A Faraway Smell of Lemon Read Free Page B

though.”
    Binny did not purchase a Christmas tree or get out the box of decorations from the loft or fill the kitchen with mince pies and jars of pickle. It was all so futile. So lacking in meaning. But she’d catch her daughter silent at the window, waiting for the person Binny knew she couldn’t make appear, and she was overcome. It was worse than hoping for Father Christmas. She’d kick the washing. Slam the doors. Rail at the thick mass of cold winter sky. But nothing, nothing eased her fury.
    Last night she’d finally given in. When the children were safely in bed, she had watched a program showing the hundred funniest moments in television—she’d laughed at none of them—and drunk a bottle of red wine. After that she had phoned Oliver. Why shouldn’t she? She didn’t even know what she was planning to say. And when he didn’t answer (as she knew all along he wouldn’t), she tried again and then again, pressing REDIAL over and over. Now that she had started this thing she hadn’t wanted to do in the first place, this unashamed self-humiliation, this willful pecking of her bare wound, she couldn’t leave it. She tried maybe a hundred times in all. And every time he failed to answer she felt increasingly diminished and increasingly betrayed.
    Knowing Oliver, he’d probably lost his mobile. It was probably caught in the lining of his trousers. And then a new thought had come to her, a real thorn. What if the mobile was not lost? What if he and Sally were lying in bed, clinging to each other like beautiful weeds, choosing not to answer? He would be stroking her ripe belly, and in Binny’s mind the couple sent her a closed-off smile. At that moment she wished him dead. At least then she’d have a jug of ashes to plonk on the mantelpiece. She could stick a bauble on it.
    How dare Oliver find peace when she had none? How dare he replace her and be so easily, so stupidly, happy? Did her love mean nothing ? She hurled an empty bottle at the kitchen wall. To her surprise, it did not break. It bounced off the fridge and into a pile of dirty washing and returned, doglike, to her feet. And because the wine bottle would not smash, she grabbed her mother’s Royal Doulton plates from the cabinet and shot them at the floor. One by one.
    They broke. They splintered into a thousand blue ceramic pins. And then she bent over the pieces, the only thing she had left of her parents, and her face yawned into one gigantic noiseless scream.
    “Mummy,” Coco said in the morning, “I think we had better buy breakfast at the corner shop on our way to rehearsal.” She closed the kitchen door and fetched the coats.
    It was too much. All too much. I will not cry . Emotion waved up and over Binny, but she would not go with it. While the children were finding their song sheets, she swept the splinters of china into her hands and squeezed until she felt them spike the skin. Then she shoved her feet into two trainers—Luke’s, actually—and slammed the front door so hard that the broken pane of glass tinkled like a frightened girl. “Fucking bollocks,” she told it.
    The children skipped ahead.

    And now it is past ten o’clock on Christmas Eve morning and Oliver will have finished his porridge. Her children are rehearsing a Nativity play about Bill the Lizard and there are no gifts at home, or at least nothing her children might want. Outside, people are traveling to be with loved ones while Binny stands alone, in the middle of a shop that stocks nothing but cleaning products. How could this place be less appropriate? And how will she get through until the New Year, when normal life resumes? Deep inside her something is stretching and expanding and she has to grit her teeth to keep a grip.
    “So may I help you?” asks the young woman. This could be the third time she’s asked the question, but she doesn’t raise her voice or say it with any impatience.
    “I guess I probably need a dustpan and brush, to start with. For my