall back on.
‘It’s like she’s trying to prove she knows him better than us,’ Caroline said.
‘Oh don’t be ridiculous, darling, I don’t think that’s it at all. It’s because she’s so fond of him, that’s all.’
Caroline pinched her lips together. He’d left it at that.
That Christmas, Caroline had let the Maximilian comment pass, looking on as he unwrapped the parcel, kneeling on the carpet, her neck arched forwards to see better what was inside.
‘Well,’ said Max, keeping up a cheerful commentary as he began to open the package. ‘This is intriguing.’ The silver ribbon fell to one side; the paper crinkled and ripped and gradually, the contents emerged.
Andrew was the first to spot what had happened. He recognised the picture of the camera on the side of the box and then he focused on the name: Nikon 3580. It was exactly the same model that Caroline had bought. Andrew got up from his chair, sensing impending disaster but at the same time not being entirely sure what he could do to prevent it.
‘Oh my God, Granny, how did you know?’ Max was thrilled, his face positively beaming with joy. ‘This is exactly what I wanted.’ He leaped up from the floor and went to kiss Elsa effusively on the cheek.
Elsa put down her sherry glass to pat his arm. ‘No need to fuss,’ she said but Andrew could see she was pleased. ‘I’m so glad I got the right one.’ She cleared her throat and brought her hand delicately up to her mouth, the fourth finger circled by the dazzling emerald of the engagement ring she had worn every year since before Andrew was born. For a moment, Andrew was hypnotised by the stone’s lucent sparkle, throwing out tiny refractions of light. Then he remembered Caroline. He went over to her and rested a hand lightly on her shoulder. She let it lie there, but did not respond to the touch. ‘Well,’ Andrew said, trying to preserve the jovial atmosphere that had existed until a few seconds before. ‘Isn’t that a coincidence?’
Max had already started opening the camera box, taking out leads and flashes and batteries and setting them all out on the carpet in front of him. He paused to look up at his father. ‘What is?’
Elsa looked at him too and Andrew realised, not for the first time, how similar they were: their faces upturned at precisely the same angle, their profiles so pronounced against the warm light cast by the fire.
‘Well,’ said Andrew again, hopelessly. ‘Your mother and I got you exactly the same thing.’
He forced himself to laugh and then Max, after a worried glance at his mother, started to chuckle too.
‘Oh dear,’ Max said. ‘That’s all my fault. I’ve obviously been banging on about it for so long . . .’ He let the sentence hang in the air. Caroline, her face immobile, didn’t laugh.
‘I’m terribly sorry, Caroline,’ said Elsa, instantly aware of the discomfort in the room. ‘I should have spoken to you and Andrew about it. How silly of me.’
‘Nonsense,’ Andrew replied. ‘No harm done. Max can take one of them back to the shop and spend the money on something else. What about a camera bag or one of those huge flashes that look so professional?’
Max nodded vigorously. ‘Yeah, great idea, Dad. I’d actually really like a bag. You need it with a piece of kit like this.’
Everyone was looking at Caroline, waiting for her to say something, waiting for the inevitable denouement of this delicate dance of social politesse. Eventually, she stood up, brushed down her skirt and shook herself free from Andrew’s grip. She smiled shakily and said, almost casually: ‘I’m just going to see to something in the kitchen – if you’ll all excuse me for a minute.’ She slipped out of the door and Andrew knew, without even having to look at her face, that she would be crying. He felt a pang of frustration. Why did she take things so much to heart? Why couldn’t she have made the effort to gloss over it like everyone else? He supposed he would have to go to her. But then, just as he was making his way to the door, Max touched his arm.
‘Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll go.’ The two of them exchanged a look. They both knew Caroline would rather see him.
Andrew walked back into the sitting room, headed straight for the drinks cabinet and poured himself a generous tumbler of whisky. His mother was still there, looking at him wryly.
‘I think you need that,’ she smiled, still seated elegantly on the sofa, her legs pressed together and angled at 45 degrees from the ground. ‘Cheers,’ she said, raising her sherry glass.
‘Cheers,’ Andrew replied, echoing the gesture.
After twenty minutes, Caroline and Max had re-emerged from the kitchen and peace had been restored, or so Andrew now recalls.
Odd, really, the things his mind is dwelling on now that Max has gone.
He walks out of the gents towards the coffee bar. As he joins the end of the queue, he hears someone calling his name. He does not immediately react because it is a girlish voice that he doesn’t recognise and he cannot imagine why anyone would be trying to get his attention. But the voice is persistent and after a few seconds, he feels a tap on his shoulder.
‘Andrew, I thought it was you.’
He turns around and finds himself face-to-face with a small, blonde woman enveloped in an oversized parka. Her hands are tucked into two pockets, set close to her chest like an old-fashioned muff. She is smiling broadly, her lips glossed with balm that smells of chemical strawberries. She is very pretty, in that artless, natural way seen in the fresh-faced girls in clothing catalogues, the girls who are picked because they are deliberately unintimidating, because the average female shopper will relate to them rather than feel threatened. He cannot place her straight away and is perplexed as to why she knows his name.
She laughs and a strand of hair escapes from her messy ponytail. ‘It’s Kate. From the office.’
‘Of course it is,’ Andrew says, flustered at his forgetfulness. Kate has been working at Weston & Barwell for the last few months, helping out with the increasing number of corporate accounts. She was a recent graduate and he remembers vaguely that there was some reason for her coming to Malvern, a sick relative or something, rather than heading off to the bright lights of a big city.
‘I’m so sorry, Kate, my mind was somewhere else entirely.’
‘Don’t worry. It’s probably the first time you’ve seen me in non-work clothes.’
‘Yes,’ he says and he has a clear image of her in a black two-piece suit with a pale pink striped shirt looking rather uptight and professional. ‘And I suppose this isn’t the most obvious place to run into one’s work colleagues.’
She smiles and for a moment Andrew stares at her and then looks away. He feels embarrassed without knowing why. ‘What are you doing in this part of the country?’ he asks, to fill the awkwardness.
‘Oh, me and a couple of mates are driving to Cambridge for the weekend. It’s the first time we’ve gone back there since graduation, so we’re going to try and recapture our youth.’
‘I shouldn’t think that will be too hard,’ he replies. He hadn’t known she’d gone to Cambridge. For some reason, this surprises him and he can feel himself beginning to take her more seriously. He’d always imagined she would be fairly unexceptional company. Why had he been so dismissive?
‘Oh I don’t know,’ says Kate, looking directly at him. ‘Sometimes I feel much older and wiser than my twenty-one years.’ Her face is serious as she says this, her lips parted so that he can see the tip of her teeth as she breathes. After a few beats, she says, ‘I’m really sorry, Andrew.’ There is a pause. ‘You know, about your son.’ He does not respond because he doesn’t know how. ‘I never got a chance to say anything at the time but . . . well, now seemed a good opportunity.’ She smiles, heartfelt, and then she does something strange: she reaches out with her right hand and touches him on his upper arm, her fingers grazing against the cotton of his fleece and the curve of his bicep. Kate lets her hand rest there and Andrew does not move away. ‘If you ever want to talk,’ she says, pressing down gently so that he can feel the weight of her touch on his skin.
He is mystified by what she is doing and yet he finds it pleasurable in spite of himself. He cannot imagine that this young, attractive woman is apparently trying to flirt with him but this is what seems to be happening. She has never before spoken more than three words to him. Had he simply never noticed her before today? Perhaps they had talked but he had been so distracted with Max and Caroline and everything that was happening at home that it had not made any impact. In his mind, it has been so long since he has been touched by a woman with any hint of affection or kindness or concern that Kate’s small, simple gesture courses through him.
His thoughts are interrupted by a tinny rendition of Barber’s Adagio. ‘Sorry,’ Kate says, removing her hand and taking a sleek-looking mobile phone out of her pocket. She swipes the screen with her index finger to answer. ‘Yeah?’ he hears her saying. ‘I know, I’m just here . . . No, by the Costa Coffee . . . do you see me? OK, come over.’ She giggles at something the person on the other end of the line is saying and Andrew feels oddly exposed, discomfited. He makes a sign to indicate he is going and it has been nice to see her but she holds out her other hand to motion for him to stay. ‘See you in a sec.’ She touches the screen again to hang up. ‘Sorry about that,’ she says, chewing on her bottom lip in a way that Andrew finds distracting.
‘Well, Kate, it was nice to see you,’ he says, deliberately brisk and authoritative. ‘I’m sure we’ll bump into each other on Monday.’
‘Yes,’ she answers, looking straight at him in that disarming way. ‘I’d like that.’
Andrew walks quickly out of the service station and back to the car, turning the key in the ignition before he has even put on his seatbelt. He drives for several miles before he remembers that he forgot to get his coffee.
When he sees his mother, he is taken aback by her appearance. Elsa is sitting in the hallway waiting for him when Mrs Carswell opens the front door and beckons him inside.
‘Come on in, Mr Weston,’ she says, cheerily. ‘No need to stand on ceremony for us, now is there?’ Mrs Carswell addresses the question to Elsa, who doesn’t respond. Andrew, brushing the rain from his coat, walks in, remembering at the last minute to bend down so that he doesn’t hit his head on the doorframe.
There are no lights on even though the day is gloomy and at first he doesn’t see his mother, who is sitting to one side, by the table with the telephone, her features overcast by shadow. But then, when he sees her properly, he has to stop himself from exclaiming at the change in her over the last month. She seems to have shrunk, as though her bones are collapsing in on themselves. Her shoulders are hunched forwards, leaving a deep valley of skin on each side of her collarbone. Her face is pinched and sallow, her eyes hooded by the protrusion of her forehead.
She is wearing a checked blouse, like a lumberjack shirt, done up in haste so that the buttons are not in the right holes and give her a lopsided look. There is an indistinct red-brown stain on the collar, the edges of which are fraying. Her hair has clearly not been set for several weeks and has grown into a straggly grey, the brittle texture of candyfloss. Her mouth, pale and thin and puckered, is set in a downward curve that makes her look mournful and lost. He thinks to himself: I should not be surprised; this is what happens when you are 98 years old. And yet he is shocked because Elsa had always taken such punctilious care of her appearance. Age did not seem to have worn her down in the same way that it had his father. She remained a good-looking woman well into her eighties and the force of her personality, her strength of character, had always shone through. The stroke earlier this year had taken away much of her ability to express herself, but even then, she had still looked recognisably the same.
He feels guilty that he has not seen her enough, that he has not been here to look after her better. He starts to say this to Mrs Carswell, but before he can get the words out, she pats him on the arm and shushes him. ‘Don’t you be so hard on yourself, Mr Weston,’ Mrs Carswell says. ‘You’ve had enough on your plate lately.’ There is an uneasy pause and then she adds, quietly. ‘I was ever so sorry to hear about Max, Mr Weston. Ever so sorry.’
He thanks her and then asks for a glass of water so that she leaves him alone. He feels crowded but does not wish to be rude.
When she has gone, he leans across and kisses Elsa on the cheek. ‘Hello, Mummy.’ She doesn’t recognise him, so he says ‘It’s Andrew,’ before adding pointlessly, ‘your son.’
Her eyes swivel towards him and she murmurs something, the sound of it slurring and imprecise. He wants to believe she is saying ‘Of course I know who it is, you bloody fool’ and he smiles, thinking that although her appearance might have altered, perhaps a glimmer of the old Elsa remains; perhaps, inside her head, everything is as it was.