The Mother-in-Law(16)
I look at Ollie. After yesterday’s protesting that it couldn’t be real, he seems to have moved into the next level of grief, whatever that is. All morning he’s been utterly silent, apart from the odd spasm of bizarre emotion. Like a few minutes ago when Harriet—in the middle of a spontaneous arabesque—slipped on a cushion and went, quite literally, head over heels. She landed flat on her back, face up on the floor and promptly began to wail. Ollie stared at her for a second or two, then, inexplicably, began to laugh. By the time I made it over to Harriet, he was positively wild with hilarity.
Grief.
I catch Ollie’s eye on the couch and mouth, “Let’s tell them now.”
I half expect him to keep staring into space, but he nods, picks up the remote control and turns off the screen.
“Hey!” Archie cries. Harriet and Edie glare at us. I sit on the arm of the sofa and the kids look back at the television, more comfortable with the blank screen than with actual human faces.
“Kids, we have something to tell you.”
“What?” Archie moans, throwing down the Xbox controller.
“We’ve had some sad news.”
Both Archie and Harriet spin around. Sad news. We have their attention now. They’ve watched enough kids movies (Is it just me, or do the parents die in every damn kids movie?) to know about sad news.
After Tom died the kids were devastated. Archie began wetting the bed again, and Harriet had started getting panicked if Ollie was even a little bit late home from work. (“Is he dead?” she’d ask, her little saucer-eyes gawping up at me.) Edie, of course, had been none the wiser back then, but this time it’s different. She adores Dido (the inane name Diana insisted on being called). They all love Dido. Loved Dido.
I take a deep breath. “Dido died yesterday.”
Harriet is the first to react, with a gasp. Her hands rise, forming a tent around her mouth, and she breathes in and out loudly. There’s something false about it, like she’s reenacting something she’s seen on television.
Archie is still yet to react so I focus my attention on him. “Did you hear me, buddy?”
Archie nods. His expression is somberish, but more collected than if, say, I’d told him he couldn’t have ice cream for dessert. “Dido died,” he repeats, hanging his head.
Harriet drops her hands from her face and bursts out laughing. “Dido died. That rhymes.” She falls back onto the empty couch, chortling so hard she has to hold her belly.
“It doesn’t rhyme, idiot,” Archie says.
“It does.”
“Doesn’t.”
“Does!”
“Kids,” I say. “Do you understand what I’m saying? Remember when Papa died? He went up to Heaven and we couldn’t see him anymore. Well . . . now Dido has died.”
Harriet laughs again. “Sorry! It just sounds funny.”
Archie lets out a chuckle. Then Edie, of course, joins in though she has no idea what’s going on.
“Aren’t you sad that Dido’s dead?” Ollie asks, a slight inflection to his voice. I turn to him, suddenly worried that he might start to cry. Not that that would be a bad thing, but the timing wouldn’t be ideal. The kids also register the inflection, and one by one, stop laughing.
“Yeah,” Archie says, but he doesn’t sound sad. He sounds like he knows that’s what he is expected to say. Archie is dutiful like that. Edie is looking at her feet, marveling at the spot where her big toe peeks through her sock. Harriet is rolling her eyes and inspecting her fingernails, which are covered in chipped lolli-pink sparkly nail polish.
“I’m not sad,” she mutters.
I frown at her. “Why aren’t you sad, Harriet?”
She shrugs. “Dido was mean to you. I don’t like people who aren’t nice to my mum.”
Ollie and I look at each other.
“It’ll be much nicer now that she’s not here, won’t it, Mummy?” Harriet continues. She bounds out of her seat and flings her limbs around, trying for, perhaps, a leaping arabesque. But she misses her footing and this time she lands flat on her face. She howls. Edie squeals. And Archie, in a delayed reaction, suddenly bursts into tears.
8: DIANA
THE PAST . . .
I pull up to the traffic lights and glare at the enormous stuffed teddy bear on my passenger seat. Tom had bought the ridiculous toy, obviously, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, he insisted that I be the one to take it along to the hospital to give to Lucy.
“What on earth for?” I’d said to him on the phone. “It’s not like Archie will be playing with it in the next few days!”
“It’s our first grandchild,” he’d replied. “Besides, Lucy will love it.”
He was probably right about that. His perfect understanding of our daughter-in-law’s psyche was almost as spectacular as my lack of understanding of it. Lucy had given birth to Archie in the early hours of this morning, after a short, uncomplicated labour. Tom had wanted to go to the hospital the instant we heard the news, but I’d managed to convince him to go into work for a couple of hours to give them some time alone with the baby. Now though, even I’m itching to get there. Tom is going straight from work and I’m meeting him there.
The traffic lights turn to green at the same time as my phone rings. I stab at a few buttons on the steering wheel, until finally it connects. (Usually I drive my little Ford Festiva around when I’m doing errands, but it has gone in for a service so I’m in the Range Rover and you honestly need a PhD in car mechanics to make the darn thing work.) “Hello?”