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FORTY
I was helping my mother make dinner, a boring radio drama about farming on in the background. An antidote perhaps to Kinnock’s leadership election victory speech earlier—
Mrs Thatcher is presiding over and will continue with policies which will bring industrial tragedy to this country. . .
‘Goodness’ sake. I’m so sick of the Punch and Judy Show.’
Her mood had nothing to do with British politics though.
It had been three weeks since the sketch had been posted through our door, but they still showed it most nights on the news. Two years later, the Night Stalker’s sketch would similarly do the rounds.
‘They’re hoping someone will recognise the Shadow,’ Bea said, with that smug know-it-all expression she wore whenever she talked about the murders. ‘The police act as if journalists get in their way. But the truth is, they need them. How else do you turn the public into your eyes and ears?’
Her words sounded regurgitated. No doubt it was a re-hash of whatever speech her father had given at the dinner table.
‘Surveillance cameras?’ I suggested. ‘They use them on motorways. Why not regular roads?’
Bea scoffed in a way that would have given Nanna G a run for her money.
‘Be practical, Sophie. Have you any idea how much that’d cost?’
‘Worth it to save lives, surely?’
I stirred the pasta sauce now while my mother measured out stock, added it to the pot. She was wearing her ‘May the Forks Be with You’ apron, a present from Matty after he took us to see Return of the Jedi. I thought the movie was a sorry waste of two hours of my life and told him so. My mother felt the same way but pretended to have enjoyed it.
The apron was her reward. I told Matty he was a chauvinist. He told me he’d make a lady of me yet.
‘Can you grab me the tomato paste?’
I got it from the fridge, handed it over. She squeezed a dollop into the pot.
‘Oregano?’
‘Here.’
It might have looked all Norman Rockwell on the outside, but beneath the surface the cracks were starting to spread. Zoom in and you’d have seen the tightness in my jaw, my mother’s gaze turned inwards.
She fumbled with the lid on the herb jar. It sprang off, a mist of chopped leaves clouding the countertop.
‘Goddammit.’
She still swore like an American, and rarely swore at all.
I fetched a cloth. On the cupboard above the sink was a new Post-it note: Faith moves mountains. Doubt creates them.
No prizes for guessing what that was about.
‘I can’t stop thinking about what the witness said,’ she’d told Linda a few evenings ago, the two of them loud enough for me to hear from my room. ‘It’s driving me bananas.’
‘You’ve got to stop this, Am.’
‘Easier said than done.’
‘You can’t seriously think that sweet man’s a murderer?’
‘No, of course not.’
Her tone and words were out of sync though.
