Lifesaving for Beginners

Ed pours milk into a wine glass. Dad puts a slice of meat on everybody’s plate and tucks a napkin into the collar of his shirt.
    We eat.
    The silence isn’t strained but it’s there. It’s always been there. We are not a family who sit together for meals, Monday to Saturday. But, for some reason, Mum insists on the Sunday dinner tradition. As if perhaps she read somewhere that this was the kind of thing that families did.
    We eat.
    Mum cuts her vegetables and meat into tiny pieces, then spears one tiny morsel of everything – potato, pumpkin, a sliver of lamb and, of course, the controversial aubergine – with her fork and steers the food into her mouth, which opens only at the very last second, and even then it’s only a slit of an opening, barely wide enough to get the food through, but she manages, nonetheless. Then the mouth closes and the chewing begins. At least ten careful chews before she allows herself to swallow. She is pedantic about chewing. ‘Eat slowly,’ she always told me and Ed.
    ‘Don’t speak with your mouth full.’
    ‘Chew carefully.’
    Some people have a fear of flying. Or spiders. Or lollipop ladies. Mum was afraid of choking. Of me or Ed choking. That’s how I knew she loved us.
    I say, ‘So . . . how’s the new book coming along?’ Mum waits until she has chewed her ten chews and taken a huge gulp of water – just to be sure – before she speaks.
    She says, ‘Difficult.’ She shakes her head. ‘Difficult.’
    I say, ‘Oh.’
    She says, ‘As you know, the story is told through a series of letters from the Archbishop to the Diocesan manager and so the narrative tone must be quite constrained, which makes it . . .’ She stops.
    I say, ‘Difficult?’
    She says, ‘Yes.’
    We eat.
    Dessert is home-made. Dad has several sweet teeth and Ed got him Nigella Does Dessert for his last birthday. I don’t know why, as Dad has never expressed an interest in either baking or in Nigella Lawson, who is like the polar opposite of the women he usually favours: Mum; Judi Dench; Margaret Thatcher, circa 1980. I think it’s because the book was fifty cents in the local charity shop. The price is written in pencil inside the cover. Ed loves charity shops. His room is full of other people’s rubbish.
    Since he got the book, Ed and Dad meet in the kitchen on Sunday mornings and bake something. They do it chronologically. Today, they’ve done page forty-three, which is a chocolate fudge cake. They serve it warm with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side. I usually have a coffee and a cigarette for dessert but not on Sundays. Not since Nigella. She has made them surpass themselves, Ed and Dad. That’s what I tell them most Sundays. That they’ve surpassed themselves. Even Mum, who has the appetite of a tiny bird, concedes to a sliver of cake. For a while, all you can hear is the scrape of forks against plates. Forks aren’t great implements to eat ice cream with. You really need a spoon. At times like these, you can understand why children lick plates, you really can.
    I make coffee. A decaf espresso for Mum, a cappuccino for Dad and Ed – with cocoa powder sprinkled on the top – and a black coffee for me. I grind the beans and I set up the machine and I sit on the worktop, as I always do, and wait. I love the noise of the machine. The gurgle and the splutter of it. And the smell. That strong, earthy smell.
    The tray is not in its usual spot: in the cupboard beside the fridge. Mum says it might be in the utility room when I ask her. And it is. It’s on the counter, covered in papers and bills. She insists on taking care of the household paperwork, even though, if Dad did it, there’d be less chance of the electricity getting cut off twice a year. I think she feels like it’s her link to the real world. To how the real world works. It’s a fairly tenuous link.
    On the tray are flyers for the local supermarket, unopened bills, a handwritten letter from a fan – three foolscap pages – and a couple of coupons for the local taxi company. I tilt the tray and they tumble onto the counter, and that’s when I see them. The envelopes. Three envelopes. Identical. Cream envelopes with a window. A British stamp. A registered post sticker on one of them. They’re not from the college. Printed in the window is my name. Ms Katherine Kavanagh. My parents’ address. I haven’t lived at this address for twenty years.
    Somewhere in my head, a pulse begins to beat.
    I pick them