Mr. McKendrick’s face fell into sombre lines and all other questions, all the squabbles, faded away. Was Grace okay?
In the months after Duncan’s death, of course, no one looked for her to be cheery. Grace had lost her man and it could be years before she was back on her feet and over it again. But she was surrounded by friends. He’d told her so and she’d laughed and said didn’t she know it. Mrs. McLuskie always invited her, in a silky voice, to join in with whatever she and Mr. McLuskie had planned for the weekend. Mrs. Watson told Grace she knew how it felt and how, when she had lost Robert, talking was the only thing that did any good. Mrs. McMaster remembered as clear as this morning how, all those years ago when she was widowed, the last thing she wanted to hear about was how somebody else had fared and how they were now. She talked about Duncan the first time they met after the funeral, laughed about something he’d said-that was what she had wanted-but Grace bowed her head at the sound of his name, and Pet could have kicked herself. She made up a posy and brought it round, saying it was a cancelled order and just the colours of Grace’s dining room.
Oh, Grace knew very well there was a net beneath her. She was the grieving widow of a well-loved man, a card that often turned up as small-town life shuffled itself, so she stood on her mark and played her part without faltering. And slowly the town forgot that the sadness had started before the dying.
Mr. McKendrick wasn’t content to be a net in case she fell. A man of action, was Jimmy McKendrick. He wanted something to do. His fingers twitched whenever he looked at Grace, itching to make it better, which made her smile. If he was a Labrador, she would think, I’d have every tea-towel in the house on my lap whenever I sat down. She laughed.
“What? What is it?” he would ask, truffling after the laugh to plump it up and have done with the sadness.
“Oh, James,” she’d say, her face resettling. “You’re a good man. You’ve always been a good friend to me.”
“Gracie,” he said, plunging in as he knew he would no matter what he told himself sternly in the mirror each morning. “Gracie, I still am. I’m right here. You just say the word. I’m right here and I’m not going anywhere any time soon.” She smiled and nodded-to stop him talking, though, not to agree with him. How could she say the word? If she said any of the words, how would she ever lift her head again?
Friday, 18 October
Why does that woman hang her head so?, Keiko wondered, standing at the kitchen window with her bowl of rice on Friday morning. She had stopped moving away when Mrs. Poole came out of the small building with her two buckets of water every day, never looking up, just walking to the drain in the middle of the yard with her gaze trained on the ground.
And what is she cleaning? Then sniffing and wrinkling her nose, she wondered if perhaps Mrs. Poole was right and she was wrong. The faint odour she had noticed when she first arrived was still there, no stronger but never going away completely.
Mrs. Poole tipped each pail carefully so that the grey water poured into the centre of the drain without touching the sides, then she swept the few splashes inwards with four or five swipes of her brush and stood for a second, facing away from the house, before turning and disappearing from Keiko’s view, her opening and closing of the back door causing hardly a sound before the building settled back into complete silence.
Five hours of work, Keiko had told herself. Five solid hours, with some time off for lunch maybe, before the trip to town on the bus with Viola Clarke. But already the errand was distracting her; she imagined what the little girl and she would talk about on the journey, whether she should take a storybook to read, where she could get one, whether Viola was still young enough to be read to… Babysitting later, she told herself. Work first. She nodded firmly. With a short walk in the fresh air to break it up in the middle.
When her coffee was brewed she padded through to the living room, to the big table in the bay window she was beginning to think of as her desk.
Find subjects. Undergraduates? Pay them? Continuity.
What she needed was a cohort of fifty individuals who would return at intervals over the next three years to be retested after the initial profiling. She thought of the herds of pierced and shambling students she had seen in the halls of the department and the task of catching them between hangovers and holidays and… details, details.
Psych profile of subjects. What scale? What test?
Published source? Expense? Make up own? Time?
Details, details.
Run first questionnaire
Report to subjects and run second questionnaire
Repeat steps 2 and 3 twice more. Three times? Five in all for luck?
Write up.
Graduate.
Apply for, be offered and accept job, find beautiful house in vibrant city.
Fresh air first perhaps and then four and a half hours of solid work with her lunch at her desk? Keiko shook her head as she stood. This had never happened before. From the days when she was learning to read and add simple figures together, she had always been able to focus. She looked around the living room. And this was the quietest, largest, most comfortable study she had ever worked in. She stamped her feet, as she had taken to doing since Fancy had showed her the trick that first day. Solid. Freshly painted and comfortably furnished and, never forget, free. She picked up her new phone and clicked through the contacts, smiling at how many there were already. The friendliest place she had ever been, with the most time she had ever had-no classes to attend, no mother to placate-and the longest line of well-wishers ready to entertain her when she needed a break from it. So what was wrong?
“You think too much, Keko-chan,” her mother would say. “And you drink too much coffee.”
“I’m a psychology student, mother,” Keiko would reply. “What do you recommend, instead of thinking?” At least, in her head she would reply that way. Under her breath, she would. Out loud she would say perhaps she needed some tea to clear her mind and would her mother like some?
“That’s right. Forget your brain for once and listen to your tummy.”
And actually, Keiko thought to herself closing her phone again, that might be the trouble after all. It had been years since she had made herself rice and miso for breakfast instead of toast and jam, but this morning, after last night, there had been no question.
Because last night she had been the guest of the Imperiolos. Or Rosa at least; Kenny had been at a meeting.
“He says he’s asking after you,” Mrs. Imperiolo had told her. “He’s sorry he couldn’t be here, but he’s a busy man. Got a lot on his mind. Stressed to his oxters, actually.” A frown passed over her face but only fleetingly, then she smiled again. “Now, Keiko,” she said, “you’re in for a treat today. I’ll order for you this time, seeing you’re new to it all. I hope you’re hungry.”
She was, but the air in here-hot, thick, and heavy in her mouth and spiked with vinegar scent in her nose-was filling her up quite nicely without the need actually to eat anything.
They were sitting in the window seat of Imperiolo’s Fish Restaurant, looking out over the main road towards the river railings. “Two fish suppers with peas, bread and butter, and tea,” said Rosa to the waitress. She turned back to Keiko. “I know how much Japanese people like fish,” she said. “And Joe, our fish fryer, took us to the national finals last year.”