Sunday is here. Lily wants Sunday gone so that it can be Monday, so that she can talk to the policewoman and the key-cutter and the people at Carl’s office. All she can do today is try this number. The phone belonging to Carl’s mother rings and rings and rings. There is no answerphone to break up the agonising incessancy of it. It just keeps on ringing until it runs out of rings and then the line clicks off scornfully, as if it’s saying: For Christ’s sake, there’s no one here, can’t you take a hint?
As Lily sits with the phone cradled beneath her chin pressing redial, redial, redial, she builds up a mental image of the woman who is not answering her phone. She has dark hair, like Carl, and his sharp cheekbones; she looks young for her age, is wearing maybe a silky blouse and tailored trousers. Again, she wonders, why does she not know what her husband’s mother looks like? Why did she never ask? Why are there no photographs in this flat? Who is this man she married? What is she doing here?
After an hour of sitting cross-legged on the bed calling Carl’s mother, Lily begins to feel a rage building deep within her. It comes from the same place that her tears come from: the soft pit of her belly. She hurls the phone across the room and watches as it hits the wall and splits in two, expelling a piece of plastic that rolls deep under the divan bed. She growls in frustration and gets to her hands and knees, her fingers clawing at the narrow gap between the thick new carpet and the underside of the bed. She can’t locate it so she pushes the divan across the carpet until it reveals itself. There’s the piece of plastic. And there’s something else. It’s one of Carl’s smart little silk knot cufflinks, bottle-green and claret. She holds it in the palm of her hand and stares at it. She sees him standing there, as he does every morning, pulling down the cuffs of his immaculate business shirts, popping the knots through the buttonholes, smiling down at her. And she remembers how she used to feel: so proud of this handsome, grown-up man with his serious shirts.
She rests the silk knot on Carl’s bedside table and concentrates instead on fixing the bloody phone. The piece of plastic appears to have snapped off from somewhere – she can’t work out where – and the two sides of the phone refuse to click together without it. She holds it together with an elastic hairband and attempts to redial Carl’s mother, but there’s no connection. She has broken the phone. She lets it fall on to the bed and she groans. All the people who might try calling Carl – his mother, his sister, his office, Russ – have this number.
She showers, washes her hair and gets dressed. Then she picks up her mobile phone and texts Russ: I have broken the house phone. This is my mobile phone. Please use this number if you need to speak to me. Thank you. Lily.
Then she taps Carl’s mother’s number into her mobile and waits for the incessant ringing to begin again. But instead, within three rings there is a click and then a woman’s voice, uncertain and quiet, saying, ‘Hello?’