Vacant Possession Read Free Page A

She hadn’t noticed, he thought, the struggle that was going on inside him.
    Just as well. Her ignorant body had done the battling for her. Christmas Day, 1974, she’d told him she was pregnant again. He’d given up Isabel so that Claire could be born, and grow up plump and cheeky, and get Brownie badges.
    That had been a bad year; the guilt, the deception, the hopeless months that follow the end of an affair. Lately, and unwillingly, he’d begun to think about Isabel again. Change was in the air, an undercurrent of disturbance. He couldn’t account for it.
    “You’re miles away,” Sylvia said, clattering at the sink. She crossed to the table and scooped the orange peel into her palm, and dropped it in the bin. “You’ll be late if you sit about any longer.”
    Colin looked at his watch. “Good God, twenty past eight.” He threw the paper down. “Have a look at it, about the Minster. It’s awful.” He snatched up his jacket, made for the door. “Come on, you kids. Take care, see you about six.”
     
    What I should do, Isabel thought; what I should do is, I should start writing it down. I’d like to write down everything that worries me, about my life ten years ago. I’d like to write it. But I can’t find a pen.
    Isabel’s brain moves slowly these days. She’s only thirty-four. She shouldn’t find thinking such an effort, and she shouldn’t look such a wreck. Perhaps a sense of foreboding dogs her. That must be it.
    If she had any paper, she wouldn’t have a pen. When she was a social worker, she always had pens. She was organised; to a degree.
    She was not organised now; she had just moved house, not unpacked yet. Here I am again, she said to herself, where I grew up and began my professional career; and had my first love affair. If that is what you call it.
    It’s not fair, she thought. I never wanted to come back here. I might meet Colin in the supermarket. I might meet his sister, Florence. Then again, I might meet Sylvia. I’ve never seen Sylvia, but I feel I’d know her at once. Instinct, if you like. Women who have shared a man can probably scent each other out.
    What about this shopping list? She turned it over. She could write on the back, why not? Just to get started was the main thing, to get some relief from the thoughts going round and round in her head. A good search through her handbag turned up a biro. She sat down at the kitchen table. She took a deep breath. Yes, I might meet the Sidneys en famille , she thought. Then again, I might meet my old client, Muriel Axon. That would be worse.
     
    “Ten years ago, I lived in this town, I was with Social Services, I was seeing Colin. I lived at home with my father; that was all of my life. But I had this case, and this is the case I want to write about. Muriel Axon, No. III/73/0059. Everything about this case bothered me. It still does.
    “Muriel Axon and her old mother Evelyn lived at number 2, Buckingham Avenue, in that part of town where people have big gardens and keep to themselves. Next door to them, but round the corner on Lauderdale Road, lived Colin’s sister Florence Sidney. We didn’t make that connection until the end. Why should we? When I met Colin—sneaking off to some pub somewhere, hoping we wouldn’t meet anyone we knew—we didn’t talk about his sister, and where she lived, or my clients and where they lived. But if I had known, I might have been able to ask Florence Sidney about her neighbours. Get some sort of—clarification.
    “Then again, I don’t know if I wanted clarification. I was afraid to find out what was really going on in the Axon household. Later, when it was all over, and Muriel’s mother was dead and Muriel herself had been put in hospital, their house came on the market and Colin bought it. He wanted a big house, and to live next door to his sister. He got it cheap.
    “I did warn him against it. I saw him at the inquest, and I told him I wouldn’t care to live there. I tried to convey to