The Final Silence Read Free

Ida said.
    Rea counted them. Eight bags and boxes in total.
    Ida read her mind. ‘Pathetic, isn’t it?’ She climbed the stairs and sat next to Rea. Her voice resonated between the hard surfaces of the stairwell and the hall. ‘What kind of life did he have? Here all alone. He had nothing. No one. There’s not even a photograph around the place. Him or Carol. You’d think he’d have a picture of his wife, wouldn’t you? But there’s nothing. Just . . . this.’
    She waved a hand at the packed-up detritus below. Rea put an arm around her mother’s shoulders. Ida fetched a balled-up tissue from her sleeve, touched it to her nose as she sniffed.
    Ida Carlisle was a small woman, wider than she’d like at the hips, her hair lacquered in place once a week by a fey man at a city-centre salon, grey roots showing through the dyed brown, the merest hint of make-up on her face. Enough to make herself presentable, never enough to be showy.
    ‘There’s always the back bedroom,’ Rea said. ‘There could be an Aladdin’s cave in there, for all we know.’
    The door to the bedroom at the rear of the house was different from the others. The rest were panelled wood, probably hung there when the house was built a century ago. But the back bedroom door was a solid featureless white with a new handle and a lock.
    The day before the funeral, a locksmith had opened the front door of the house, fitted a new tumbler and left them with a set of keys. They hadn’t found the locked door upstairs until he’d gone. Rea’s father had made a half-hearted attempt at putting his shoulder to it, but the door wouldn’t budge. Rea had tried kicking it below the handle, like she’d seen in a police documentary, but she’d only succeeded in bruising the ball of her foot and straining her calf.
    ‘There’ll be nothing in there but old dust and air,’ Ida said. A tear escaped her eye. She caught it with the tissue before it could drip from her cheek.
    ‘We’ll see,’ Rea said, stroking her mother’s back.
    Neither Ida nor Graham Carlisle were comfortable with shows of affection. Hugs. Kisses. Cuddles. Such displays were for infants and television dramas. Rea couldn’t remember ever being told by either of her parents that they loved her. She had no doubt that they did, but to tell her so would run against their Presbyterian grain.
    At the age of eighteen, when Rea left home for university, she made a decision: regardless of whether they returned the gesture, she would tell them she loved them. And she would hug them, and she would kiss them. If that made them cringe, then tough luck. She would not live her life with her emotions tied up and hidden inside her.
    ‘No point in worrying about it now,’ Ida said. ‘I talked to your father last night. About this place.’
    ‘Oh?’ Rea asked.
    ‘When we’ve got it all sorted, all the legal nonsense, we think you should have it.’
    The house had belonged to Raymond’s wife, and she’d inherited it from her parents. When she died, Raymond had stayed on. Now, once the estate was settled, it was Ida’s to do with as she pleased.
    ‘But Mum, I can’t . . . it’s too much to . . .’
    ‘It’d get you out of that shared place. You’d have a home of your own. No mortgage to tie you down. A house is too hard to buy these days, I mean for a girl on her own, even with the prices falling the way they have.’
    Rea shook her head. ‘But this place has got to be worth a hundred grand, maybe a hundred and twenty. You and Dad could have that for your retirement.’
    ‘Your father retire?’ Ida smiled. ‘He’ll not retire until he drops. Besides, he’s got enough money put away to keep the both of us.’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Ida said. ‘It’s too big a thing. I can’t get my head around it.’
    ‘Well, think about it. You’ll see it makes sense. Dear knows, there’s precious little left of your uncle here. Hardly anything to show for him being here at all. Whatever’s