She had to lean hard on the door to get it open. Her mother had jammed her brown velvet sausage dog against it. Sometimes the dog stuck, so like now, Chris had to squeeze through the gap. Alice’s stuffed emissary greeted her with an expression of lumpy resignation. Not for the first time Chris inwardly fumed at her mother’s insistence at using a draught excluder in the height of summer. She complained of being alone, but spent most of her time stopping people getting in.
Chris paused in the hallway. Since the David Bowie nightmare, she’d been entering with trepidation. She also savoured the illusion of being on her own. How different this flat would be if it were hers. She had never been alone in it.
The short corridor had no windows and depended on one of its five doors being open for light. They were always shut. Chris sniffed. The hall smelled of air freshener and washing and was pleasantly cool despite the heat outside. It was a relief now, but in the winter the hall was a place to avoid. There was no central heating. That was Stage Three of the modernisation of the Victorian estate. Stage Two had been security doors and a bench manacled to the estate office with a dedication plate to a dead councillor around which the information: ‘WP liKEs it up thE aRsE’ had been carved. Also included in Stage Two was a brick trough of dusty soil now populated with browned-eared shrubs and dotted with colour from drinks cans and food packaging. Stage One had been the Norwegian double glazed windows that could be cleaned on both sides without ladders or risk of death by falling. The third stage was on hold because the housing association had run out of money.
Chris tossed her bag on to her narrow single bed, registering with a stab of fury that it had been made. Now it was a pretend bed, with no creases or folds, a series of straight lines like a prison. Her mother always tucked the duvet in at the sides. How many times had she asked her not to?
‘Mum! No one tucks in a duvet!’
‘It’s neater, otherwise it’ll slip off the bed.’
‘How? Is the bed on a slope?’
‘Why do you have to contradict? You have to have the last word.’
‘No, you always have the last word.’
‘See what I mean?’
Now Chris snatched at the duvet and wrenched it out from the wall. Discarded and rejected clothes had been folded in reproachful piles on her desk, covering papers and pens.
Chris lay down, her arms outstretched.
After a bit she felt between the wall and the mattress and hauled up a square of crocheted wool and clamped it to her nose. Contentment crept through her like a paper slowly catching fire, licking and lapping: spreading heat. The room was hers again. Her mother had knitted the small pink blanket for her cot. She sniffed it, breathing right in. A kind of peace descended.
The walls were dark red with shiny black skirting. Chris had done the gloss four years ago when she was supposed to be doing her French homework. Nothing had been greater than her buzzing excitement as she left the shop with the tin of paint, a brush and the bottle of turpentine secreted in her bag. Chris had paid for everything with money from her Saturday job at the library. Her Mum had brushes and cleaning fluids, she was an expert on decorating and home improvement. But she would not have let Chris use her brushes, even if she cleaned them thoroughly afterwards. As it turned out, the borrowing of brushes might have been a small crime in comparison with the much larger one of painting her skirting boards black.
Streaks of cold tea had dribbled down the woodchip wallpaper, mingling with black paint. Even years later, Chris still found flakes of china tucked into the edges of the carpet. She liked this, preferring to think of her bedroom as a preserved crime scene. The next day she had bought her mother a new mug. It seemed her Mum, normally so fiercely tidy, always had to make a mess when she was cross.
It had been worth it. Now Chris knew every inch of her bedroom, the places where there were cracks and indentations and ominous bulges. She had painted like the bloke in the shop had advised, following the grain of the wood in rhythmic sweeps. Now though Chris regretted the black. But she kept this secret from Alice.
‘You’re late. Was the traffic bad, darling?’
‘Same as usual.’
‘The sun has left the quadrangle.’
‘Do you have to use that pretentious word. Yard. It’s a crappy old yard.’
‘So what?’ she retorted and too late berated herself; despite the launderette, they might have a nice evening. Chris repeated her usual resolution.
‘I will be nice. I will be kind. Just do as you’re told.’
Leaning against her Mum’s big old armchair, she glanced out of the window at the shaded yard. She wanted to see her Mum laughing with her own friends in some crowded restaurant or sipping a glass of wine in a pub garden decked out with lanterns like other people’s mothers did. Sometimes when Alice tapped her feet to a tune on the radio, Chris spied the girl in the stories, who skipped and pranced and wore her hair in bunches. More recently she was reminded of the woman in the mirror.
At two in the morning, listening to the flat flexing its limbs: the whimsical trilling of the fridge, groaning water pipes, and the other indefinable sounds of her home, Chris would whisper a wish to the darkness that one day her Mum would be able to go outside and feel the warm sun on her face. She would turn Alice into the carefree girl she was before her parents were killed. She would restore that happy child spinning a figure-of-eight on the ice rink watched by proud parents up in the stands. Then Chris would hear her Mum cough through the thin wall and despair that she would ever get better.
‘How was your day?’
‘I’ve made you bœuf en daube. With extra wine the way you like it.’
Chris loved her Mum’s cooking; it was their private language. Alice didn’t cook according to the seasons, but by mood or priority. She had defrosted the fridge, and was working through the contents and then gave her dishes fancy names enunciating the French with guttural enthusiasm. This was a joke they shared. Alice had spent three days over the dish. Chris was impressed that Alice was expert at cooking without going anywhere. She never picked up flavours and smells or ate other people’s food and swapped recipes and tips.
This flash of good feeling prompted Chris to bring on another high spot in her Mum’s day. She went to get the newspaper.
‘Hey Mum, you sit and read. Let me set the table and serve up. Then we can do the crossword.’
‘I’ll take you up on that.’ Alice started out of her chair to hug her daughter, but she had gone.
Chris opened the kitchen door and entered a world where only good things happened. The rich herby smell laced with garlic triggered another burst of love for Alice. As she lifted the lid from the pan and stirred the reddish-brown mixture, Chris called to the living room in a chirpy voice:
‘Mind you the news is weird. Some doctor bloke drove his car into a swimming pool and drowned himself at the weekend. Probably killed a patient and couldn’t admit it! There’s a great photo.’
There was no reply, but Chris was too preoccupied choosing especially tender pieces of meat for her mother to notice.
The kitchen was warm and bright. The surfaces were gleaming. It could have doubled as an operating theatre. No mistakes were made here. No crimes either. Her Mum rarely left traces of herself in a room, wiping down cupboards and polishing handles after cooking. She left no chance for mould to grow anywhere.
Alice had put out a tray with plates and cutlery so there wasn’t much for Chris to do. She was surprised her mother had let her serve the food. Alice liked recognition and presenting her culinary feats was part of the ceremony.