Over

by Margaret Forster

  ‘I know all that.’

  ‘Well, that’s your answer, Finn. That’s why he won’t let it rest. He can’t let someone get away with this, and maybe some other person die because of some kind of mistake or laziness.’

  Finn shrugged. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘Maybe. But there’s always a possibility that –’

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more, Mum. I don’t want to have to go over and over it all, I’m sick of it.’

  He was shouting by then, red in the face, the football boots thrown to the ground. I put my hand on his arm, meaning to be sympathetic, trying to show that I understood, but he shook me off and crashed out of the kitchen, and I heard the garden gate slam.

  It exhausts me even remembering it.

  *

  We are doing a Healthy Eating project in Reception R (R is for my name, Roscoe). Each child has to draw a picture of what they like to eat best of all and write their name (with help) underneath. Paige had trouble writing bubblegum. Lola did a very good drawing of an apple and managed to write the word clearly. At least half the class listed some sort of sweet or biscuit, but I suppose that was inevitable, considering the question. We had fun learning about what makes children grow, what makes their teeth strong and their bones sturdy, and we stuck pictures of all the appropriate foods onto sheets of coloured cardboard. Then Jeremy measured them all and we made a chart of heights too. This led, naturally, to some boasting about who was the biggest. ‘Biggest is best, Miss, isn’t it?’ Paige said. I said no, being big didn’t mean you were better than someone smaller. Being healthy was what mattered and small people could be just as healthy. Paige didn’t believe a word of it. We moved on to talking about how food is grown. They knew apples grew on trees but they thought potatoes and everything else did too. ‘If you don’t eat carrots,’ Paige said, ‘you go blind.’ She had other gems of a similar nature. Corrected, she came up with: ‘Anyway, if you don’t eat the right food you die. Don’t you, Miss? You die, and they put you in the ground and worms crawl over you.’

  *

  Don phoned. I was just sitting here, staring into space, as I so often do, and the phone rang and I answered it instantly. His voice surprised me. He doesn’t usually ring. Since we parted, he uses e-mail to tell me anything he thinks I need to know, and we occasionally meet, though it is a few weeks since we last did so.

  We met last time to discuss the house, where I was still living. We were selling it, and splitting the proceeds so that we could each buy something separately. At least, I was going to buy this flat, but Don needed some of his share to fund his ‘investigations’. He said he hadn’t time to search for a property to buy so he had rented a bedsitter. At his age, in his position – a bedsitter. It is pathetic, but he doesn’t seem to see that. We met in a café, one that we used to frequent often as a family, which made the encounter a little upsetting – at least for me – but Don suggested the venue and it was convenient, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else.

  He was business-like, and in rather a hurry. We ordered the soup we always used to have there – it’s very good, a meal in itself – and that was all. Don wanted my agreement to an offer just made for our house, and I gave it at once, eager to buy this flat which had just come on the market. He talked about the mortgage and how much we would each get once the sale went through. I asked how long that was likely to take and he estimated six weeks or so. I was worried about what to do with the furniture and contents but Don had little interest. That was when he told me to take whatever I wanted. After that, we were silent. The noise we made supping our soup seemed indecent, but once we were finished neither of us wanted to talk. I was startled when after a lengthy pause during which we both stared at our empty bowls Don suddenly said, ‘Do you want a divorce?’

  ‘No!’ I said, and then repeated it in a less indignant tone. ‘Why would I want a divorce, Don? It’s never entered my head.’

  ‘Well,’ Don said, ‘we’ve parted, because you wanted to, and we’re selling our house … I just assumed …’

  He looked at me then, and I returned his stare. I like to think quite steadily.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, and put a hand over his eyes, rubbing them. Then he tried to smile. ‘How are you, anyway? I haven’t asked you. You look well, relaxed.’

  I couldn’t reply. Relaxed? He’d paused a fraction just before he said that word and I knew he’d been going to choose ‘happy’. I wasn’t supposed to be able to look happy ever again. Smiles, laughter – they were banned. Afterwards, whenever the children and I laughed together, at some joke, or more often at something on the telly, we all felt such a rush of relief – we were laughing! – but it would be followed by a nervousness which wasn’t quite guilt but came near to it. We got into the habit, if Don was in the house, of closing the sitting-room door firmly if we were going to watch a comedy programme when we might, just might, guffaw loudly.

  When I still didn’t reply, Don said, ‘How’s the teaching? Still enjoying it?’

  I nodded. Enjoyment was another feeling that I knew he could no longer remember. Except that is not quite true. He enjoys his ‘investigations’. The longer they go on, the more complex (and pointless) they become, the more he enjoys them, I’m sure. He gets excited, still, about ‘leads’, microscopically small pieces of new information he reckons he has discovered. He writes everything up, very neatly, and puts it in his files.

  That was one of the first indications of what was going to happen. Afterwards, he went out and bought a filing cabinet. Storing information on his computer apparently wasn’t enough. It was a big, ugly steel thing he’d got at some sale of antiquated office furniture. It took two men to carry it into the house and up to his study. There was nowhere really for it to go. His study was tiny, a mere box room, with a desk and a bookcase and a single chair taking up most of the space. It was a struggle to wedge the filing cabinet into a corner, but he was so pleased to have it. When I asked him what he wanted it for he said, ‘I’ll need it. Everything must be filed, every last thing. It’s the only way.’

  Next, he bought a tape recorder. We already had one, but he wanted a much smaller model which would tuck neatly into a pocket. Hours, he spent, researching the different makes, and then he was off to Tottenham Court Road and spent a whole day testing them. That evening, he came as near to smiling again as he was ever to do. After supper, he told us to sit still a minute, he had something amazing to demonstrate. We waited, expectant, but wary. He put his hand in his jacket pocket and produced what looked like a tiny transistor radio, about 10 by 4 centimetres, and then he pressed a switch. All our conversation during supper was faithfully and clearly reproduced.

  ‘See?’ he said. ‘None of you knew I was doing it. It’s so sensitive, this machine, and so powerful, it can pick up sound even when it’s in my pocket, muffled. Extraordinary.’

  It was Finn, of course, who realised first. ‘Dad,’ he said, ‘it’s dangerous. It would be getting evidence under false pretences. I’ve read about it. It would be inadmissible – I think that’s the word.’

  ‘I’m not worried about that,’ Don said, impatiently. ‘The point is, it will help me get to the truth. People are frightened to tell it, but if they think it’s in confidence, and there’s no microphone around, and I’m not taking notes, then …’

  ‘They can say anything,’ Finn said. ‘Anything they know you want to hear. What use is that?’

  *

  His voice sounded strange on the telephone, as though he had a bad cold. ‘Don,’ I said, ‘are you all right? You sound hoarse.’

  ‘I want you to come with me,’ he said.

  ‘With you? Where to? When? Why?’

  ‘To Holland. I need a witness. There’s no one else I can ask.’

  ‘But Don, I teach, I can’t just take time off, you know that.’

  ‘Saturday then, Saturday morning. I’ll come and get you.’

  ‘But Don, we’ve been through all t
his, I’ve told you, I don’t want to be mixed up any longer in your investigations. You know what I think about them. It makes me feel ill, I just can’t be involved.’

  ‘Louise, don’t you want to find …’

  ‘Don, I’ll hang up if you say it. Please, leave me alone. Ask one of your friends to be a witness to whatever it is you want to do. Not me. I helped all I could. I don’t believe in investigating any more.’

  ‘You disappoint me. I thought, in spite of everything, that I could count on you in an emergency.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, my voice sounding harsher than I intended. Then I hung up.

  An ‘emergency’. He knew he could ‘count’ on me. It amounted to a kind of blackmail, which he perfectly well knew. Two years ago, he wouldn’t have needed to resort to it. I would have been with him without needing to be asked. But not now. Now, I have to be tough. What has overtaken him is a sort of madness born of grief, and yet he doesn’t recognise this. He remains absolutely convinced that he is going to discover a culprit. Some poor piece of workmanship, or some lax checking will be traceable to one person, and he will expose them and demand that they admit their guilt and they will say they are sorry and then they will be punished. ‘And then, Don?’ I asked, the last time he outlined this scenario, ‘And then, what?’ ‘I will have done my bit,’ he said. ‘My duty to her will be over.’ ‘And your duty to the rest of us?’ I asked. ‘You’re being melodramatic,’ he said. ‘You disappoint me, Lou,’ and he hung up.

  I ‘disappointed’ him. How cutting he made that sound. Once, Miranda had disappointed him, though he never told her so.

  *

  Miranda shoplifted. A sweater, nothing special, just an ordinary red sweater, probably didn’t cost more than £30, from Top Shop. It was the first sign that she had a reckless streak in her, or if not reckless exactly then a wish to take risks, be daring, just for the excitement. When I found this sweater I knew at once that it had not been paid for in the normal way. She was only thirteen and though she had pocket money, and could have saved it to buy the sweater – and she did love clothes and spent most of her money on them – I knew that if she had bought it, she would have worn it immediately. But it had never been worn. The price tag had been half torn off and it was rolled up and shoved inside one of her boots. It was October. I was thinking of buying a pair of boots for myself and remembered this pair Miranda had bought but I couldn’t recall the shop she’d got them from. I’d meant to ask her, but had forgotten, and I went to her room to have a look. I found them in her cupboard and picked one up to see the make. They were from Office. And then I saw there was something in the boot and I pulled out the sweater.

  It was normal enough. I knew that. Lots of teenagers do it. It’s a kind of showing off. I thought I wouldn’t confront Miranda. I thought I would just leave the sweater on her bed and mention that I’d been looking at her boots because I fancied a pair like them. I hoped she didn’t mind my copying her taste. She blushed furiously. No more needed to be said. The sweater disappeared. I don’t know what she did with it. When I told Don, half laughing – though I knew there was nothing funny about it – he was horrified. He wanted to tackle her, confront her. ‘It’s stealing,’ he said (rather unnecessarily). ‘Why does she have to steal, a girl like her? She disappoints me.’ I told him to calm down. I asked him if he had never nicked anything when he was a boy, but he said no, he hadn’t. I believed him, it fitted. I said I’d keep an eye on Miranda, but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t do it again. Don went on thinking about what could have made her do such a thing, harping on about it. He wondered if she was being led astray. He wouldn’t have it that it was her own idea and that she wasn’t quite the good little girl he imagined.

  *

  Molly sends me e-mails regularly. She phones me once a month, if she can get to a phone, six o’clock on a Sunday evening. These are self-imposed routines and I’m always telling her that she doesn’t need to be so conscientious, but she says she worries about me. I beg her not to – it’s awful to think of being a worry to one’s nineteen-year-old daughter. She hasn’t been in touch with her father for a long time. This doesn’t please me. Don, I know, will be bitterly hurt and won’t begin to see it is his own fault. When Molly left, he was devastated. He couldn’t bear the idea of her being in a foreign country, so far from home, so far from his protection. He accused me of encouraging her. He was right, I did. She had to leave us, put some real distance between ourselves and her, for her own sanity. There he was, trying to keep Miranda alive every single minute when she was dead, and Molly was struggling to face up to it. It was Miranda, Miranda, Miranda all day long and for her twin this was unbearable. Go, I said to her, get right away.

  Molly was always the plump twin, Miranda the slender one. Molly took after me, Miranda after Don – it was perfectly plain to see. They weren’t identical, which I think made them happier twins. Their identities were never confused. There was no rivalry between them, they were very close, devoted to each other. So often, with twins, there is one who seems, as it were, the poor relation, literally, but not with my girls. Everything was evenly balanced. Molly was plump, and wished she wasn’t, but she had the best hair and teeth. Miranda was thought to be prettier and she was athletic, excelled at all sports, whereas Molly was useless but this was balanced by Molly’s greater academic ability. It was like that with all their different talents – neither was the more favoured, they each had something the other didn’t. They were a good team, endlessly supportive of each other, the other’s champion.

  Molly was always stronger, though. Miranda leaned on her more than she did on Miranda. Neither of them was shy, but Molly was always the one who took the initiative even if Miranda seemed the more forceful. It was interesting to observe. Don and I used to discuss how the twins operated in certain situations and he could never quite see how crucial Molly’s approval was to Miranda. I’d cite examples of what I meant and he’d be surprised and have to concede I was right. He wondered what would happen when they formed other partnerships – would Molly’s opinion still be as vital to Miranda when she had a boyfriend who was also influencing her? We were just beginning to find out.

  *

  The other day, when I was on a bus, there was a photograph on the front page of the newspaper the man in front of me was reading. I didn’t want to stare at it, but again and again I kept coming back to it. It was of a happy-looking young woman. I could only see one part of the headline, which read: ‘Body Found in River’. Then the man folded the newspaper the other way. I wondered what river it was, and then caught myself and was horrified that I could be so callous, when a woman had drowned. But still my thoughts went on; I couldn’t stop them. How had this woman drowned? Was it suicide? Was it an accident? I hated my own curiosity, but it was there. It is always there. Exactly how … why … on and on. Never ending, never over.

  2

  THERE IS A blackbird hopping its way round the edge of the garden – this block of flats has a communal garden – towards a tree where it has its nest. The bird always goes along the same route, as though trying to shake off a pursuer. Then, in a sudden rush, it flies up into the branches of the tree and, I suppose, to its nest, though no nest is visible. When the bird leaves, it flies straight out, at terrific speed.

  I watch it for hours, or what seems like hours. I sit absolutely still, pen in hand, taking in the bird, the grass, the tree. This is what it must be like being old or very ill, and I am neither. It’s a steadying thing, watching birds. Such frail creatures – but no, not all birds are frail, there goes a crow, terrifying my neighbour’s cat, beating its black, black wings as it swoops down and comes to rest just ahead. Shouldn’t it be the cat chasing the bird?

  More diversions … but I need them. They help.

  *

  I was trying today to remember exactly when I returned to teaching – difficult when remembering anything about those weeks is what I do not want to do. Because it all happened at the end of July, there
had already been five weeks in which to start to pull myself together before term began. Finn went back to school in September, and Molly started attending an induction course before preparing to go off to Africa. She’d always intended to do this in her gap year anyway. Once the house was empty for most of the day it became an unbearable place. I became afraid of my own head, of what went on inside it, of the clamour that shrieked away in there with no way out. I wanted to go back to teaching then, but Don wouldn’t hear of it – he said he needed me at home, to help him, so I stayed away from school for half a term. It was the worst thing to have done. I didn’t help Don. I couldn’t see how I could – when he was at home he was either on the telephone or the Internet all the time. All I did was listen. I listened to a lot of technical detail about boats, which I didn’t begin to understand. Something to do with a certain type of engine and with the metal this certain type of engine was made of. Don, when he started on his investigations, didn’t understand either. He has no mechanical knowledge or aptitude – he’s a creative person. He was a man who had no idea how his car worked – he turned the key and the engine started and that was enough for him. But, afterwards, he made himself study the engine that was in that boat. He even went to the factory in Sweden where these engines are made and he was allowed to follow the manufacturing process all the way through. He was away a week that time. While he was gone, Finn started bunking off school. This was easy to do. He knew it would take a while for anyone to realise. But I happened to see him, from the top of a bus, walking along the road with two other boys, all of them eating something out of those small polystyrene containers. I knew he should be having double maths. When he came home that day I didn’t play any mind games. I hadn’t the energy. I just told him that I’d seen him and I asked him what happened to double maths. He didn’t play mind games either, didn’t make up any excuses or offer likely explanations. He said he hadn’t felt like maths. He couldn’t be bothered. I relayed this to Don when he rang from Sweden but he hardly paused in his description of what he’d seen that day. I repeated what I’d said, cutting into his little lecture on fuel-supply systems and cooling systems and other information he’d newly learned about engines and that meant nothing to me. He simply wasn’t interested. If Finn was bunking off school because he couldn’t be bothered to go to lessons he didn’t care. ‘I’m trying to tell you something important, Lou,’ he said. ‘Are you listening?’ I was, but he wasn’t.