ONE DAY(132)

When he is sure his father has gone, Dexter steps out into the hall and pads towards the kitchen. He drinks warm tap water from a dusty pint glass and looks out at the garden in the evening sun. The swimming pool is drained and covered with a sagging blue tarpaulin, the tennis court scrappy and overgrown. The kitchen, too, has a musty smell. The large family house has gradually closed down room by room, so that now his father occupies just the kitchen, living room and his bedroom, but even so it is still too large for him. His sister says that sometimes he sleeps on the sofa. Concerned, they have talked to him about moving out, buying somewhere more manageable, a little flat in Oxford or London, but his father won’t hear of it. ‘I intend to die in my own house if you don’t mind,’ he says, a line of argument that’s too emotive to counter.

‘Feeling better then?’ His father stands behind him.

‘A little.’

‘What’s that?’ He nods towards Dexter’s pint glass. ‘Gin, is it?’

‘Just water.’

‘Glad to hear it. I thought we’d have soup tonight, seeing as how it’s a special occasion. Could you manage a tin of soup?’

‘I think so.’

He holds two tins in the air. ‘Mulligatawny or Cream of Chicken?’

So the two men shuffle around the large musty kitchen, a pair of widowers making more mess than is really necessary in warming two cans of soup. Since living alone, his father’s diet has reverted to that of an ambitious boy-scout: baked beans, sausages, fish-fingers; he has even been known to make himself a saucepan of jelly.

The phone rings in the hall. ‘Get that will you?’ says his father, mashing butter onto sliced white bread. Dexter hesitates. ‘It won’t bite you, Dexter.’

He goes into the hall and picks up. It’s Sylvie. Dexter settles on the stairs. His ex-wife lives alone now, the relationship with Callum having finally combusted just before Christmas time. Their mutual unhappiness, and a desire to protect Jasmine from this, has made them strangely close and for the first time since they got married they are almost friends.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Oh, you know. Bit embarrassed. Sorry about that.’

‘That’s alright.’

‘I seem to remember you and Dad putting me in the bath.’

Sylvie laughs. ‘He was very unfazed by it all. “He’s got nothing I’ve not seen before!”’

Dexter smiles and winces at the same time. ‘Is Jasmine okay?’

‘I think so. She’s fine. She will be fine. I told her you had food poisoning.’

‘I’ll make it up to her. Like I said, I’m sorry.’

‘These things happen. Just don’t ever, ever do it again, will you?’

Dexter makes a noise that sounds like ‘No, well, we’ll see . . .’ There is a silence. ‘I should go, Sylvie. Soup’s burning.’

‘See you Saturday night, yes?’

‘See you then. Love to Jasmine. And I’m sorry.’

He hears her adjust the receiver. ‘We do all love you, Dexter.’

‘No reason why you should,’ he mumbles, embarrassed.

‘No, maybe not. But we do.’

After a moment, he replaces the phone then joins his father in front of the television, drinking lemon barley water that has been diluted in homeopathic proportions. The soup is eaten off trays with specially padded undersides for comfortable laptop eating – a recent innovation that Dexter finds vaguely depressing, perhaps because it’s the kind of thing his mother would have never let in the house. The soup itself is as hot as lava, stinging his cut lip as he sips it, and the sliced white bread his father buys is imperfectly buttered, torn and mashed into a puttycoloured pulp. But it is, bizarrely, delicious, the thick butter melting into the sticky soup, and they eat it while watching EastEnders, another recent compulsion of his father’s. As the credits roll, he places the padded tray on the floor, presses the mute button on the remote control and turns to look at Dexter.

‘So is this to become an annual festival, do you think?’

‘I don’t know yet.’ Some time passes, and his father turns back to the muted TV. ‘I’m sorry,’ says Dexter.

‘What for?’

‘Well, you had to put me in the bath, so . . .’

‘Yes I’d rather not do that again if you don’t mind.’ With the TV still muted, he starts to flick through the TV channels. ‘Anyway, you’ll be doing it for me soon enough.’

‘God, I hope not,’ says Dexter. ‘Can’t Cassie do it?’

His father smiles and glances back at him. ‘I really don’t want to have a heart-to-heart. Do you?’

‘I’d rather not.’

‘Well let’s not then. Let’s just say that I think the best thing you could do is try and live your life as if Emma were still here. Don’t you think that would be best?’

‘I don’t know if I can.’

‘Well you’ll have to try.’ He reaches for the remote control. ‘What do you think I’ve been doing for the last ten years?’ On the TV, his father finds what he has been looking for, and sinks further into his chair. ‘Ah, The Bill.’

They sit and watch the TV in the light of the summer evening, in the room full of family photographs and to his embarrassment Dexter finds that he is crying once again, very quietly. Discreetly, he puts his hand to his eyes, but his father can hear the catching of his breath and glances over.