The news articles on the local station usually only last a day, so hopefully it’ll be done and gone by six o’clock. I’m surprised they didn’t run with it the day before Craig was released.
I should know better than to have it on in the first place. When it first happened, the news was so raw, so horrific. But sometimes, it’s like it’s happened to someone I don’t know. I’ve had to distance myself from it, you see. I’m not as hard as you think I am. I can’t imagine my son doing… See, I can’t even think about the details.
Would Mum have made it better or worse for Craig and me if she were alive? I can’t envisage what she’d say about it – I’ve never been able to. She was so loyal to her loved ones in public.
No one around here cared about me after she died. All they talked about was how her husband left her and how she had to look after her spinster daughter – as though there was something wrong with me. Mother knew everyone around here. She was always talking about everyone’s business, and everyone else was the same. What they gossiped about was only true half the time; the rest they made up to fill in the blanks – I’d heard them when I was forced as a child to sit at the back of the church after the service with a lukewarm orange cordial.
Mother didn’t know the lengths I went to to keep my other life secret from her. I didn’t want to disappoint her because I knew what I was doing was wrong. She had such high expectations of me. She had no idea I had a boyfriend, let alone that I was pregnant out of wedlock (as they used to say). I had no other choice but to live with her – I had no money to start up on my own, even though I was working. Single people didn’t have as many points as families to get a council house, and this area was made up mainly of married couples with children. Mother inherited this house when she was only twenty-three. Her parents – I was only two when they died – were killed in a road accident, but I never asked my mother to elaborate. I wanted to ask how they managed to die like that. Wasn’t it rare in a place that didn’t have many cars? Had they been drinking? I didn’t have the courage to ask any of those questions.
There was one picture she kept in a display cabinet. In it, my grandfather’s wearing a light shirt with a knitted vest over the top, and my grandmother’s in a proper 1950s dress, belted in the middle. I like to imagine it was yellow and her belt was patent black. They were both smoking cigarettes and looking off camera, standing in front of a house with grass under their feet, so it can’t have been this house. It was as though they were so used to having their picture taken. They looked kind. I must still have that photograph somewhere.
My mother always used to tell me how wealthy her parents were, that they were involved in the cotton industry, but she never said how or what she did with the money– never showed an interest when the last mill closed. Instead, she said, ‘I could’ve been rich, too, after they died, had I made different life choices.’
I took that personally, of course, but she didn’t mean it in that way.
And now I’m in the same position as she was then. My mother and I might not have been that different after all, but we never found that out, did we?
Well, not until the end.
Now I’m six years older than she was when she died, yet I picture her in my head as an old woman, even though she was only fifty-four. She never let herself relax, and I wished she had. I suppose I’m like that now – I never drink alcohol, I worry about things that will never happen, and I can’t sit still for more than ten minutes. Is it inevitable that we turn into our mothers?
She didn’t leave a will, so I’ve been paying my brother rent for his share of the house since she died. I constantly wonder if he’ll announce he wants to sell. I’d get half, but what could I buy for that? A one-bedroomed flat probably – and I’d be grateful of that – but what would happen to Craig?
I shouldn’t worry about something that’s not happened yet.
There’ve been no goings-on outside so far today. People have been walking to work and not giving us a second glance. It helps that only one person on this street has lived here from that time; most have moved on. Those who stayed live up near the shops. Many of these houses are rented out now – it’s where the profit is; I hear that all the time on Homes Under the Hammer.
It’s only at twenty past eleven that I hear Craig moving upstairs. He hasn’t said what time he was usually woken, but I doubt they gave him a lie-in. I’ve been dressed since I got up in preparation for him coming down. I don’t usually bother getting up until just before ten as that’s when the postman might knock. Sometimes a new one’ll be at the door with a package for a neighbour five, or even ten, doors down, which is ridiculous. It’s worse around Christmas – why don’t people have it delivered to their workplace? They must be so busy that they can’t be bothered going into town to buy presents. If I had the money and people to buy for, then I’d love to.
Oh well.
The regular postie knows I don’t take anything in. What neighbour would want to knock at my door to rescue their parcel?
Craig thuds down the stairs and leans into the living room.
‘I’m going to make some toast. Do you want any?’
He doesn’t wait for a reply, just carries on into the kitchen. I get up and stand at the doorway.
‘I’ve eaten, love,’ I say. ‘Do you know what to do?’
‘I didn’t die and come back to life,’ he says.
I frown at that, but he doesn’t see. I don’t think he realised what he said. He begins humming as he takes the loaf from the wooden bread bin that I’ve had for so long the pine-coloured varnish has worn off. He puts two slices in the toaster. It’s like he’s in his own little world and everything’s fine.
‘I worked in the kitchen for three years,’ he says. ‘I chopped onions, made sandwiches. It was fresh food, you know. Everyone has to work… and my mate Rob got a degree with the OU.’
I don’t say he already told me most of that during our visits over the years. Though when he’d said he worked in the kitchen, I thought he meant washing up, serving food – I hadn’t imagined they’d given them sharp objects. Why hadn’t I asked at the time? But it’s good news; it means they trusted him.
‘What time’s your supervising officer getting here?’
He turns his back to me, his shoulders tense as he leans on the counter. The toast pops up and he scrapes butter on it. He takes a bite; almost half of it in his mouth at once.
‘Half twelve,’ he says, his mouth full. ‘Surprised they arranged a meeting at lunchtime. I could’ve done with a longer sleep.’
I follow him into the living room. He’s so tall, but he can’t have grown since he was last in this house. The markings on the doorway only go a bit higher than I am because he wasn’t interested in measuring his height once he was an inch taller than me.
Looking at him now, bulked out with his weight-training, it seems like he could be capable of anything. And he must’ve learned some new things in prison, too.
Craig doesn’t want me there while Adam, his supervising officer, talks to him. I was allowed to answer the door, though. ‘…Just so he can see you’re around. I wouldn’t want them thinking I was lying about moving in with you. You don’t want to be bothered by all that official stuff though.’
Adam seems nice enough. Young – though of course everyone is these days. I feel so much older than sixty. My mother used to say she knew she was past it when police officers started looking younger than her. Mum always seemed old, even though she wasn’t – such old-fashioned hair. All mothers looked the same when I was a child: permed hair (I imagine they thought they were Marilyn Monroe), skirts to the knee, and powdered faces. They never swore in public, but then got to a certain age when they thought they could get away with saying whatever they pleased, even if those words hurt people.