Out on a Limb Read Online Free PDF

the living room. I smiled. He smiled back. I said ‘Who made the chilli? Come on, own up. Can you cook after all?’
    And Charlie stopped smiling. He frowned and said ‘ah.’ Though he didn’t really need to, because right between ‘own up’ and ‘can you cook after all?’ his expression had already answered my question. It looked stricken for an instant and then it look relieved. Thank God, his expression said. Because I’ve had enough of lying. Now I can tell you the truth.
    And seeing that expression made me all at once realise that deep down, some clear-thinking, unconscious part of me actually already knew. So I was, in a way, though mostly mortified, obviously, just a bit relieved as well.
    I’m going to be just fine, of course. I was happy before I met him, I am happy again now it’s over. He, on the other hand, went into this unhappy, is coming out of this unhappy, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. I can’t make him happy. The logistics won’t allow it. So all that’s to be done is to move on.
    But it does make me realise that the crucial thing (for the purposes of a thorough analysis of why Charlie, who I no longer love, is still ever present in my mind, like a persistent cold sore) is that if you slip into an affair born out of any sort of problem, then woe betide you. Because you are merely the symptom, and when you are removed, the problem, of course, still persists.
    As does the problem with my mother.
    ‘Your turn,’ says Pru, without pre-amble or explanation, less than five days after Hugo’s lifeless body has been relocated to the hospital morgue. Explanations are unnecessary. I have been allocated the technical duties of dealing with the undertaker, sorting out some clothes for them to dress him in, ringing and advising such people as I can get hold of, drafting a short notice to put in the local paper, and taking care of the tropical fish. Light work, in comparison to looking after Mum. ‘I’m sorry,’ Pru adds. ‘But she’s driving me nuts.’
    I had, being essentially a good and dutiful daughter, offered to take Mum home with me on the day Hugo died. My sister, however, had insisted. I had initially been somewhat taken aback at her uncharacteristic readiness to cart Mum back to Bristol with her (my brother-in-law, among other things, not being noted for his selfless devotion to his mother-in-law at the best of times, for which absolutely no one could blame him), but, given the longer term implications of the situation – that, given her recent op, Mum wouldn’t be able to manage on her own for a good few weeks yet – it wasn’t long before it (admittedly rather uncharitably) dawned on me that getting in first, and for a finite duration, was a very clever way of lessening the likelihood of being stuck with her for terribly long. A sort of biting the bullet now in the hopes of relief later. As in passing the bullet on to me.
    ‘What a surprise,’ I say, perfectly equably. Because I’m really not surprised, and I really don’t mind. And I must do my bit, after all. ‘Has Mum spoken to his daughter yet?’ I ask her.
    Hugo has a daughter, who is called Corinne, who neither of us have ever met. Mum has seen her a few times, though only by accident, because though the last Mrs Hugo long pre-dated our Mrs Hugo, Mum and Hugo as an item – Mum and Hugo as in married – did not, it seems, go down very well. I don’t think it was Mum, particularly – I think it would have been the same with anyone. None of us were really sure why that should be, but families are complex and not always to be fathomed, and as Mum didn’t seem to care much either way, we didn’t have reason to either.
    Anyway, Corinne (plus her family) has apparently been away on holiday for a fortnight. Between them, Mum and Pru have been calling her home twice daily, and yesterday they connected. With a woman – the next door neighbour, apparently – who’d popped round to check on her gerbils.