Dedication
To Ann—faithful, capable,
irresistibly mischievous,
and bound to go
from strength to strength.
Thanks for reliably
fighting my corner—
and for remembering
wine miniatures and
popcorn for our
bleary train journeys home.
Epigraph
There is a natural tendency of any isolated system to degenerate into a more disordered state.
—The Second Law of Thermodynamics
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
1. The Soap-Dish Box
2. The First Last Supper
3. White Van Man Redux
4. Cyril Has an Unexpected Change of Heart
5. The Precautionary Principle
6. Home Cinema
7. Fun with Dr Mimi
8. Even More Fun with Dr Mimi
9. You’re Not Getting Older, You’re Getting Better
10. Of Ignorance and Bliss
11. Love Doesn’t Freeze
12. Once Upon a Time in Lambeth
13. The Last Last Supper
About the Author
Also by Lionel Shriver
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
The Soap-Dish Box
“Was I supposed to cry?” Kay cast off her heavy, serviceable dark wool coat, for this was one of those interminable Aprils that perpetuated the dull chill of January. The only change that spring had sprung was to have stirred her complacent acceptance of wintertime’s bite to active umbrage.
“There aren’t any rules.” Cyril filled the kettle.
“In respect to certain gritty rites of passage, I rather think there are. And please, I know it’s a bit early, but I don’t want tea.” Kay went straight for the dry Amontillado in the fridge. She’d had a nip of wine at the reception and didn’t fancy going backwards to English Breakfast. A drink at home was an indulgence at five-thirty p.m., and she was using the technicality of occasion to break the household injunction—unwritten, but no less cast-iron for that—against ever cracking open a bottle before eight p.m. Any impression that she was drowning her sorrows was pure conceit. In truth, the sensation that the afternoon’s landmark juncture left in her stomach felt nothing like grief. It was more like that vague, indeterminate squirrelling halfway between hunger and indigestion.
To Kay’s surprise, Cyril abandoned the kettle and joined her at the table with a second glass, remembering to slice and twist two wedges of lime. Had one spouse been responsible for establishing the eight p.m. watershed in the first place, it would have been Cyril, though the couple’s intertwined habits went far enough back that no one was keeping track.
“I thought I’d at least feel relieved,” she said, clunking her cheap wine tumbler from Barcelona dully against the one sitting on the table in a lacklustre toast. Serviceable, like the coat, the tall, narrow glasses achieved a perfect proportion of which much fine crystal fell short. More betrayal of her inadequacy: that she could consider the geometry of glassware at a time like this.
“You don’t feel relieved?”
“To be honest, I’ve looked forward to this turn of the page for at least ten years. Which may be appalling but won’t surprise you. Now that what used to be called ‘the inevitable’ is upon us—”
“Maybe we should call it ‘the optional’ now,” Cyril said. “Or ‘the infinitely delayable.’ ‘The on-second-thought, maybe-we-can-do-that-next-week, love.’”
“Well, I don’t feel any lighter, any sense of release. I only feel leaden and flat. My father sucked so much life from everyone around him by the time he passed. Maybe he used up even the miserable amount of energy we’d need to celebrate the fact that he’s dead at last.”
“What a waste,” Cyril said.
“Yes, but it would have been one thing if the waste were restricted to the one life of Godfrey Poskitt and the discrete misfortune that it ended badly. The waste has been so much more ruinous than that. My poor mother, the carers, even our kids, before they stopped visiting. I’m so glad I gave them permission to give up the pretence of being loving grandchildren. Because what was the point? Most of the time he didn’t know who they were, and all they got for going out of their way was abuse. He was physically so unpleasant as well. My mother and I tried, but managing the nappies alone was such a trial, because he fought and kicked a great deal, and sometimes, which was mortifying, got a soft little erection—honestly, my own father. So we’d put off changing him, and he often smelt.”
“In spite of all that, it was decent of two of his grandchildren to make an appearance today.”
“Of course Simon came. He’s so duty-bound and hyper-responsible that for pity’s sake at twenty-six he’s almost middle-aged. And whilst I appreciated that she showed up, if only for my mother, naturally Hayley had to be late—allowing for the usual showy entrance and calling attention to herself. Why, I reckon she planned it, watching a bit of telly beforehand, just to ensure she’d not be boringly on time. Roy’s absconding in the end was predictable as well. Being a grandson is simply one more undertaking that he can’t follow through on.”
“As for the waste,” Cyril said, looping back, “you omitted a conspicuous casualty. Yourself.”
Best that her husband said it. “I hesitate to calculate how many cumulative years of my life that man’s infinite dotage managed to destroy.”
“At least you miraculously managed to keep working. It was the leisure time your father hoovered up. The evenings and weekends, the early mornings, the emergency trips to Maida Vale in the middle of the night: all time you might have spent with me.”
“So you’re the injured party?”
“Merely one more.”
Restless, Kay got up to sweep some crumbs from the Corian beside the sink, casting a mournful eye at the half-built would-be conservatory off the kitchen: a work in progress for the last two years and another victim sucked into her father’s whirlpool of limitless need. These days the children seemed so envious, but she and Cyril had bought this house in 1972, once they’d found out Kay was pregnant with Hayley and needed more room—and in those days, not only was the whole country a wreck, but so was Lambeth, which was why such a grand structure (if south of the river) had been within the means of an NHS nurse and a GP. These three-storeys-and-loft-to-boot had only looked grand from the
