The Son-in-Law Read Free Page A

to stay for a few days? No, she bloody well couldn’t. Nobody could. We had a new baby.
    Zoe was born in a cottage hospital, near where we were living at the time. In the next bed a girl called Jennifer nursed her eye-watering eleven-pounder, Bradley. Jennifer had pink cheeks and a pinker towelling bathrobe, and her bedside cabinet was covered with cards screaming It’s a boy! As though she didn’t know.
    ‘What you calling yours?’ she asked, eyeing the scrap of life in the cot by my bed.
    ‘Zoe,’ I said. ‘Zoe Eliza.’
    ‘S’nice. This your first?’
    I nodded, a grin of idiocy plastered across my face.
    ‘Bradley’s my third,’ she said. ‘And believe me, he’s my last!’
    Freddie held Zoe as though she was made of crystal, his foolish smile his matching mine. His hair was already in retreat, leaving shiny temples. I thought it looked distinguished, with his long face and fine bones.
    ‘Is that the granddad?’ whispered one of Jennifer’s visitors.
    Freddie and I pretended not to hear, while Jennifer shushed and the visitor giggled.
    Jennifer’s husband came to take her home the next morning. I watched as she organised her things, chattering amiably. Minutes later, she had gone. The midwife came to make her bed. Funny thing: I missed her terribly. In fact, that was the day I began to cry, for no reason at all. Freddie found me snivelling in the nursing chair. Zoe had fallen asleep in my arms, heart-shaped mouth open, dribbling milk onto my blouse.
    ‘It’s not getting her,’ I sobbed, as Frederick patted and soothed.
    ‘What’s not getting her?’ He touched the whorl of copper hair on Zoe’s mushroom-soft head. Her veins pulsed beneath the fontanel.
    ‘Life,’ I said. ‘Death.’
    But it did.
    •
    I think I shall start with the letter.
    It arrived the day they let him go. It lay there, making the kitchen table filthy with its very presence, with a rash of purple stamps from the censors. Perhaps we’d dropped off the list of forbidden correspondents, or perhaps the authorities had slipped up. We’d already had two from his solicitor, so I had a fair idea what this one was about.
    I wouldn’t open it. The thing could go in the bin. There! I cast it into that dark pit and heard the satisfying click-clack of the plastic lid. It would be sinking helplessly into a glob of leftover porridge. That’s what I think of you!
    It had been snowing since lunchtime, and the garden was already a white wilderness. The heaviest fall had passed, but miniature wagon wheels of lace still waltzed and swirled. Frederick and Ben were out there, trying to make a snowman. I could see them through the kitchen window. Ben took three steps to each one of his Gramps’ as he shovelled snow into the tiny wooden wheelbarrow. Frederick made that barrow for Zoe, when she was small. He and she used to weed the flower beds together. I’d hear her chattering—yabber yabber yabber, without a pause for breath—and his delighted laughter. We wanted more children, expected more, but after three excruciating miscarriages I got the message and poor old Frederick got the snip.
    I opened the oven to find my scones smoking merrily. Damn and blast Joseph Scott, he even made me burn the scones. I rescued the best of them before tapping on the window. Frederick and Ben were bent low over the winter-bare cabbage patch—examining some life form, for sure. Frederick would be speaking in rich, enthusiastic tones like David Attenborough, and Ben would be staring up into his grandfather’s face with a look of total absorption. Four years old, and seventy-six. Those two had a love affair going on.
    I opened the kitchen door, warbling names to the tune of ‘Waltzing Matilda’. ‘Frederick Ben, Frederick Ben, would you like some tea and scones?’
    The warmth of the kitchen billowed out, hanging like a heavy eiderdown in the frozen wastes. Freddie took his grandson’s hand and the two figures headed towards me—one tall and too thin,