The Mother-in-Law(76)

53: LUCY


THE PRESENT

I take the long way home from the police headquarters. As I drive, questions circle in my head. Is this what you wanted, Diana? For me to go to jail? Was involving me all part of your elaborate plan? Or did your plan go horribly wrong somewhere along the line? My mind swirls with all the possibilities and the worst part is that I can’t ask her.

I left the police station after claiming no knowledge. Now I am going to have to get in touch with a lawyer. Not Gerard, we can’t afford him. Actually, we can’t afford anyone. We’re going to have to declare bankruptcy, we have no inheritance coming our way. I’ll probably have to find someone from Legal Aid.

I look at all the pieces of my life that have fallen apart in recent weeks. My husband’s business has failed. My formerly pleasant relationship with my sister-in-law has soured. And my mother-in-law is dead. The funny thing is, until recently, news of my mother-in-law’s death wouldn’t have been devastating (beyond the obvious feelings of sympathy for my husband and children). But now, the loss cuts surprisingly deep.

It’s quiet when I let myself into the house. Then I hear Ollie.

“Lucy?” he whispers.

I drop the keys into the bowl and follow his voice to the bedroom. The side-lamp is on and Ollie is sitting on the edge of the bed in his boxer shorts, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. He glances up when I enter.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“Not really,” he says. “I want to explain why I was at Mum’s the day she died.”

Why I was at Mum’s the day she died. It takes me a minute to understand what he is talking about, but then I remember. Before I went to the police station, Ollie had admitted he was at Diana’s house the day she died. That conversation seemed like a million years ago.

“Okay.” I sit beside him on the bed and flick on the bedside lamp. “Explain.”

“I dropped in for a visit,” he says. “I wanted to tell her about my business troubles.”

“But . . . why didn’t you tell me that?” I ask, frustrated. “I’ve known for a week about your business troubles.”

Ollie looks down and suddenly I’m afraid of his answer. I don’t think Ollie is capable of hurting his mother, but obviously something happened during that meeting. Something he didn’t want me to know. I don’t think I can take another shock, another betrayal. But judging by the look of determination in Ollie’s face, it looks like I’m not going to have a choice.

“Because a long time ago,” he says, dropping his head into his hands, “you made me promise I’d never ask Mum for money again.”





54: DIANA


THE PAST . . .

I meet Nettie at a café, at her suggestion. Nettie and I don’t usually meet at cafés, but nothing was normal lately.

I’d told the children that I had breast cancer a couple of weeks earlier. Ollie had gone through the motions of shock and sadness, which I expected. Nettie’s reaction was less expected. I’d thought she’d have a controlled but concerned reaction—asking for information, statistics, names of doctors. But she hadn’t asked a single question. Her mind had been elsewhere, even then.

Since Tom died, I’d noticed her behavior had become increasingly odd. Every so often she’d come to the house, but rather than speaking to me, she’d just wander about searching for Tom in the folds of the curtains and the creases of the sofa. She never said that was what she was doing, but I knew, because I did it too. Once, just a few weeks after Tom’s death, I came home and found her curled up on his side of the bed. I left her there, and snuck away and she never knew that I saw her. Sometimes we need to grieve together, and sometimes we need to grieve alone.

As I approach the café, I notice a playground across the road full of mothers bundled in puffer jackets pushing babies in strollers or shouting up at older kids who have climbed to the top of a climbing frame to come down for morning tea. I am wondering if I should find us a table inside, away from it all—after all, why make it worse for Nettie?—when I see her sitting at a table out in front.

“Mum!”

I nearly don’t recognize her. She’s thinner than she’s ever been and her skin is sallow and pale . . . and yet at the same time, she looks slightly more alive than the last time I saw her. The idea flickers through my mind that she might be pregnant. I can’t decide if that would be good news or not.

“Hello, darling.” I kiss her cheek and sit opposite her on a cold metal chair. There are mushroom heaters dotted about and woolen blankets on the backs of the chairs, but it doesn’t replace the shelter of four walls, in my opinion. “Isn’t it a little cold out here?”

“I’m fine.” Nettie smiles.

Nettie comes across, I’m assured from most people I meet, as a happy, cheery person who never has a bad word to say about anyone. And she is, indeed, smiley, at least she used to be. But there are some things only a mother can tell. This smile, for instance, is not indicative of happiness. It is a smile of strategy; a smile of digging her heels in. It’s a smile that says: We’re sitting outside. If you don’t want to, you’re going to have to be the one to rock the boat. Every one of Nettie’s smiles means something.