‘She liked the farm, the animals.’
‘That was just an excuse.’
‘She raised a family there. She had a home …’
‘Even if she’d come back to Ireland … but she was determined to stay, as if it was her penance.’
‘Penance for what?’
‘Well, she blamed herself, didn’t she? As if she would ever have knowingly harmed that little one. She loved her more than anything else in this world.’
‘What happened?’ Daniel was whispering. ‘A car accident?’
‘Yes, and can you imagine losing a child of six? And their only child. And Delia was such a wee lamb. She was the brightest, funniest child you ever knew. She was the spit of Minnie when she was wee. Black curls and the brightest blue eyes you ever saw. She was a darling. I was working in England myself when it happened and I came as soon as I heard but the wee lamb was nearly gone by then …’
Daniel held his breath.
‘She was still conscious, you see … drifting in and out. The worst injuries, and she was in such terrible pain. Minnie just couldn’t take it. She was holding her hand and the little one was saying to her, Am I dying, Mammy? And, oh God, she was fighting it so hard, fighting to hang on. Minnie was suddenly so calm. I just remember her whispering to Delia: It’s all right, pet, you’ll be my angel still …’
Harriet began to cry softly. Daniel stood up and put the hall light on. Its sudden brightness strained his eyes and he shielded them with his hand. He turned it off again.
‘Minnie blamed herself because she was driving when it happened?’
‘She was driving … but it wasn’t just that.’ There was the sound of Harriet blowing her nose. ‘Delia had a party that night, you see. She was at one of her friends’ houses for a birthday party and Minnie went to collect her. One of the other little ones wanted to go home then too and Minnie offered to give her a lift, so as to save her dad the trouble, you know …
‘Good God, I remember like it was yesterday. Minnie told me that Delia was wearing her best dress with the tiny daisies on it and that she just looked so sweet. She told me Delia was carrying a bit of cake from the party in a blue napkin. I still remember – she said it was a blue napkin.
‘Minnie, God forgive her, she gave Tildy, Delia’s friend (I’m sure that was her name), the front seat with the seatbelt and all. Delia was in the back, without a seatbelt. That was how it was back then, Danny, in the seventies … no such thing as safety. Hadn’t even been invented …
‘Minnie said that the little one was singing in her ear – Delia always loved to sing in the car. She had an elbow on each of the passenger seats, like, y’know how kids do, or did back then anyway, and Minnie told her sit back, but then … that was it.’
‘What was it?’ said Danny, his thumbnail between his teeth.
Harriet started to cry again. ‘They swerved. The roads were wet, you see. There had been so much rain and those bloody country roads, they were wet and slippy. Minnie said that Delia didn’t make a sound, not even when she … hit the windscreen. Oh, God! I’m sorry, Danny, I can’t do this just now.’
Harriet was weeping. He heard her sharp intakes of breath.
‘I just wanted to say that I was sorry,’ she cried, ‘for the other day.’
‘I’m sorry to have upset you.’ His chest was tight. ‘Thanks for calling back.’
‘She loved you, you know,’ said Harriet, sniffing. ‘She was proud of you. I’m glad you made it up for the funeral. She would have wanted you to be there.’
Daniel hung up. The flat was cold. He had a pain at the back of his throat. He walked into the living room, which was also cast in darkness. The photo she had left him was like a black cut-out against the white fireplace. Without turning on the light and picking it up, he could see her face. It must have been the late sixties, early seventies: the colours were brighter, happier than real-life colours, as if they had been painted, snatched from the imagination instead of life. Minnie was in a short skirt and Norman wore dark horn-rimmed spectacles. The child too was almost unreaclass="underline" porcelain cheeks and white pearl teeth. She was like Ben Stokes: stolen from life when she was still perfect.
He walked in darkness into the kitchen, where he took a beer from the fridge. The brief light from the fridge taunted him. He felt cold and the chill bottle caused goose pimples to rise on his arms. He bit his lip and then drank deeply from the bottle, finishing half of it before letting it fall hard on to the kitchen work surface.
Daniel put one hand over his eyes. He was so cold, but his eyes were burning. He put the back of his hand to his lips, uncomprehending, as hot tears coursed down his cheeks. It had been so long since he had cried. He covered his face with the crook of his arm, remembering the comfort of her flesh wrapped in the rough wool of her cardigan. He swore, and bit his lip, but the dark was forgiving; it allowed it.
20
It was spring. The air was strung with the scent of manure and brave new buds. Daniel’s wellington boots squelched in the mud of the back yard as he fed Hector and the chickens. The door of the shed was hanging off its hinge and some of the wire mesh was torn. Daniel knelt in the mud to repair the mesh and screw the lock back into place. Foxes had killed chickens at the farm next to Minnie’s. Her own birds had only been startled, set clucking and fluttering against the mesh in the middle of the night until Minnie had gone out with Blitz to scare off the fox.
It was six thirty in the morning and Daniel’s stomach yawned with hunger as he worked. It was still cold and his hands were pink to the cuff. He was growing out of his clothes again, and his shirts had begun to ride up his forearm. Minnie had promised to get him new ones at the end of the month, along with a football strip. He was striker now in the school team. But today was Saturday, and they had the market.
Daniel could see Minnie at the window, filling up the kettle and making the porridge. In the morning, her grey hair hung down, held back at the sides by two tortoiseshell clips. Only after she got dressed would she wind it up on top of her head.
Daniel’s mother’s hair had been light brown and short, but she dyed it blonde. As he emptied the last of the scraps into the chickens’ run, Daniel remembered the feeling of her hair between his fingertips. Her hair was thin and soft, unlike Minnie’s heavy curls.
After the trouble with the Thorntons, Minnie had told Daniel that she would apply to adopt him. They had done all the paperwork together, spreading the forms over the kitchen table. Now they were just waiting. The idea of being someone else’s son, at the same time as being his mother’s son, was strange to Daniel, yet he had agreed and felt a strange auspicious joy at the thought.
Minnie had asked him if he wanted to change his name to Flynn, but he had decided to keep his own name: Hunter. It was Daniel’s mother’s name, not his father’s. He wanted to keep her name because he liked it. It was his name, but he also reasoned that when he was eighteen his mother might want to find him. If she ever looked for him, he wanted to be easy to find.
Inside, Daniel washed his hands in the bathroom, enjoying the feeling of the warm water on his cold fingers. When he was finished, he leaned on the sink and stared at his face in the mirror. He stared at his dark hair that was almost black, and his dark brown eyes, which were so dark that you had to look really closely to distinguish the pupil from the iris. Daniel had often felt estranged from his own face. He looked so different to his mother. He did not know where his features came from.