I open one eye, and the wall clock above the telly tells me it’s just after six.
The hissing chatter in the kitchen didn’t wake me up, though. I never truly slept: the events of yesterday pressed hard into my subconscious and wouldn’t let me drift off. But they think I’m asleep, John and Trish. They think I can’t hear them.
‘Did you know she was coming back?’ Trish is saying. Even in a whisper I’d recognise that biting tongue; that clipped, over-articulated, media-trained voice. You can almost hear her saliva singing.
John is grumbling and inarticulate.
‘Oh, Johnny, I can’t deal with this right now. If she’s got a key to let herself in whenever she fancies, how many more are there? How do we know Jack didn’t dish out keys to all his friends? All his girlfriends?’
I close my eyes tight like a child wishing to turn invisible.
‘Jack wouldn’t do that, love,’ John says. ‘Not in his nature.’
‘What isn’t? You’re forgetting what happened with Florrie!’
I open my eyes. Who the fuck is Florrie?
‘He was young,’ I hear John saying.
‘Don’t make excuses. He knew how to control himself, Johnny.’
‘Keep your voice down, love. She’s asleep.’
‘She has a name … What was it again?’
‘I can’t remember, love. Erm – Clare?’
‘Well, how do we know that Clare was really his girlfriend? It can’t have been serious, Johnny. Jack would’ve introduced us before shacking up with her.’
‘Would he?’
‘Don’t act as if I don’t know my own son, Johnny!’
Now this is great. Jack’s parents don’t want me here and I really need to wee. Obviously I’ll have to get up at some point. I can’t just stay on the sofa like a fat cat. But I don’t know – should I wait until after I’ve used the toilet to tell them that my name isn’t Clare? Or stand up and tell them right now that erm, sorry, but my name is not fucking Clare?
‘Did you see the suitcase, Johnny?’ Trish spits. ‘Doesn’t feel very serious, does it?’
She’s upped the volume slightly because the kettle is boiling and it would be a travesty for John not to hear her every word. Wouldn’t it?
‘What are you suggesting, love?’ John says. I imagine he’s rubbing his eyes with his thumb and index finger, just how he did yesterday when we met.
‘That we tell her – kindly – to leave. I’m sure she won’t mind. We’ve got so much to do, so much to deal with, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she wanted to get out of here faster than even we’d appreciate. She only needs to zip up her bags – there’s nothing at all that suggests she’s a permanent fixture around here. Jack was probably just casually shagging her.’
‘Trish, please. Let’s not discuss our dead son’s sex life.’
I hear Trish gasp, and a long, sorrowful moan follows shortly after.
‘Our dead son,’ she says, muffled. John must be holding her close to him.
She’s crying hard, uncontrollably, giving me no choice but to rise.
‘Excuse me,’ I say, and immediately wish I hadn’t. ‘Sorry.’
Darting into the bathroom, I lock the door and sit on the toilet, pushing the walls either side with my hands. Not a permanent fixture, Trish? Well, what about my electric toothbrush right there in the holder next to Jack’s withered cheap one? Or the fact that the hanging caddy in the shower contains salon-recommended shampoo and conditioner for bleached hair? And coconut butter body scrub, mango shower gel and three used – yes, used – Venus disposable razors because, oops, I just forget to throw them away? Does (I’m sorry, did) Jack look as if he ever used a fucking razor in his life? Did he? And tampons. Yeah, there’s a little box of opened tampons: clearly mine. Unless Jack went through a phase of using them for earplugs, or butt plugs, you know, something I wouldn’t know about. Like Florrie.
Who the fuck is Florrie?
I wash my face, brush my teeth. I can see Jack in the mirror, grinning over my shoulder.
‘It’s not funny,’ I say through a mouthful of toothpaste. ‘You’re not even there.’
Jack pretends to be offended, dropping his mouth open, splaying his hand across his heart.
‘Well, for a start, if you were here you’d tell your mum that we aren’t just shagging.’
Oh, he finds that hilarious. His jolly presence fills the whole bathroom. I struggle to lean over and spit into the sink, banging my forehead on the mirror.
‘Ouch!’ I turn around.
He’s gone.
I wipe my mouth on my arm and barge into the kitchen, annoyed at myself for …
I don’t even know why. I’m just annoyed.
John and Trish are both sitting at the breakfast bar, staring into mugs of instant coffee. At least I’m dressed. Sort of. I’m still wearing the floral dress with the button missing, and although it shouldn’t be an achievement, I’m wearing knickers, unlike yesterday’s parental meet and greet. I took my bra off though, somewhere between sleep and disbelief. The underwiring was digging in and it now lies on the coffee table on top of last Sunday’s Observer Food Monthly. I’d like to think that a pair of grieving parents wouldn’t notice something like a discarded bra, but it’s just the sort of thing Patricia Carmichael would spot and rant about, turning it into a political debate.
‘Morning,’ I manage.
John stands. He’s still dressed in the same clothes as yesterday. His tailored shorts and light blue shirt are now creased, and everything about him is off-colour. Trish elongates her neck, straightens her posture. If I hadn’t known that Jack’s mum was Patricia Carmichael, I mightn’t have recognised her. She isn’t wearing any makeup and her short, spiky hair hasn’t been styled. She’s wearing an oversized t-shirt printed with a cassette tape across the chest. I know that t-shirt. It’s Jack’s. He bought it from Spitalfields market about a month ago. No – in fact, I bought it. The stall only accepted cash and he only had his card. I had a twenty quid note.
‘I’m Chloe,’ I say, avoiding eye contact with John and going straight for Trish.
Trish rolls her red, swollen eyes to John and raises one eyebrow. I give a little wave with my hand. Not intentionally, believe me. An abundance of questions dance around my mind, all of which John and Trish might have the answers to. Firstly: is this all real? Is Jack really dead? And how exactly did he die? What are the finer details, because are they sure, I mean absolutely sure, that he isn’t perhaps almost dead? Did somebody get it wrong? And why did Jack never mention me to them? Or did he, and they’ve forgotten; in the same way that John forgot my name?
‘We’re leaving shortly,’ Trish says.
‘There’s a lot to do,’ John says.
‘Help yourself to tea, coffee …’ Trish tells me.
‘Thanks,’ I say.
I don’t want to boil the kettle. It feels too much like intruding, pottering about behind them while they sip their own hot drinks. It’ll give off the wrong impression entirely if I open the fridge and pick at the grapes, the first thing I usually do in the morning. And if I go back to the sofa, I can’t go back to sleep or turn on the telly. So what should I do? Sit there with my hands on my lap awaiting instruction? In my own home?
The plays, now in a small pile beside the fruit bowl, are my saving grace. John knows they’re mine. I lean across, slide them towards me and God, I’m relieved to have something in my hands. Shit. I have to teach practical drama to Year Nine in a few hours. Am I expected to go to work today? Even if my boyfriend died yesterday? Auditions for the school musical are tomorrow. I have to be there. But that’s not right, is it? Or is it?
A breeze floats in from the back door, slightly ajar. Empty bottles of Peroni that need taking to the recycling bin shake, humming a gentle tune. They’ll still have Jack’s saliva around the rim.
‘Have you finished with that, Johnny?’ Trish asks.
John allows his wife to take his half-empty mug. She shuffles over to the sink.
‘I can do that,’ I say. ‘The mugs. I know where they go.’
‘It’s no trouble,’ Trish says, the water already running.
I exchange a look with John, which is both comfortable and embarrassing all at once. We give each other our gentlest smiles, laced with sadness. Trish is doing a good job with the mugs, scrubbing every tea stain clean, not a brown mark left in sight. She throws her head back and laughs: a hint of that wicked, infectious sound I’ve heard on the telly, only the cameras aren’t rolling and she’s got washing-up liquid on her hands.
‘What’s so funny, love?’ John asks, twisting around on the bar stool.
‘What do you think’s funny?’ she replies, her laugh on the verge of splitting into a cry. ‘Jack, of course. Jack.’
‘And what’s triggered this?’
Trish steps back and theatrically, her short legs planted strong, she sticks out her chest and tilts her head upwards, throwing out words like, ‘bonkers’, ‘brilliant’, ‘bizarre’, in no order, repeating them over and over. She’s looking at the man sat in the shopping trolley and John is nodding, his mouth curled. This is proving too much for him to cope with. He begins to cry, silently.
My throat tightens. Aches. But this is not my turn to cry.
‘I got that printed for Jack,’ I say. ‘A moving-in present. Except I was the one moving in. So I guess it was a thank you present, for asking me; letting me. Anyway, it was something he really wanted.’
‘Ah,’ Trish catches her breath. ‘But it’s so … random.’
‘Love …’ John reaches his hand out to her.
‘No, I know what you mean,’ I say, a singsong in my voice that always pipes up when I’m trying to impress somebody. I definitely would’ve used it had I been given the chance to meet Jack’s parents prior to yesterday. ‘Out of context, it’s a very bizarre – to use your word, Mrs Carmichael – photograph. I can see how you think it’s random. But to Jack and to me, it represents a special moment, and also a boss holiday, and provides us with endless laughter, still.’
‘You went to Thailand with Jack?’ John asks.
‘Yeah. In March.’
Trish swivels from left to right, her arms folded. She’s still looking at the picture, but she isn’t laughing any more.
‘In fact,’ I continue, no stopping me now. ‘We always kind of joke about how one day we’ll go back there, to that spot, and find that man. Or go to the place where he works, because can you see he’s wearing a uniform and there’s a badge, see? Top right of his shirt. We just wanna meet this fella – say a proper hello! Ask him what he was doing in the shopping trolley. Find out his name; shake his hand.’
I’m expecting some sort of response, but I get zilch. The thick silence sits in the triangle between us all. I realise I just talked at John and Trish using Jack in the present tense. I hadn’t meant to do that, but they naturally picked up on it, loud and clear. I hug the paperback plays tight; feel them squash against my braless chest.
Trish stretches out her arm and taps the breakfast bar three times. This must be some sort of code for them to leave, because John stands up, puts his hand to the small of Trish’s back and picks up her orange Michael Kors handbag, carrying it for her. They float past me like ghosts and disappear into the hallway.
‘Look, I’m so sorry for your loss,’ I call after them.
They pause by the bookshelf, a particularly creaky floorboard beneath their feet. John looks over his shoulder and gives me a pained, but kind, smile. Trish is frozen, the back of her head facing me.
‘Take all the time you need, Chloe,’ she says. ‘We won’t be coming back here today.’
And she opens the door and leads the way outside, John following, his head bent low. He closes the door behind him gently, but the flat seems to shudder, just as it does every time a double decker bus trundles past the road. Oh God. I want to run after them, ask them seriously, what the fuck happened? Who is to blame? There’s always somebody to blame, isn’t there? And how … how did he actually—
SLAM!
I run into the kitchen. Jack?!