Lifesaving for Beginners

interferes with ‘the Work’.
    I say, ‘Go on through.’ She takes a couple of steps up the hall, then turns back and points at a door with a question on her face. I say, ‘Yes.’
    I bundle her hat and coat and gloves into the cloakroom. In the kitchen, I get another glass and fill it with wine. I top up my own glass. I put my hands on the counter. Close my eyes. Steady myself. Try to remember the last time Mum and I were in a room together. Just the two of us. On our own. I can’t. I can’t remember.
    I pick up the glasses. Bend and look at my reflection in the toaster. I look pretty bad but there’s no time for bronzer or a hairbrush. I’ll have to wing it.
    I hand her a glass. ‘Here you are.’
    ‘Thank you, Katherine.’ She takes the glass and views it with deep suspicion. Places it on the coffee table beside her chair. I grip the back of the chair I’m supposed to be sitting on.
    I say, ‘So?’ in a way that I’m hoping strikes a balance between not-unwelcoming and mildly curious.
    I don’t think I manage it because she says, ‘What do you mean, so?’ Her voice is pinched. It’s not coming easily. She sits on the edge of her seat, as if she’s about to leave. But she doesn’t leave. Instead, she looks around the room. Stops at the record player. She smiles and nods. ‘Your father bought me that before we were married. I can’t believe you still have it.’
    The silence that follows isn’t awkward as such. It’s just . . . there. I pass the time by drinking wine.
    She says, ‘Does it still work?’
    ‘Yes.’ Even though it doesn’t. Not really.
    Sometimes I wish we were the type of mother and daughter who could have the television on in the background. Countdown , maybe. Something interactive.
    She lifts her glass, takes a drink and puts it back on the table. Then she clears her throat and I brace myself and she looks towards me, but not directly at me, and says what she came here to say, which is, ‘What are you planning to do?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    She nods. There is resignation in the nod. She expected me to say that.
    For a moment, I think that’s it. That’s all she’s going to say. But then I realise there’s more. I’m pretty sure she’s going to say something else. I can tell by the way she shifts in her seat. Picks up her wine glass. Puts it back down again. Tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear and pushes her finger up the bridge of her nose, as if she is wearing her glasses, which she is not.
    The thing she ends up saying is this: ‘Faith looks just the way I imagined her.’
    I am not surprised that Mum mentions Faith. It’s the fact that she imagined her that I can’t get over.
    ‘She looks like you.’
    I take a drink. ‘I didn’t think you ever thought about her.’
    ‘Of course I did. Didn’t you?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘No?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Well, I did. And she looks just as I imagined.’
    ‘You never talked about it. Afterwards. You never brought it up.’
    Mum picks up her glass. Takes the tiniest sip. She shakes her head. ‘I thought it was for the best.’
    ‘And even Minnie. She never mentioned it either. Not really.’
    ‘I spoke to Mrs Driver. Afterwards. Told her I thought it was better if we didn’t . . . make a fuss.’
    ‘And Dad never said anything.’
    She shrugs. ‘No. Well, he wouldn’t, would he?’
    ‘It was like it never happened.’
    She looks at me. ‘Don’t be silly.’
    ‘Afterwards, when I came home, nobody said anything. Sometimes I wondered . . .’
    ‘What?’
    ‘If it had actually happened.’
    ‘You’re being fanciful, Katherine.’
    Fanciful. There’s a word. I’ve never heard anyone use it except my mother.
    She puts her glass on the coffee table but the gesture is a little brisk and wine reaches for the rim, scales it, splashes onto the pale wood of the table. She doesn’t notice.
    Now the silence is awkward. After a while, she straightens. ‘So. The reason I came . . . Well, I mean, we have to do something, don’t we? We can’t just do nothing. Can we?’
    I don’t say anything.
    ‘About Faith, I mean.’ When she says her name, I want to clamp my hands against my ears. She sounds real, when she says her name. Faith. She sounds like a real person. A person who’s twenty-four. A person who has a brother called Milo. A person who lives in Brighton.
    I don’t clamp my hands against my ears. I say, ‘No.’
    Mum continues as if I hadn’t said anything. ‘Her mother died recently. Her . . .