The Darkening Hour Read Online Free PDF

tins of drink, small portions of left-over food. Halves of things; clementines, tomatoes. And his one shelf, bare but for a quarter-bottle of whisky. One solitary glass like an
orphan.
    I think of our family home with its floor-to-ceiling pantry shelves bulging with packets and jars. Its drinks cabinet of aperitifs and liqueurs. Spirits and vintage port. Rows of glasses:
tumblers, champagne flutes, goblets for wine and brandy.
    You would never have known how grand he once was. How grand we all were. You would never have believed, in those days, that he would end up like this, a shrivelled old man living in a Deptford
basement. Would he have been better off at Anita’s? Until we found him a home? Am I guilty of dragging him down with me? Should I have had him in the guest room beside me? But it would have
humiliated him, living with his grown-up daughter in the little room next to her.
    I take a lasagne out of the tiny freezer compartment.
    How can his life be reduced to this? A Marks & Spencer ready meal for one in a container the size of a box of Cook’s matches?
    I’d like to run from it as my siblings did.
    But someone has to confront it, someone has to care.
    I put the lasagne in the microwave and show Mona how to set it. Then I show her how we have to make sure he eats, as you would a child, checking the temperature, making him spoon the food into
his mouth without spilling.
    Daddy’s on his best behaviour.
    ‘It’s very good actually, very tasty,’ he says, dabbing at his mouth with one of the starched napkins he insists on using. The microwave has slipped under his radar. If he
registers me warming his food, he objects that it’s not cooked from scratch.
    I show Mona Daddy’s plastic pill box with the days marked on, that he keeps on the Lazy Susan where Mummy once kept her condiments, feeling that pang again; when did the superior chutneys,
mustard and sea salt metamorphose into bottles of flurazepam and Co-codamol? I show her the small en suite bathroom where he wees, washes and does his teeth. I show her where he keeps his clothes
and his night things. His whisky bottle – he insists on a measure every night, says it helps him sleep – and how to measure it.
    ‘Aaah!’ he says, when we sit back down. ‘So nice of you to do all this for me. What did you say your name was again?’
    He’s looking at me, not at Mona, and my heart plummets. It always shocks me, however I prepare myself. I want to cling to those periods where he’s lucid, where he seems not to be
unravelling before my eyes.
    ‘Daddy, I’m Dora.’
    He frowns, glances from one to the other of us.
    ‘Of course you are. I’m so sorry. Forgive me do. Dora. And who is this?’
    ‘Mona, Daddy.’
    ‘Do I know you?’
    ‘You will,’ I say, bending to kiss him goodbye. ‘You will.’
    And as we mount the steps back to the house, I think with a sudden euphoria, Mona’s here now to cope with this.
    Mona will make it bearable for me.

CHAPTER SIX
    When I’ve met Charles, the old man who I’m going to be looking after, Dora shows me round her house.
    ‘The drawing room,’ she announces, opening a door. The smell hits me in the face – cat, mixed with stale smoke and beer.
    Though it’s morning, the room’s dark. Her son doesn’t look up. He’s slumped onto the sofa. The cat lies along the back of it, its tail hanging down, its eyes glowing like
the lights on the TV. It should be outside hunting mice and rats. I wait for Dora to chase it out. She ignores it.
    ‘It’s dark because Leo finds it easier to see his screens like this. This room really needs redecorating – painting, I mean.’ Dora makes a motion with her hand.
    ‘I can paint it for you.’
    ‘Oh, no, it’s not your job, I’ll get a man in sometime. Leo, let me show Mona the room. I’m putting the light on for a second.’
    The cat jumps off the sofa. Slinks around our feet into the hall. I watch it, bile rising in my throat.
    ‘Leo, say hello,’ Dora