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I sat there, listening to the engaged tone, trying to think of the right words.
Telephone conversations with my mother are never very easy.
There always seems to be a weighting inside them, things left unspoken, things not fully spoken.
She says things gently and discreetly, carefully holding back her full implication.
Like holding playing cards against her chest.
When I told her about my latest new job she said that sounds very nice and what other opportunities have you been looking at?
She says things like, I don’t think you’re making full use of your degree, my love.
She says things like, it doesn’t sound as though you’re stretching yourself.
She doesn’t say what the hell kind of a job is that, or what are you actually doing with your life here?
I wonder if I wish she would.
I got through eventually.
My dad answered, he picked up the phone and sighed and said yes, please?
He’s always answered the phone like that, as though he was afraid of who might be trying to speak to him, of what they might be intending to say.
I said hi dad it’s me, is mum there, and he said no, no she’s not, she’s gone out tonight.
I’m not sure whether I was disappointed or relieved.
I could hear him clutching the phone tightly, holding it away from his face as though he didn’t think it was entirely safe, the way he always does, and I knew that I wouldn’t say anything to him.
I knew it was a secret I would be keeping to myself a little longer.
He asked me about my job, he asked me about people I haven’t seen for a long time and I said they were fine.
I said something about football, and then I let him get back to watching the television.
I put the phone down and imagined what I might have said, mum there’s something I have to say, or mum I need to talk to you about something.
Mum I’m not sure how to say this but.
I think I was hoping she might realise something was wrong without me having to say so, that I could talk about my new shoes and she would say so what is it you’re really telling me?
Like the mum in the old British Telecom adverts.
I looked at another photograph, of Simon and Rob and Jamie dancing naked down the street in the first pale hours of that summer, celebrating the election.
I remembered that momentous night, looping a cable through the window and setting the TV up in the front garden, gathering around it with pizza and weed and the excitement of history.
I remembered coming back from the garage at midnight, armed with fresh snack supplies and seeing my friends’ faces lit up by the shrine of the television.
Shining and blue and flickering in the darkness.
Already looking like ghosts.
Chapter 6
The woman at number nineteen, she has finished hanging out her washing, and now she steps into her kitchen and begins to think about breakfast. The children will be waking soon, and the whole household will begin then to fumble into the morning, her husband, her husband’s father, her husband’s mother. She reaches up to the cupboard over the sink and fetches down boxes of cereal, four packets of sugared grains and flakes which she clutches to her chest. As she turns to drop them on the table she sees her young daughter leaning against the doorframe, watching her with her big worried eyes. Before she can say anything, her daughter is hurrying to the cutlery drawer, counting out spoons, turning to the crockery cupboard, struggling with the bowls. She is still wearing her night-clothes. Hey, hey, says her mother, smiling, dress first, washing and clothing okay? And she takes her little arms and hustles her out of the kitchen. The child does not say a word, and the mother listens to her shuffling up the stairs, a shadow of concern skimming briefly across her face.
