The Beauty of the End Read Online Free PDF Page B

housekeeper.”
    Her face wears a confused expression. Clearly I’m not her regular fruitcake. “It’s cool. Actually, when my parents are away, I like it a lot.”
    That bit’s actually true, because I can wear shorts and the cheap clothes my mother doesn’t know I have; because when they heave suitcases in the car their demands and expectations go with them.
    She pauses, then looks at me again, quizzically. That’s when I know she’s sensed she’s missing something.
    â€œIt sounds good.” She says it quietly, then puts her pen down. “Shall we leave it there? For now?”
    I look at my watch, then sit there, nonplussed, as she gets up, because we’ve got another ten minutes. Is she a cheapskate, or is this a new therapist thing I haven’t seen before?
    She notices my hesitation. Pauses. “Or was there something you wanted to talk about, before you go?”
    I shake my head. It’s one of the rules. I have to remember that. You give them what they’re expecting. Enough, that’s all. No more.
    Â 
    On the way home, my mother plays Madame Butterfly turned up over the sound of the air con.
    â€œHow did you get on?” she shouts.
    I reach forward to turn the volume down, just in case for once she actually listens.
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œGood,” says my mother. “We’ll tell your father it went well. And I’ll ask Gabriela to make another appointment . . .”
    She turns the music up even louder, so that her voice is lost. Music’s good for that. Gives her somewhere to hide.
    â€œ. . . for next week.” Shouting again. “Abigail told me she’s supposed to be good.”
    I don’t know what good’s supposed to mean, but she’s okay. Different from the others. She really listens, to more than just my words.
    I turn my eyes away, thinking of Toby, with his thick, tufted hair. He throws things and yells a lot, so my mother says. Mostly at Abigail. Poor Abigail. She says that a lot, too, because she only ever talks to Abigail. Not poor Toby. But not everyone can do that. Imagine being other people.
    As we leave the motorway, I lean my head against the window, gazing through the trees at the iron-clad sky. I’m not sure what I’m feeling, or if I’m feeling anything at all. Then the trees clear and there are fields, fading into the distance until you can’t tell where they end and the clouds begin.
    â€œWhat is all this stuff?” she shouts. “You’d think they’d spray it. Don’t open the windows. I don’t want it all over the car.”
    I watch the stuff she’s talking about, the tiny, weightless willow seeds that float until they settle on the ground like beautiful, ethereal snowdrifts from another place. But in her orderly, designer world there is no room for such things.
    I lean my head against the window, blocking out her voice and the music and the cold air whooshing in my face, thinking how there’s so much I can never tell her, looking at the sky, which is heavy, muggy grey.
    Waiting for the rain.

6
    2016
    Â 
    M y thoughts are interrupted by a familiar voice.
    â€œNoah? Hello? You’re in there, aren’t you?”
    Clara lives next door, a close friend of my late aunt. I’ve become used to her coming and going, once I got over the way she’d let herself in when it suited her and the way I’d turn round to find her standing there, just behind me, and then I’d be forced to listen while she regaled me with some screwy observation she’d made.
    * * *
    The first time it happened, I don’t know how long she’d been watching me. Lost in my work, I hadn’t noticed her until she spoke.
    â€œSo you’re Noah. . . .”
    Startled, I’d glanced up to see a woman standing there, with long, greying hair and sharp eyes that looked me up and down.
    â€œSo you’ve come to put Delilah’s things in order