Dot (Araminta Hall)

of myself. If you can function in this world without knowing where you come from.
    But, sorry, you’re not interested in any of that. I only mentioned my grandmother because it was such an unusual interlude in our lives, which means she’ll remember it and vouch for the fact that I was behaving very strangely that day. And I was behaving strangely because … well, you know the rest.

9 … Nothing
    What do you actually do with a day? Physically, that is? There are enough thoughts in any mind to keep it spinning for the whole twenty-four hours, but the body needs something as well. It needs to feel useful or it starts to tell the mind that there’s no point, that it might as well scramble and trip and turn and flip and bounce.
    Dot and Mavis were good at inertia. It is after all the natural preserve of the teenager to lie immobile on a bed thinking deep thoughts they are yet to understand. Besides, they had just finished school, which still seemed like the hardest point of their lives: they knew that they were waiting, that something new was around the corner, whether they wanted it or not.
    Tony had learnt to fill his days by taking the short walk to Ron’s shop after the school drop-off every morning. He knew that bringing up children is lonely and solitary and that we live in a cold, damp country where there is often a cloud overhead and that the washing up can take all morning if you let it. So, his nothing was to sit in the back of a small shop with an old man whom he’d grown to love, one either side of a thick wooden table, pockmarked with years of good honest work. A bright bulb without a shade hung over the table illuminating all they did, discouraging shadow. Pieces of clocks, toasters, vacuum cleaners, beloved toys and sentimental radios rested in neat piles. Each man had his tools and magnifying glass. Radio 4 droned on comfortingly in the corner and if someone came into the shop one of them would stand up to see what they needed. People thanked them when a much-loved item was restored, small amounts of money changed hands and tea was always being offered between them. Sometimes they barely spoke and at other times they didn’t stop all day. On more than one occasion Ron had stopped what he was doing to put a friendly arm round Tony’s shoulders as they heaved with his tears. This was his nothing, and yet it was so much more than something.
    Alice was now bound to the house. For a while after Tony had left and Dot was still small she’d flirted with the idea of moving away, to London or even further. But that was long gone now. She had even got used to Dot getting up and fixing her own breakfast and leaving for school on her own. She didn’t ask her daughter any more what time she might be home or what she’d like for supper. Dot was nearly an adult and she was developing adult sensibilities. Once a week Alice drove to the big supermarket in Cartertown to stock up on tins and loo roll and pasta and packets. Otherwise she’d walk into the village when they needed things and patronise the butcher or the greengrocer, and sometimes the newsagent. She knew that other people had interests; her mother for example loved the garden as if it was a person and spent hours planning the planting. But since the village play all those years ago, which had come to nothing, nothing more had ever come to Alice. She quite liked reading although sometimes weeks could elapse between her finishing one book and starting another; she was an adequate seamstress; she fed them all; but nothing grabbed her and made her want to investigate it until she’d mastered it. Ideas turned to dust in her head, or at least that’s what it felt like. She would think about making a cushion or looking up a recipe or going to see the bluebells and be immediately struck by how pointless it all was. Everything would be over in less time than it took to do. One day they would all be dead anyway and then who would care that the roses had a colour theme or that chocolate tasted good or that the curtains matched the duvet cover? She had become good at sitting still, at resting her hands peacefully in her lap while she sat at the kitchen table. At lying in bed when she had no intention of sleeping. At walking through the village as if she had somewhere to go. At watching a film as if she was interested in the ending. She waited for Dot to be around and tell her things in the way she used to wait for the phone to ring. In another life she