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what happened? With Dad?’ Mum had told me on the phone that he’d been a bit breathless lately. I’d thought he was just unfit. ‘Had his angina got worse? Or was it just, like …?’ Bang, I was going to say but it didn’t sound right.

      Mum twisted her hands together. ‘Oh, you know. He’d gone to see the doctor for his angina a week or so ago because he’d had a bit more pain than usual. I told him to mention the breathless thing, too—it might be linked. I told you about that, didn’t I? Anyway, the doctor had said not to worry, but that it was worth doing some further tests. An ECG and some other things. The appointment was supposed to be this week. It was him that I called when I found Dad. He confirmed it was heart failure and issued the death certificate himself.’ Mum looked at the floor and, when she spoke, her voice was small. ‘He was pottering in the garden earlier that day. We’d had a nice dinner. The doctor said it was just “one of those things”. “It happens”.’

      ‘I still can’t believe it.’

      ‘Neither can I.’ Mum gave herself a little shake. ‘Still. Onwards and upwards. Life goes on.’

      ‘And I’m here to help.’ I wanted her to know she could lean on me.

      ‘Yes, dear.’ She turned towards the kitchen. ‘I’ve just made some bread. I’ll pop the kettle on and we can have a nice cup of tea and some toast?’

      ‘Sure.’

      I looked back at Dad’s chair, still trying to take it in, then something caught my eye: under the coffee table lay Dad’s cold slippers. Presumably where he’d left them two days ago. Before he died.

      As I looked at them, moulded to the shape of Dad’s size elevens, it hit me again that he wasn’t coming back. Why hadn’t I made more of an effort with him? Insisted he come out that autumn? I blinked hard. I’d been protecting my mother since I was eight years old. No matter what I felt inside, I would not cry in front of her.

      I hadn’t known what sort of state Mum would be in. On past performance, she could have been anything from a bit teary to shopping naked in Tesco. So I was relieved to find her acting so normal. She was chomping at the bit, desperate to get things done. I hoped it wasn’t just a front; I hoped she wasn’t hurtling headlong towards another breakdown. I wanted to ask more about how Dad had died but she didn’t give me a chance.

      ‘Toast’s ready,’ she said, setting the plates on the dining table with two steaming mugs of tea. ‘Eat up. We’ve a lot to do.’

      I sighed.

      ‘Apart from the funeral, what else is there?’

      Mum pulled out a notebook and ran a pencil down the page as she read a list. ‘Well, we’ll have to tell people, for a start. So far only a few friends from church know.’ We had a very small family—all four of my grandparents were dead; Dad was an only child, and Mum might as well have been one, too: she had an older brother, but I’d never met him and I’d learned years ago never to ask about him—all I knew was that he hadn’t come to her wedding. I wondered if things might be different now; perhaps it was my tiredness that made me less guarded than usual.

      ‘Will we let Uncle David know?’

      Mum didn’t even answer. An imperceptible huff and a miniscule shake of the head, and she was off again, as if I’d never asked.

      ‘Once we’ve got a date for the funeral, maybe you could help me go through Dad’s address book and let people know? Tell them no flowers, too. I don’t want people wasting their money on flowers. If they want, they can give the money to charity.’

      I nodded, already dreading it.

      ‘And then we have to arrange the funeral. We have an appointment at the funeral place up the road at eleven tomorrow—you don’t have to come, but it’d be nice if you did. Then, obviously, the catering for the party. I’ve no idea how many people will come, but I was thinking at least three hundred for the funeral, maybe a hundred will come back, so we need to think about that. And we need to speak to the crematorium—Dad wanted to be cremated, by the way—and arrange the service there and the committal.’

      She looked up to see if I was still listening. I was. But I was also stunned. Dad had only died yesterday morning and already she’d gone through all of this. It was like she was competing to be PA of the year. Either that, or she was clinging onto her list like it was a piece of flotsam in a tsunami.

      ‘I’ve taken a couple of weeks off from work but, well, if you could help me sort out Dad’s papers and make sure that everything’s in order in terms of bank accounts, the house, insurance policies, the mortgage, bills etcetera, that’d be very helpful? Dad took care of all of those things and I don’t know where to start.’

      ‘Are you still enjoying work? Do you think you’ll carry on?’ Mum was a part-time administrator at the local hospital.

      ‘Yes. Why wouldn’t I? Dr Goodman would be lost without me. You know how he depends on me. I might even go full-time!’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Yes! Why not?’

      I shook my head, lost for words, changed the subject back. ‘What about Dad’s computer? Do you want me to close down his email account and stuff?’ Mum’s fantastic ability at the hospital had never translated to her home life: she was rubbish on the home computer, a fact that even the PC seemed to sense, given it always seemed to shut down on her midway through an email to me, causing her to lose everything.

      ‘Oh, yes please, darling. Maybe you could ping any house-related emails over to my email so I can get the details changed to mine. Good idea.’

       Ping?

      She looked at her list again. There was more?

      ‘And then, depending on how long you’re here for, there’ll be the scattering of the ashes. If the crem can get them to us quickly, we could probably fit that in before you go back?’

      She looked at me, maybe misinterpreting my silence as reluctance. ‘I don’t really want to do it on my own,’ she said. ‘And I couldn’t ever be one of those people who keep him in a pot on the mantelpiece. Can you imagine? He’d be home more now than he ever was when he was alive!’ She burst out laughing, a raucous sound that jarred.

      ‘I can stay as long as you need me to,’ I said, trying not to sound churlish. ‘Of course I’ll help with the ashes.’

      Mum’s laughter stopped as abruptly as it started. She opened her mouth to say something then stopped. I waited, but she must have thought the better of it.

      ‘Right,’ she said, noticing I’d finished my toast. ‘Why don’t you unpack and freshen up? We could look at the paperwork later?’

      I stared into the middle distance, slightly dazed. Despite, or perhaps because of, the conversation we’d just had, I still had no idea what was going on in Mum’s head, and that worried me. Over the years I’d learned how to read her moods; how to avoid her flashpoints; handle her unpredictability; but now I felt I’d lost that skill. I was back to square one, almost as nervous of Mum as I’d been when I was growing up.

      Perhaps it was just the lack of sleep, or maybe it was just that peculiar feeling of arriving in a different country without having psychologically left the last one, but suddenly I felt drained. I stood up and turned for the stairs, hauling my suitcase with me.

       CHAPTER 6

      They say every expat is running away from something. I don’t want to believe it about myself but somewhere, in a dark place where I try never to look, I know it’s probably true. I was never running away from Graham; I was running away from what had happened after Graham. I heaved my suitcase onto my bed with a grunt worthy of a championship tennis player then went to have a look at Graham’s old room. It was now a little-used guest room but,

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