Capital

not-angry-just-disappointed, hate-to-see-you-wasting-your-talents talk of the type he was used to. Smitty’s words and tone were gentle because his conclusions were final. What was going on here was something Smitty had seen before: a young person’s first real farewell to the world of school and college, where even if they are rebelling and faffing about and getting in trouble, the truth is that the whole experience is about them. They think that the whole world revolves around their needs, for the good reason that the institutions and authority figures in their world do, in fact, put them first. They’re not wrong to think they’re the centre of the universe. They’re just wrong to think it will stay that way. Then you get to the adult world, and at some point the penny drops. No one cares about you and most of the time they don’t even notice you’re there. It was this revelation that was now taking place in Smitty’s studio.
    Parker’s expression began to crumple and darken. He looked much younger, like a rebuked schoolboy. It seemed as if he might even cry. He switched from looking cocky to looking numb and devastated. Smitty was aghast – he hadn’t wanted the kid to go skipping out the door, but he didn’t want to feel as if he’d just shot the little bastard’s puppy. He sped through the last part of his prepared speech, about maybe we’ll work together again one day, and handed him his envelope with a month’s pay and his P45. By now, no question, there were tears in the boy’s eyes. He collected his jacket and his bag and his iPod in a lot less time than he had taken to get them off, and was out the door without a further word.
    Smitty thought, thank fuck that’s over.

47
     
     
    At 42 Pepys Road, Petunia Howe was dying. Her condition was worse in every way. Her level of consciousness varied: at times she knew where she was and what was happening; at other times she was living through a delirium. Memories swam through her like dreams. Albert was alive and beside her, or she was already dead and in some place where he had gone before to wait for her. At other times, all she could feel was pain, pain so general and at the same time so intimate – as dental pain or earache is intimate – that there was no point at which the pain stopped and she began. Petunia spoke only in fragments and could only move with assistance. Her daughter had to help her to use a bedpan.
    Mary tried not to think about what was happening. She kept herself as immersed as possible in the daily detail of her mother’s illness. Every now and then she would pull back and get a glimpse of things in the round, an overall look at the reality of these terrible days, and she would think: this is the worst experience of my life. My mother is dying horribly, I’m more tired than I’ve ever been, more tired than I was when the children were small, she is in pain, she doesn’t know who or where she is, and there’s no end in sight, because it’s dragging on and on, and the only release is for Mum to die, so I want Mum to die, which is a terrible thing to want, and it will happen to me too, one day, I will die too, and I’m stuck here in London and I’m lonely and frightened and I have to lift my mum to the bedpan to have a shit and then have to wipe her bottom and put her back in bed and go to the toilet to empty her shit down it and then flush it and wash my hands and go back to bed and sit there staring at the ceiling waiting for sleep which I know will never come, and it won’t end until my mum dies, and then I’ll have to sell the house and it’ll be worth a million pounds and it will come to me and everything will be different, but if I think about that I’m a bad person so I mustn’t think about anything other than today, right now, the things I have to do right here and right now. And so Mary would return to the daily, immediate demands of the house, the sickroom, her mother’s death; and she would feel easier .
    Her contact with home was through phone calls. She had to ration these because otherwise she called Alan ten times a day, mainly just to hear his voice. Ben, who was seventeen, was too grumpy to have a proper conversation with, and Alice was away at college, and Graham was off at his London life, so with all three of them she confined herself to a daily exchange of texts. (‘u ok?’ ‘yes k.’) Alan knew well what she was going through – he was good like that – but in the end there