The Mother-in-Law(12)
I slide the mugs off a high shelf and line them up on the counter. The sky beyond the window is black. Patrick, Nettie and Ollie are in the living room, spread across furniture, staring out in different directions. I get the feeling that Patrick and Nettie would like to leave but they feel they shouldn’t, as though it might be considered dismissive to Diana. These are, after all, times for family to be together.
Simon and Stella left over an hour ago, leaving behind two shiny business cards and a sober environment. Since then Nettie appears to have rethought her initial embrace with Ollie and has perched herself as far away from him as possible whilst still being in the same room. Patrick sits right beside her, patting her leg, sincere but unemotional. Tears stream from Nettie, filling and falling without much apparent effort on her part.
Ollie is surprisingly dry-eyed, and seems to be an impossible combination of bewildered and irritated, alternately shaking his head no, then nodding it yes, whatever that is supposed to mean. Peculiarly, it’s exactly how I feel. No, Diana can’t be dead, followed by Yes, she is and it isn’t the worst thing in the world. After all, I’ve never made a secret of my dislike for Diana. Our relationship had been volatile. It has even, at one point, been violent. I wonder if the police will discover this while they are investigating Diana’s death.
As I get down my “visitor tea” (I’m getting the feeling that Nettie might do well with chamomile), I can’t help but think of the day Tom died. We’d all been called away from home and work midmorning to come and say our good-byes, but by midnight that evening, he was still hanging on. It wasn’t the first time we’d gotten the call. We’d given our teary farewells twice before, only to have Tom battle on, but this time, the doctors told us, was it. Apparently.
After twenty-four hours, as Tom continued to hang in there, Ollie had asked the nurse if there was something she could give Tom to “end his suffering.”
When the nurse explained that there wasn’t anything—and that it could take as much as a few days before Tom died—Ollie had reached for a cushion and announced that he’d like “a few minutes alone with Dad.”
Everyone had become slightly feverish with exhausted hilarity—even Diana, amazingly, had smiled as she explained to the nurse that, obviously, her son was joking. But there are no jokes to be had today. Everything is utterly somber.
I take the tea into the living room and hold out a mug to Nettie, but she doesn’t seem to notice. After a second or two, Patrick takes it and sets it on the coffee table.
“I guess it’s too early to talk about the funeral,” I say. It is too soon, but I can’t bear the silence anymore and what else are we supposed to talk about? Nettie stares at the blank television screen. Ollie looks at his shoes.
Only Patrick looks at me, shrugs slightly. “Depends when we get the body, I suppose,” he says.
Nettie visibly stiffens.
I sit on the arm of the sofa, next to Ollie. “When will that be?”
“There’ll be an autopsy, I guess,” Patrick says. “That’ll take time.”
“But . . . why are they doing an autopsy?” Nettie asks. She glances around the room, half dazed, like she’s just woken up.
“The police said they are treating it as a homicide,” Ollie explains.
Nettie’s eyes widen. Everyone seems to have forgotten that we’re not supposed to be making eye contact and we all look intently at each other.
“They said they have to treat it as a homicide,” Patrick says, “they don’t actually think it was one. It sounded pretty clear-cut to me. The letter, the . . . materials.”
“What kind of materials are they talking about, do you think?” Ollie says. His face is the image of bafflement. “A rope? A gun?”
“Ollie!” I say.
Nettie has gone so pale she looks like she might faint. Somewhere in the next room, Ollie’s phone begins to ring. Eamon, Ollie’s business partner, would be the only one to call this late. I’m relieved when Ollie doesn’t move to answer it.
“If they think it could be a homicide,” Nettie says, her eyes searching, “will they be speaking to people? Investigating?”
Patrick looks at his lap. “I guess they’ll have to.”
“But who would they investigate?” Ollie says. “Who’d want to kill Mum?”
It’s a slow process, but one by one, Patrick, Ollie and Nettie all turn to look at me. I drop my gaze and stare into my tea.
6: LUCY
THE PAST . . .
“I don’t have something borrowed,” I say to Claire, my matron of honor. She sits in the armchair in my Dad’s bedroom with her three-year-old daughter, Millie, in her lap. Millie is going to be a flower girl at the wedding, a role that has delighted her until about two minutes ago when she realized she’d have to have her hair brushed. Now, Claire grips Millie between her knees as she drags the brush through her coils but Millie is twisting and wriggling like someone being tickled with a thousand feathers.
“Leave her,” I say, watching them in the reflection of the mirror. “Her hair is fine the way it is.”
“How do you not have something borrowed?” Claire exclaims, releasing Millie from her thigh grip and putting down the brush. “It’s your wedding day. Speaking of which, are you having any Runaway Bride feels? Will I need to winch this window open and saddle up a horse so you can make a run for it, Julia Roberts style?”