‘Sorry. I’ve been staring at you all day. I’m Angela, by the way. Angela O’Donnell.’
Edward looks up and sees the girl with purple hair address his mother.
‘It’s just that, I’m sure I know you from somewhere.’
His mother shrugs, ‘I’ve never seen you before in my life.’
‘We’re from Sheffield,’ he says, by way of an apology for his mother’s bad manners.
The girl glances over at him. He shakes his head at her and pulls his mouth into a long thin line. She flashes him a smile.
‘I’m a student at Sheffield,’ she laughs, ‘I wonder, do you ever go to Henry’s on Burgess Street? I work there as a waitress. Maybe that’s where I’ve seen you.’
Rachel gives a quick shake of her head and scowls, ‘No. I’ve never heard of the place.’
Edward notes the sharp tone in her voice.
The wake is being held in a dreary pub high up on the winter moors. It is full of people he doesn’t know, just like his father’s funeral twenty years earlier, where people had nodded and smiled, and not known what to say.
He remembers the desolation he had felt back then. His father’s life had slotted so tidily between his own and his mother’s so that, all too late, he’d realised that the true beauty of the man lay in all his quiet ways. Even in retirement he was still the first up, enjoying the silence of early mornings, alone with his crossword and cup of tea.
Barely a week after his father’s death, Edward was overcome by a desperate need to leave home. The lie that had been his parent’s marriage seemed to resound throughout the house. All that was familiar to him only heightened the absence of his father. He felt no guilt at leaving his mother; it had been his father who had needed him as a foil against her. He hoped that if he left home his grief would ease and he could learn, like a child taking its first steps, to move forward into a new life.
Janice, a colleague from the library, told him about a Mrs Ingram who was looking for a lodger. Her mother and Mrs Ingram played bingo together on a Saturday night. When he told his mother that he was moving out, he was piqued to find that she seemed rather pleased with the idea.
It wasn’t until the day he was leaving and they were sitting down to Sunday lunch that he had any misgivings. Maybe her bravado was all a front. His mother had soon relieved him of that notion. She put down her knife and fork, laughed and said, ‘Thank God, I won’t have to cook another Sunday lunch ever again.’ She must have seen the look of dismay on his face, but she just shrugged, ‘I only ever did it for your father, but what’s the point now? It always seemed a waste of a good day to me.’
Half in jest, Edward had replied, ‘And here was me thinking I still might come for my Sunday lunch.’
She’d suddenly sat upright, a look of irritation on her face, ‘You can forget that. Your father was a good man, but now I want to live my own life.’
A good man! What a damning statement, Edward thought.
He had gone back three weeks later and been puzzled to find the wheelie bin filled to gaping on a Sunday. Bin day was Friday. What had his mother been doing over the weekend? Something in the bin caught his eye, and he flipped the lid open with his stick. It fell against the side with a dull, plastic thud. Instantly, he recognised the scuffed-leather soles of his father’s best ox-blood brogues. Incensed, he flipped the lid back over and wheeled the bin down the drive and along the quiet Sunday street until he came to a path that led down to the river. It was awkward over the rough ground but his anger gave him strength. He pushed the bin through the sparse willow thickets, past the suspended tyre that dangled out over the river and to where the bank became less steep. He tried to tip the bin out onto the path but it was too difficult for him. He tried again and it veered off crazily down the bank toward the river, his father’s shoes tumbling down into the brown water. He caught sight of a paisley scarf that his father wore on special occasions, and a grey worsted cap, long past its best, that he’d worn when he went to his allotment. He tried to descend the bank to retrieve the cap, but the ground was too slippery. Caught in the cleft of a tree root he spotted his father’s false teeth; the ones the undertaker had pestered his mother so hard for, and what he’d taken to be a branch had a rubber ferrule on the end. It was his father’s walking stick. How could she have thrown out his father’s stick? It was the first time Edward had cried since his father’s death.
He’d never gone back to the house. When he first left he’d thought that he would return for the rest of his things bit by bit and now, all these years later, he wonders if they are still there. He should have asked his mother a long time ago what she’d done with his belongings. Maybe he should ask her now, but she’d been edgy, especially after her fall. He could go to the bar, get her a drink, make it a peace offering.
The girl with the purple hair is standing at the bar. She has her back to him and is chatting with two workmen, who lean over their beer and cigarettes.
He listens to their conversation.
‘Slummin’ it a bit aren’t you, love? Don’t usually see the likes of you in here.’
‘Oh, even the likes of me occasionally goes for the odd bit of rough.’
The workmen laugh loudly. Edward is surprised to find her so forward. Sensing a presence, she turns. He is gratified to see that she has the grace to blush.
She smiles at him and shakes her head, her sideways ponytail bobbing up and down. ‘You know, it’s really frustrating. I wish I could work out where I’ve seen your mother before.’
‘I’m sorry I can’t help you,’ Edward hears himself reply, ‘and I can tell you now, if my mother does know, I doubt very much she’ll tell you.’
She has a very direct gaze and, as he stares back into her eyes, Edward sees that the irises are a pale grey, rimmed by a fine black line. Up close, her skin has a wonderful, translucent quality. A fine vein runs down the side of her cheek and he has an almost irresistible urge to put his hand up to it and trace the faint blue line with the tip of his finger. She smiles, and he notices that her teeth are like fine porcelain.