thrown her clothes on. Her cardigan was buttoned up all wrong.
' Madre,' he said. It annoyed her when he spoke Spanish.
She didn't let on, asked, 'What are you doing here?'
'You still got that leaky tap?'
'The one in the bathroom?'
He shrugged.
'Well, yes,' she said.
'Then I'll try to fix it.'
'It's not the washer.'
'Did I say it was?'
She shrugged.
He said, 'I'll take a look anyway.'
'Oh,' she said. She straightened up, maybe realising he hadn't come here to chastise. 'This is an unexpected surprise. What's brought it on?'
He looked away. 'You phoned.'
'That never worked before.'
'Well, you've been going on about it long enough.'
She peered at him down her long nose, kinked in the middle where she'd broken it on a skiing holiday, along with her leg.
'You want the tap fixed?' he said. 'Or should I go?'
She folded her thin arms, nibbled her pale lower lip. 'You're not working today?'
'It's slow,' he said. 'Left Dan to take care of things.'
'Maggie said he was on holiday.'
Maggie hadn't mentioned that. 'You spoke about Dan?'
'I asked how things were going at the salon.'
'Well, Dan's back, as of this morning.'
'Must have been a short trip.'
'Yeah,' he said. 'Couple of nights. All he could afford on the salary I pay him.'
She nodded, unfolded herself, tucked her lip away. 'Come on in.'
The sitting room was a shrine to seventies bad taste. Bucket seats, white leather couch, brown and orange shag carpet and stripy psychedelic wallpaper. Reminders of her prime, no doubt.
She said, 'You want coffee before you start?'
' Si,' he said. Before he started what? The decor was fucking with his head, making him dizzy. Oh, yeah, fixing a leaking tap. Which he had no intention of doing. He wouldn't know where to begin.
He moved a magazine off the settee. It squeaked when he flopped down into it. Placed the magazine on top of the glass coffee table, next to the old-fashioned dial-operated red telephone, one of those models that once upon a time everybody used to have.
'You don't have any tools,' she said.
'Thought I could use George's.'
'I imagined you'd bring your own.'
'I don't have any. I'm not a plumber.'
'Right.'
'You still have them?'
'You have to ask?' She disappeared into the kitchen. She shouted, 'How's Maggie?'
'Good,' he said.
'What? Speak up.'
'Good,' he said, louder.
'And Sofia?'
'Good.'
'How's Sofia?'
'Great,' he said, louder.
'You know, I'm so sorry, but I'm just grateful she landed on the cushion. No harm done. And whatever Maggie thinks, the drink has nothing to do with it, it's just me, you know me, clumsy…'
She babbled on. She'd never liked Maggie. The fact that Maggie was twenty years younger than Carlos had a lot to do with it. And Maggie had never warmed to her as a result. After what had happened with Sofia, the temperature of their relationship had grown decidedly cool. He tuned his mother out. Picked up the magazine, flicked through it. Gardening magazine. His mother didn't have a garden. Well, she shared a garden with the other members of the tenement, but there was a lawn, and that was all. No reason that she should have a gardening magazine. Maybe she was thinking of coming round to his, giving it a make-over.
She could leave his fucking garden alone. God, she knew how to make him angry.
When she returned with coffee — milk jug and sugar bowl on a tray, despite the fact that neither of them took sugar, and a selection of biscuits which he knew neither of them would touch — he asked her about the magazine. 'You renting an allotment or something?'
'Not mine,' she said, her cheeks turning pink.
'Whose, then?' he said.
She pressed the plunger on the cafetiere. Her hand was shaking. 'Just a friend.'
Just a friend. She'd had a few of those since George died. 'A good friend?' he asked.
'Well,' she said. She poured a cup of coffee for him, half a cup for herself. 'Well, yes, I'd have said so at one point. But now I'd have to say no.'
'Sorry to hear that,' Carlos said. 'You want to talk about it?'
'I doubt any good would come of that.' She reached behind her, pulled a bottle of vodka from the side of the settee. 'Don't say a word.' She unscrewed the top. 'This is my house. My vodka. I can do as I wish.'
He said nothing, picked up his cup, drank his coffee. She made good coffee. Hadn't always been that way. When he was a kid her coffee tasted like crap. He remembered his dad drinking cortados. Coffee the way it should be drunk. But back then Carlos's palate was too immature to appreciate it. And by the time he was old enough to do so, Pablo Morales had disappeared from their lives.
'So,' she said, pouring a generous amount of vodka into her cup. 'Work's slow?' She screwed the top back on the bottle.
'Yeah,' he said, but he could have said anything. She'd already decided what she was going to say next.
She took a sip of her drink, blinked slowly. 'Plumbing,' she said. 'It's never too late.'
' Cago en tu leche.'
She frowned, pouted her lips. 'Something about milk?'
Something about shitting in it, but he wasn't about to tell her that. 'I'm very fucking sorry I never became a plumber, Mama.'
That's right. Now she'd snapped to attention. He'd never match up to the late George Anderson, his mother's second husband, plumber fucking extraordinaire. Carlos changed the subject. Last thing he needed right now was more anger he didn't have an outlet for.
Things were about to get complicated.
'Mum,' he said. 'This may seem like a strange question, but you haven't annoyed anybody recently, have you?'
She grinned, lips quivering, exposing dull yellow teeth. 'Me? Always annoying people.'
'But annoyed somebody very badly.'
'I usually annoy people very well. Ask Maggie.'
'You know what I mean.'
'What a strange question.' Her eyes shone, twin beams of pencil torches. He watched her eyelids come down, the left slightly quicker than the right. Then they rose again. 'I really have no idea what you mean.'
The tanning salon was a front. Carlos had bought it many years ago from Florida Al, a fat Geordie who liked to wear Hawaiian shirts. Carlos wasn't sure why the fat lad wasn't called Hawaiian Al, but nicknames don't always
