‘Hello.’
She has only fleetingly met my gaze; she’s spending a lot of time looking around on the floor, checking, checking her sitting position, checking the leg of the chair isn’t nudging the skirting board, checking behind her for — for whatever.
‘Now, you’ve got your coffee,’ says Sheila. ‘How about you?’ she says, looking over at me. ‘Can I get you anything? How’s your water?’
I shake my head — nothing for me. No water. No visitors. I said no visitors.
‘All right,’ says Sheila, retreating. ‘Make yourself at home, and I’ll see you later.’
She exits the room and shuts the door quietly behind her.
Alone together. The shock of her being here at all has quickly given way to — to what? I don’t know. I’m casting around to feel something, but I wonder if I feel nothing.
‘So, how are you?’ says Laura, finally looking at me properly and frowning.
‘Never better,’ I say, and immediately wish I hadn’t, as she begins to cry again.
‘I’m sorry, Ivo, I’m sorry, I just — I was so worried about coming here, but seeing you there like that, in your bed, I feel so stupid about all the years we’ve let slip.’
There it is, the last time Laura and I saw each other, a perfunctory goodbye in the car park of the Yew Tree as the tyres of other mourners’ cars tugged at the gravel around us. Job done, Mum safely in the soil. All organized by me, down to the buffet. Seven years. A lifetime ago.
‘It’s such a waste, you know? Don’t you think what a waste of time all this has been?’
And now I’m the one who can’t meet her gaze. You see, face to face I can’t back up what I’ve said so often in my mind. This is bigger than both of us, so should we just give each other up? Abandon hope? ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘A real waste.’
She hops out of her seat, and comes over and gives me a strong, deep hug. I’m not sure I want it, but I let it happen, and somewhere deep, deep in there, beneath the make-up and jangle of the great gesture, there’s warmth, there’s goodness.
‘I’m so glad,’ she says, releasing me from her grasp and sinking back into her seat. ‘I’m so glad I came. I was scared to come. I knew you wouldn’t want to see me. But I thought, Sod it, you know, whatever’s gone on, whatever rights and wrongs, you’re my brother, and I’m your sister, and that should mean something.’
‘I’m — yeah. I’m glad you came too,’ I say, with a dilute smile.
‘I wasn’t going to come, but Kelvin — he said we should both act like adults, so I agreed to come with him.’
‘Oh yeah? Is he here?’
‘He’s parking the car. I think he’s going to wait a few minutes to see if we start tearing each other’s hair out.’
‘No, well that was never going to happen, was it?’
‘No, I’ve just had mine done, so—’ She dabs at the edges of her hair, and I sort of do a little singular snort laugh. Funny. She’s funny. And how easily we fall back on those years of practice about how we slot together. The rhythms of a person, they become ingrained. These are the Laura patterns I’ve known all my life. It feels — it does, it feels nice, all this. It feels like me and Laura. Feels like home.
‘I got you some grapes,’ she says reaching down and drawing out a brown paper bag. ‘Sorry, it looks a bit feeble now. I would have got you something else, but—’
‘Fine, it’s fine,’ I say. ‘What do you buy for the man who has … you know.’
Her face tightens into a frown. ‘Kidney failure?’
I look at her and let go another laugh, and break out into a gurgling cough. ‘That’s not quite what I meant.’
She sits and watches me while I cough, and I think she might be a bit shocked.
‘What would Mum say if she could see us now, eh?’ I say.
‘She’d say, Shoes up, bags up, coats up.’ The old clarion call of Mum as she came in the front door to find we’d wrecked the house on our return from school.
‘You sound just like her, you know.’
‘Oh, don’t. Mal always used to say—’
My face must drop, because she stops suddenly and looks me directly in the eye, her mouth still open, like gasping.
‘I don’t want to talk about Mal,’ I say, flatly. I reach across to unhook the oxygen mask from the top of the oxygen canister — its elastic straps come free at the second attempt. I lay it by me, more for something to do than because I’m short of breath.
‘Look, Ivo, I’ve wanted to talk to you about everything since mum’s funeral,’ she says, working two fingers at her temple and closing her eyes. ‘I thought it might bring us together, I really meant to talk with you, but you never—’
She croaks as she reaches out for words, but none come.
‘You’re my sister,’ I say. The words emerge ultra quiet. ‘It is supposed to mean something. You weren’t there. For me.’
‘I didn’t—’
‘You went with him. The one time I needed you to stand by me and support me, you made your choice. You disappeared off with him.’
‘I wanted to support you, I did. But I had to make a choice.’
‘You weren’t there for Mum either, when she needed you.’
‘I couldn’t do it. There was no way,’ she says, with real desperation. ‘You and her were always close, but I didn’t have that with her. She hated me some days.’
‘She never hated you.’
‘Some days.’
I look away. I don’t know what I remember from those days.
My heart is pounding. It’s pounding, pounding. All the meaning of the last decade and more hangs in the air between us, undivined.
‘There were years — six years he was in prison. I was on my own,’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t see me, would you? You wouldn’t see anyone.’
‘I saw Mum.’
‘Mum was scared to talk to you about anything that might upset you. She thought she’d push you away. But the few times I talked to her, she just said she wanted us all to be together again.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ I know, I know.
‘But it didn’t happen, did it? She never got to see that happen. And that’s not all my fault.’
A great burning swell of acid regret rises now. I’m so sorry, Mum. I could have tried harder. I should have done better.
The tension breaks and we sit there in silence a while. After everything, I don’t want to blame her for stuff that’s not her fault.
‘I’m not blameless,’ I say, quietly. ‘I never claimed I was blameless.’
‘No, nor me,’ she says. ‘Poor Mum.’
‘Poor Mum.’
And so very easily Laura tips once more into tears. Thick, wet silence, and there’s nothing I can do. I’m just going to have to let the arc rise, rise, and slowly crest and descend, slowly slowly descend again until she comes back to earth.
‘Er — hello.’
I look up at the doorway, and there he is. Kelvin himself.
‘Oh, hello,’ mumbles Laura, working at her nostril with a tissue. ‘Come in.’
Kelvin glances over at me. I look away. He shuffles a metre or so inside the door, technically in. Look at him, loving the job of chauffeuring Laura around. Designed to be a lackey for her. In the hope that maybe one day she’ll fall into his arms.
‘So how are we doing?’ he says with a falsely light air.
‘We’re — talking,’ says Laura. ‘When I can stop bursting into tears.’
Kelvin roots around in his wax-jacket pocket for a clean tissue. ‘Here you go.’
Laura takes it — sense of some intimacy between them? I don’t know. What do I know? It’s been ten years. None of my business.
‘Have you asked him?’ Kelvin says to Laura.