by Alison May
Sleep isn’t going to happen, so I drag myself out of bed and pull my dressing gown on. I’ll get a cup of tea and put the TV on for company. I pad down the stairs, but stop in the hallway. There’s music playing in the living room. Not proper music, weird wind chime stuff like they play when you go for a day spa. I push the door open as quietly as I can and take a look. Tania. Of course. Bloody Tania, playing plinky-plonky music in the middle of the night. She’s wearing black lycra trousers and a pale green vest, and her hair’s all piled on the top of her head. I take the opportunity to peer at the hair at the back of her neck that’s normally hidden, but even there I can’t see any grey strands. She’s very well put together, is Tania. She’s standing at one end of the rug, with her hands pressed together in front of her chest like she’s praying. Then she lifts her arms and bends forwards from her hips reaching down to touch her toes, but she doesn’t just touch her toes. She puts her whole hands down flat on the floor. That’s bendy for somebody so old. I watch as she kicks her legs backwards and pushes her bum up towards the ceiling to make an upside-down V shape with her body. She looks ridiculous. I watch as she lifts one leg off the floor, so she’s balanced on one foot and her hands.
‘Morning Tania!’
She flinches as I come into the room and her elbow crumples under her sending her face-down into the rug.
I rush to her side. ‘Oh my God! Are you okay? I’m so sorry.’
She wriggles into a seated position. ‘I’m fine. I didn’t think anyone else was up.’
‘Couldn’t sleep.’ I haven’t quite decided what to do about Tania. She can’t marry Dad. She’s only known him five minutes. It’s been me and him my whole life. It’s my job to look after him, but if I look like I’m trying to split them up people will act like I’m the one being unreasonable. I need to find out a more about her. Friends close; enemies closer. That’s the approach.
I smile my sweetest smile. ‘I was going to make a cup of tea. Do you want one?’
Tania turns off the horrid music and follows me into the kitchen. ‘I’ll have a peppermint one. It’s much more energising, and less caffeine.’
‘And here’s me thinking it was the caffeine that gave you the energy.’
Tania shakes her head. ‘It’s terrible for you. You have no idea what caffeinated drinks do to your insides.’
She’s probably right. There are some horrible toxins in food. I’ll have to remember to Google what caffeine does to my insides later. Right now though, I don’t want to let her win. ‘Well, I’ll have a coffee.’
She doesn’t reply. I open the cupboard, but the coffee’s not there. There’s a neat little case of funny herbal tea bags with names like ‘Raspberry revitalize’ and ‘Citrus sooth’ but no coffee. I look back at Tania. ‘What have you done with the coffee?’
She leans past me and reaches up to the very back of the very top shelf, and pulls the jar down. ‘Out of sight, out of mind. You’ll be amazed how little you miss these things when they’re not staring you in the face.’
Sod the getting to know my enemy. Right now, I want to smash my enemy in the smug, freakishly line-free face with the coffee jar. I don’t. I’m biding my time. I put the kettle on and open the fridge to get the milk. I stop. What she’s done to the cupboard is nothing compared to what she’s done in the fridge. I scan the shelves. I did an online shop the day before Dad came back. There was bacon, two steaks, a pack of sausages. I look again. I definitely bought cheese, proper cheese not the low-fat cottage variety that’s there now and butter, proper old-fashioned butter, which is what Dad likes. ‘Where is everything?’
For the first time since she scraped her face off the rug, she looks a tiny bit uncertain. ‘I had a bit of a clear out. Theo said you wouldn’t mind.’
I lift the milk, semi-skimmed – one of the only things that seems to have survived the cull, from the back of the door, and force myself not to explode. I smile brightly. ‘It’s just that those were some of Dad’s favourites.’ I pat Tania sympathetically on the arm. ‘I guess you’ve not known him that long, have you?’
She steps away from my hand. ‘But he’s not getting any younger, is he? We’ve got to take care of his health, haven’t we?’
We’re both quiet for a second, standing opposite one another in the kitchen, both wearing cheek-achingly bright and cheerful smiles, neither one of us backing down. So that’s how it’s going to be, is it? I turn away and pour water over her sanctimonious mint teabag. Well, at least we both know where we stand.
Alex
Alex opened his eyes and carried out his customary first-thing-in-the-morning checks. Whose room was he in? He glanced around. His own. Excellent start. Did he remember the night before? He certainly did. Dinner with Helen and her friends, cut short by Dominic’s bereavement. Teasing Helen over her hopeless infatuation with Dominic, and then into town to meet up with a mate for drinks before the weekend was officially over. So far so good. How hungover was he? Alex pulled himself up onto his elbows and tipped his head from side to side. No nausea. Only the slightest hint of a headache. Not too hungover, he concluded. And finally, the big question. Who else was in his bed? A cursory look around confirmed what he already suspected. A blonde head on the pillow beside him. It was shaping up to be a good day.
The blonde head raised itself from the pillow. ‘Is it morning?’
Alex grinned, and slid himself out of bed. ‘Certainly is.’ He grabbed his boxers, jeans and shirt from the floor where they’d been discarded the night before and pulled them on, before gathering up an armful of female attire. It was quite small attire he noted – blonde-head was facing an uncomfortably scantily-clad walk of shame. He chucked the clothes onto the bed. ‘Wait here.’
Alex headed downstairs and peered into the living room. As he expected, Helen was already up. Now clearly it was none of Helen’s business who he spent the night with, but she was something of a specialist in the delivery of heartfelt speeches about developing self-respect and owning one’s own sexuality, and he didn’t want to build up a reputation for offering his overnight guests a good time at night and a sermon in the morning. He stopped in the doorway and listened. Helen seemed to be on the phone, and she seemed to be quite angry about the fact.
‘No, but now I’ve got a new lodger, so I’ve got rental income again ... No. I know. I used to have a lodger, but she moved out, which I told you six weeks ago and you reassessed me then ...’
Alex had no idea who she was talking to but it sounded like it could take a while. He leaned around the doorpost and peeked into the room. Helen was sitting with her back to the door. Excellent. He ran back upstairs. Blonde-head was sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling her boots on. She looked up as he came in. ‘So I’d probably better ...’ She gestured towards the door.
He nodded. She followed him down the stairs, and slipped out the front door, stopping on the doorstep. ‘So you could call me?’
Alex nodded again. ‘Sure.’
Blonde-head frowned. ‘So I’ll give you my number?’
‘You gave me it last night.’ He started to push the door closed.
‘I don’t think I ...’
‘Bye then.’ The door clicked shut. Alex turned back into the house. Helen was standing in the hallway.
‘You really are the most incredible tart.’
Alex shrugged. ‘We all work with the talents we’re born with.’
‘Were you trying to hide her from me?’
Now Alex felt a bit stupid. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d mind.’
‘What do I care? You can stick that where you like. So long as you pay your rent and do your half of the washing up, we’re fine.’
‘Cool.’ He followed his landlady back into the living room. ‘Who were you phoning?’
‘Tax credits. They claim I never told them Susie moved out, so now I’ve told them you’re moving in they think there are three of us.’ She flopped onto the sofa. ‘For the amount of money I get, it’s barely worth the time on the
phone.’ She peered at her new lodger. ‘You’ve only got one module this term?’
‘One and a bit.’
Helen closed her eyes. ‘I’ve got four. That’s ...’ Her voice tailed off as she moved her finger in the air, drawing the calculations on the space in front of her. ‘That’s not enough money.’
Alex shrugged. ‘I’ve still got a bit of my bursary left, and we can economise.’
Helen looked around the rather drab and very empty lounge. ‘I’m not sure how. I’m already wearing cardigans over jumpers over cardigans instead of putting the heating on.’
‘I don’t mind the cold.’ Alex peered out of the window to make sure blonde-head had definitely left. ‘It discourages people from staying too long in the morning.’
‘I need to get a proper job.’
Alex shuddered at the thought, but Helen was his friend, and respecting your friend’s right to be fundamentally wrong-headed about the ideas like work ethic and commitment was part of friendship. ‘Fingers crossed for Samson’s old post then.’
Emily
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come?’ I’m curled up on Dom’s bed, flicking through the TV channels. He’s packing his bag to go to Stockport for his dad’s funeral. At least he’s supposed to be packing. So far he’s just walking round the room picking things up, and putting them down somewhere different.
He shakes his head. ‘It’s probably not the best time for you to meet my mum.’ He holds his one and only suit up for my inspection. ‘Is this all right? It’s not black.’
I nod. ‘I think it’s fine. I don’t think people worry about wearing black so much these days.’ I have no idea whether that’s true, but it seems like the most helpful thing to say.
‘I think my mother probably worries about stuff like that.’
‘I’m sure she won’t mind.’
His expression doesn’t change. ‘You haven’t met her.’
I don’t answer. This isn’t the time to start a row, but I’m very aware that I haven’t met Dom’s mother. I hadn’t met his father either, and now he’s dead. I hope Dom isn’t simply hoping I outlive all the relatives he doesn’t want me to meet.
He starts to fold his suit. I stand up and take it off him. ‘Don’t you have a suit carrier?’
He shakes his head.
‘Then put a bin liner over the hanger and hang it up in the back of the car. It’ll get all creased in your case.’
He goes to the kitchen to get a bin bag. He’s not normally this biddable. It feels like the real Dom has gone into hibernation somewhere in the middle of the Dom-shaped shell that’s still walking around and packing bags and getting on with things.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come?’ I don’t know why I keep asking him. This is at least the fifth time this evening. It’s the only helpful thing I can think of to do. It’s the girlfriendly thing to do, isn’t it? I should go with him for moral support. He should want me to go with him for moral support.
He shakes his head again. ‘I don’t want to put you out.’
Dominic
‘Cup of tea?’ Dominic half stood from his seat on his parents’ patterned sofa, hoping for a few moments relief from the feeling that the air itself was pressing down on his shoulders.
His mother shook her head. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
Dominic glanced at the clock. Eleven in the morning. The service was at 11.45. The car to collect them to follow his father on his final journey would be here at twenty-five past. Twenty-five minutes that felt like they were stretching away to the end of days. Maybe he should have brought Emily. Her brightness might have taken an edge off the sense of insipid despair that overcame him every time he visited his parents’ home. He tried to picture her here, but his brain wouldn’t do it. It was as if he was trying to draw a character from a different world into this setting; his mind rejected the contradiction. It wasn’t that his mother wouldn’t like her. He had no doubt that his mother would be overjoyed with the professor’s daughter. Maybe that was what unsettled him. The idea of his mother falling over herself to do things properly for his la-di-da girlfriend. The idea that he’d be the returning hero coming home from the big bad world with his prize.
He sat back and willed the silence to pass more quickly. He’d suggested that the whole family meet up here before the service. His dad’s brother and his wife. Maybe even their children too if they’ve even managed to drag themselves away from their own lives for long enough to pay respects to their distant and not well-loved uncle. His mother had pooh-poohed the idea. More than one car coming to the house wouldn’t do. His father, apparently, would have been dismayed at the ostentation.
Dominic stood and paced across the room, stopping to take a look out of the net-curtained bay window at the front of the house. It was the sort of workaday terraced street that seemed destined for either descent into slum status or creeping gentrification. Either way, Dominic thought, Mother would remain, increasingly isolated and out of place. He paced back again. Everything in this room was a memory. The carpet that hadn’t changed since he was a school boy. The collection of figurines on the mantelpiece which his mother painstakingly moved to dust beneath every week, and then put back in their precise allotted positions, where they would sit unnoticed and unloved until the following week. Even the television was the same as when he was a boy. Dominic had installed a digital receiver box for his parents, but they’d refused his offer to buy them a new TV. The current set hummed to itself for five minutes after you switched it off, and every time it was switched on, but was deemed ‘good enough for us,’ by Dominic’s mum.
He paused next to the empty chair opposite the television. His father’s chair, which he fancied would always be empty now. His mother would never dispose of it, but at the same time, would never consider sitting there herself. Like so much else, it would stay frozen in this moment. He looked at the chair, trying to picture the man, but the image in his mind was fuzzy. He couldn’t see the cold blue of his father’s eyes, or the shape of his nose, or the tone of his skin. The chair was just a chair.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to stay longer?’ It was a conversation they’d already had multiple times, but Dominic couldn’t bear the quiet any longer. The atmosphere in the room felt like a physical weight pressing him down..
His mother shook her head. ‘You’ve got to get back to your work.’
‘They can manage without me for a few more days.’ It was true. It was only mid-January. His full teaching schedule didn’t kick in until the following week. He was supposed to have office hours for students to drop in this week, but before lectures had even started the chances of anybody needing to see him urgently were slim. There was no rush at all for him to get back to work.
‘No. You should get back. You’re a professor now.’ She said the word like it was something she’d learnt from a foreign language, over pronouncing every syllable. ‘It’s what you’ve always wanted.’
Dominic paused. This wasn’t the time, but in another sense it was as good a time as he would ever get, because being an academic wasn’t what he’d always wanted. It was what had always been wanted for him, and he’d assumed that, as the feelings around him were so strong, he must feel the same. What Dominic really wanted was change. ‘Actually, I’ve been thinking about that and—’
‘Your father was so proud of you.’ His mother wasn’t listening to him. She was trapped in her own story of his imagined life. ‘All those extra hours he worked to pay for your school. All those years when the pair of us didn’t have so much as a day out to see the illuminations, let alone a holiday, so that you could get where you are now. A proper professor. It makes it all worthwhile.’
Dominic swallowed.
‘Sorry.’ His mother dabbed the corner of her eye. ‘What were you saying?’
Dominic shook his head. ‘Nothing.’ He was, after all, a product of his parents’ sacrifice, and that meant that he had responsibilities to people other than himself. H
e had a responsibility to have everything they’d wanted for him. The good career. The nice house. The perfect family. It wasn’t all about him. There were the years of work and expectation from the father he’d be letting down; the father to whom he would never now be able to explain. A sound in the street caught his attention. The black outline of the hearse appeared like a shadow through the net curtain. And so it was time.
Alex
Alex mooched along the corridor on his way to the hourly-paid lecturer’s office. He’d never had an office before, even a one eighth share of a communal office. He must, in his own small way, be growing up. The offices in the department of history were arranged in spurs, off a central long corridor. How far you were placed from the central hub by the main entrance was a fairly direct signifier of your importance within the department. Accordingly, Professor Midsomer had an office with its own reception area where Emily maintained a guard position, directly off the main corridor. Alex glanced through the door to see if she was at her desk, but the office was empty. He shook his head; he wasn’t even sure why he’d looked.
Dominic Collins’s office was the second one along off the first spur. The hourly-paid lecturers were at the far end of the furthest spur, between the cleaners’ cupboard and the office of an emeritus professor who hadn’t actually been spotted in person for several years. The received wisdom was that he had probably died, and his family had omitted to let anyone at the university know. Anyway, an office was an office, and for Alex it was a step-up in the world.
He glanced down the first spur as he passed and saw a student banging enthusiastically on a closed door. Alex paused. ‘Are you all right there?’
The young man was staring intently at the door. ‘Can I help you with anything?’
