LITMIR.BIZ

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drink and sit her on my knee and read a nice book to her.’

      To his horror, Eddie felt tears filling his eyes. It was so unfair. ‘But with the others, we always –’

      Angel coughed, stopping him in mid-sentence. It was one of her rules that they should never let a girl know that there had been others. But when Eddie looked at her he was surprised to see that she was smiling.

      ‘Lucy isn’t like the others,’ she said, her eyes meeting Eddie’s. ‘We understand each other, she and I.’ Her lips brushed the top of Lucy’s head. ‘Don’t we, my poppet?’

      What about me?

      Eddie held his tongue. A moment later, Angel asked him to go down and warm some milk and turn up the heating. He went downstairs, the jealousy churning angrily and impotently inside him as pointlessly as an engine in neutral revving into the red. The two of them made such a beautiful picture, he accepted that, the Virgin and child, beautiful and hurtful.

      He altered the thermostat for the central heating and put the milk on the stove. His headache was worsening. He stared into the pan, at the shifting disc of white, and felt his eyes slipping out of focus.

      Virgin and child: two was company in the Holy Family. Poor old Joseph, permanently on the sidelines, denied even the privilege of making the customary biological contribution to family life. The mother and child made a whole, self-contained and exclusive, Mary and the infant Jesus, the Madonna and newborn king, the Handmaiden of the Lord with the Christ Child.

      Where did that leave number three? Somewhere in the crowd scene at the stable. Or leading the donkey. Negotiating with the innkeeper. No doubt paying the bills. Acting as a combination of courier and transport manager and meal ticket. No one ever said what happened to old Joseph. No one cared. Why should they? He didn’t count.

      What about me?

      It seemed to Eddie that almost all his life he had been condemned to third place. Look at his parents, for example. They might not have liked each other, but their needs interlocked and they excluded Eddie. Even when his father allowed Eddie to join in the photographs, Stanley’s interest was always focused on the little girl, and the little girl always paid more attention to Stanley than to Eddie; they treated him as part of the furniture, no more important than the smelly old armchair.

      When Stanley died, the pattern continued. His mother hadn’t wasted much time before deciding to find a lodger. But why? There had been enough money for them to continue living at Rosington Road by themselves. They could have managed on Thelma’s widow’s pension from the Paladin, her state pension, and what Eddie received from the DSS. They would have had to live frugally, but it would have been perfectly possible with just the two of them. But no. His mother had wanted someone else, not him. She found Angel and there was the irony: because Angel preferred Eddie, at least for a time.

      Only Alison and Angel had ever taken him seriously. But Alison had gone away and now Angel no longer needed him because she had Lucy instead. But what made Lucy so special?

      Eddie’s eyes widened. The milk was swelling. Its surface was pocked and pimpled like a lunar landscape. A white balloon pushed itself over the rim of the saucepan. The boiling milk spat and bubbled. He lunged at the handle of the saucepan and a smell of burning filled the air.

      I blame you.

      Mummy, Mum, Ma, Mother, Thelma. Eddie could not remember calling his mother by name, not to her face.

      Angel had taken charge when Thelma died. Eddie had to admit that she had worked miracles. When he finally managed to drag himself downstairs on the morning of his mother’s death, he had sat down at the kitchen table, in the heart of Thelma’s domain, and laid his head on his arms. Still in the grip of an immense hangover, he hadn’t wanted to think because thinking hurt too much.

      He had heard Angel coming downstairs and into the room; he had smelled her perfume and heard water gushing from the tap.

      ‘Eddie. Sit up, please.’

      Wearily he obeyed.

      She placed a glass of water in front of him. ‘Lots of fluids.’ She handed him a sachet of Alka-Seltzers which she had already opened to save him the trouble. ‘Don’t worry if you’re sick. It usually helps to vomit.’

      He dropped the tablets one by one into the water and watched the bubbles rising. ‘What happened to her?’

      ‘I suspect it was a heart attack. Just as she expected.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘You knew she had a heart condition, didn’t you?’

      A new pain penetrated Eddie’s headache. ‘She never told me.’

      ‘Probably she didn’t want to worry you. Either that or she thought you’d guessed.’

      ‘But how could I?’ Eddie wailed.

      ‘Why do you think she gave up smoking? Doctor’s orders, of course. And those tablets she took, not to mention her spray … Didn’t you ever notice how breathless she got?’

      ‘But she’s been like that for years. Not so bad, perhaps, but –’

      ‘And the colour she went sometimes? As soon as I saw that I knew there was a heart problem. Now drink up.’

      He drank the mixture. At one point he thought he might have to make a run for the sink, but the moment passed.

      ‘It’s a pity she didn’t change her diet and take more exercise,’ Angel went on. ‘But there. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, can you?’

      ‘I wish – I wish I’d known.’

      ‘Why? What could you have done? Given her a new set of coronary arteries?’

      He tried to rid his mind of the figure on the bed in the front room upstairs. Never large, Thelma had shrunk still further in death. He glanced at Angel, who was making coffee. She was quite at home here, he thought, as if this were her own kitchen.

      ‘What happened last night?’

      She turned, spoon in hand. ‘You don’t remember? I’m not surprised. The wine had quite an effect on you, didn’t it? I didn’t realize you had such a weak head.’

      He remembered the basement restaurant in Soho. Snatches of their conversation came back to him. The silk tie, blue with green stripes. Himself vomiting over the shiny bonnet of a parked car. Orange candle flames dancing in Angel’s pupils. The three white tablets in the palm of her hand.

      ‘Did you see my mother last night?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘So what happened when we got back?’

      ‘Nothing. I imagine she must have been asleep. I took you upstairs and gave you some aspirin. You went out like a light. So I covered you up and went to bed myself.’

      ‘You’re sure?’

      Angel stared at him. ‘I’m not in the habit of lying, Eddie.’

      He dropped his eyes. ‘Sorry.’

      ‘All right. I understand. It’s never easy when a parent dies. One doesn’t act rationally.’

      She paused to pour water into a coffee pot which Eddie had never seen before. He sniffed. Real coffee, which meant that it was Angel’s. His mother had liked only instant coffee.

      A moment later, Angel said in a slow, deliberate voice: ‘We had a pleasant meal out last night. Your mother was asleep when we got home. We went to bed. When I got up this morning I was surprised that your mother wasn’t up before me. So I tapped on her door to see if she was all right. There was no answer so I went in. And there she was, poor soul. I made sure she was dead. Then I woke you and phoned the doctor.’

      Eddie rubbed his beard, which felt matted. ‘When did it happen?’

      ‘Who knows? She might have been dead

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