* * *
“She’s not a completely different person,” Cyril said. “She just has to be watched very carefully.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hayley said. “My real mother doesn’t put sponges in the toaster. For that matter, my real mother doesn’t have to be ‘watched very carefully.’”
They were doing it again, talking about her in her presence as if she weren’t there and couldn’t hear them.
“It’s understandable that you’re angry,” Cyril told their daughter, “but it’s not fair. You have to distinguish between there being something wrong with someone and her doing something wrong.”
“I’ve had quite enough of your criticism!” Kay said, bustling about the kitchen and putting dishes away, though goodness knows where the utensils belonged; in desperation, she stuck the spatula in the spice rack. “I don’t think I should be held to a standard that for anyone else would be unreasonable. We all have our . . . our . . . our moments of doing something strange. Why, just this morning I found the box for that stainless-steel soap dish in the fridge! How sensible is that? Rest assured, I didn’t stash it there.”
There was that look on his face again.
They wouldn’t let her drive any more, and it wasn’t lost on Kay that nowadays when Cyril was away there was always someone else underfoot: that vaguely familiar-looking woman she’d seen in the garden next-door, or Hayley, or Simon, or whatever his wife was called. Once, she was escorted home by a policeman, who was obviously persecuting her over that summons nonsense; she seemed to recall having sent them a letter, and this pettifogging officer must have been dogging her because the phone number under her address had been incorrect. The next time she decided to strike out on her regular South Bank constitutional, the front door was chained from the outside. From Kay’s perspective, she had remained the same and all the people around her had gone insane. Yet some voice outside her whispered that the problem was quite the other way round. When she was petulant, this was the voice that informed her from overhead, “You’re being petulant.” When she grew exercised that her whole family was conspiring to convince her that she was cuckoo, this was the voice that said, “You’re being paranoid.”
That voice might have provided an anchor, but it was also a source of torture, for it was when she heard the overmaster direct, “You should know this” or “You used to know this,” or press her sternly, “That is not an overweight stranger here to steal your wedding china; that is your daughter,” that she was most apt to collapse into tears. Accordingly, little by little the voice shut up, and Kay felt fine. It was possible, of course, that she was sometimes misguided or in error, but heavens, so were most people.
Pleasantly, Kay entered a state of confidence and airy surety. Because everything had achieved a sense of surprise, the physical world was the source of eternal captivation. Picking at a hole in her favourite grey cardigan, she found that the threads could unweave into a fringe that was frightfully pretty, and eventually the hole was big enough to put her whole fist through, and how handy to have designed an extra sleeve. She darted her fingers in and out of the sunlight streaming through the parted crimson drapes in the bedroom, fascinated by how her hands kept going bright and then dark. Tiny maggoty grains on her plate could be arranged along the rim like a necklace, or pinged one at a time with her thumb and forefinger a quite astonishing number of feet, which made her laugh. A smooth soft white pile next to a sausage doubled as make-up, and she slathered the pale foundation over her cheeks, certain that the application would make her eyes appear less baggy—and a girl did need to look after herself. The red sauce in the plastic bottle with the small hole in the top was good for drawing on the table, and sometimes she squeezed it to make a volcano that went everywhere, and that was hilarious.
Then there was the brown stuff whose texture was so various, dense in bits and watery in others, though it wasn’t entirely clear where the substance came from. It had a nice strong farmy smell, and could make intricate patterns on her ankles, like henna. She used the same paste to smear her hair from her forehead, streaking the strands back in a dramatic do. Perhaps it would be a nice change of pace to go brunette.
“Mum, for God’s sake, that’s disgusting!”
“Hayley, calm down. Believe it or not, she doesn’t know what it is.”
This rather pudgy woman shoved Kay into the shower and hosed her down roughly. She didn’t mind the warm water, but the gruff mishandling seemed impolite.
For a time, Kay confided in a handsome middle-aged man, who suffered under the peculiar impression she was his mother. (Tired of correcting this extraordinary mix-up, at length she humoured the fellow—though she couldn’t determine whether he was innocently delusional, or a fraudster.) She whispered in his ear conspiratorially that she was keeping a deep and devastating secret, which must at all costs be kept from her husband: she was a Leaver. This chap so fiercely convinced that he bore her some relation kept insensibly urging her to stay put.
“I’d urge my kids to come by more often,” the middle-aged pretender said, “if she could keep her clothes on. It’s not fair on Geoff to expect him to keep a straight face with her tits hanging out.”
“It’s unusual at her age, but she still has hot flushes,” said an older gentleman who’d been making free with the house rather a lot. “So she breaks out in a sweat, and tears her top off.”
“Listen, Dad, I’m afraid this is even more
