Lottie smiled wanly down at him. They were sitting on wooden stools at either end of the kitchen stove, for warmth
'Can you finish it, Willie? Can it be done?'
Willie looked up at her through his lank, brown fringe, like a mouse emerging from a hole in the wall. Lukewarm autumn sunbeams danced with the dust in the big kitchen behind the public bar. Such a lot of dust. She'd been neglecting the cleaning, like everything else, since Matt had been bad. Now it was over. Dust to dust.
Willie said, 'We got two or three instrumental tracks down, y'know. The lament. It all got a bit, like ... half-hearted, as you can imagine. Me and Eric, we could see it weren't going to get finished. Not wi' Matt, anyroad.'
'I want it finished,' Lottie said crisply. 'It was his last ... I'm not going to use the word obsession, I've said it too much.' She hesitated. '... I'm not religious, Willie, you know that, not in any ... any respect.'
Willie gave three or four nods, his chin keeping time with the fingers on his knees.
'But I just feel that he won't be at peace ... that it won't be over ... until that music's finished.'
'Aye.' Willie's fingers didn't stop. Nerves.
'So what about Dic?' Lottie said.
'Will Dic want to do it?'
Lottie said grimly, 'He'll do it. Is he good enough?'
'Oh, aye,' Willie said without much difficulty. 'I reckon he is. With a bit of practice, like. But really, like, what we could do with is ...He beat his knees harder to help him get it out. ' ... Moira.'
'She rang me,' Lottie said. 'Last night.'
Willie's eyes lit up, expectant. Dear God, Lottie thought, they're all in love with her.
'Actually, it was early this morning. I mean very early. Gone midnight. The kind of time people don't ring up unless it's an emergency.'
'Oh,' Willie said, and his hands were suddenly still.
'She asked me about Matt. She said, was he ill? I told her yes he was very ill. I told her it was close to the end. I told her ...' Lottie stood up and put her hands on the warm metal covers over the hot-plates of the kitchen stove, pressing down with both hands, hard. 'I didn't need to tell her.'
Willie was quiet.
'We didn't say much. She started to explain why she'd put him off when he wrote to her. I stopped her. I said we'd discuss it some other time.'
There was a new kind of silence in the room.
'I put the phone down,' Lottie said. 'It was about twenty-five past twelve. I waited for a minute or two, in case Dic had heard the phone, but he was fast asleep. I thought, I'll make some cocoa, take it up with me. But I didn't move. I knew. I mean, why should she suddenly ring after all these years at that time of night? And sure enough, not five minutes had passed and the phone rang again, and it was Sister Murtry at the hospital. And I just said, He's gone, hasn't he?'
There was more silence, then Lottie said, 'I've not slept since. I've just sent Dic to bed for a few hours. I'm not tired, Willie. I'm not using up any energy - not thinking, you know?'
Lottie sat down again. 'I shan't be staying here. Only until it's done. His bloody project. I think coming back here, buying the pub, the whole bit, that was all part of it. The project. All I want is to draw a line under it, do you see? I mean, I hope somebody'll buy the pub, somebody sympathetic, but if not ...' She shrugged. 'Well, I've got to get away, regardless.'
Willie nodded. Fingers starting up very slowly. 'Um ... what about Moira?'
'I'm not inviting her to the funeral, that's for sure.' Lottie folded her arms, making a barrier. 'If she wants to help complete these songs, that'd be ... I'll not be begging. No more of that. And another thing, Willie - tell whoever needs to be told, tell them I'm not having anything to do with these stupid ... traditions. You know what I'm saying? Matt might've accepted it, I don't. All right?'
'Aye, all right,' Willie said, not sounding too happy. But that was his problem, Lottie thought. 'Yeh,' he said. 'I'll tell her.'
When Willie had gone, Lottie pushed her hands on to the hot-plate covers again, seeking an intensity of heat, needing to feel something. Something beyond this anaesthetized numbness.
Wanting pain - simple pain. Loss. Sorrow.
Not any of this confusion over the gratitude that he was gone and the wanting him back ... but back as he used to be, before all this. Before his project.
A blinding sun through leafless trees ricocheted from the windscreens of cars on the forecourt. A perky breeze ruffled the flags projecting from the motel's awning and lifted tufts of Chrissie's auburn hair. She thought she probably looked quite good, all things considered.
That, she told herself, was what a good night's sleep could do for you.
Ha!
Roger Hall paused, gripping the door-handle of his Volvo Estate. Don't say it, Chrissie thought. Just don't give me that, I still can't understand it, this has never happened to me before ...
He didn't. He merely put on an upside-down, pathetic grin.
'Can we try again sometime?' Eyes crinkled appealingly, full of silly morning optimism, and she felt herself falling for it - even if she knew he still wasn't telling the half of it.
'Why not,' she said, daft bitch. She squeezed his arm. 'How long will you be gone?'
'Oh, only until Tuesday. That is, I'll be back late tonight so I'll see you tomorrow morning. Have lunch together, shall we? Would that be ... ?'
'Of course,' she said. She would have wangled the day off and gone to London with him. They'd been too close to the Field Centre last night, that was probably the problem. Too close to him.
'I'm really only going down there,' Roger said, 'to make sure we get all the stomach returned. Don't want them trying to pinch him back, bit by bit.'
Shut up! Just shut up about that fucking thing!
'Don't worry about it, Roger. Just drive carefully.'
As the Volvo slid away past the Exit Southbound sign, two commercial traveller types came out to their twin Cavaliers and gave her the once-over. Chrissie found herself smiling almost warmly at the younger one. It would be two years in January since her divorce.
She got into her Golf. She looked at her face in the driving-mirror and decided it could probably take a couple more years of this sort of thing before she ought to start looking for
something ... well, perhaps semi-permanent.
Sadly, Roger's marriage was now in no danger whatsoever. Not from her, anyway.
All the trouble he'd gone to to deceive his wife. Was that for her? Was that really all for her? And then he couldn't do it. Because of 'tension'.