One Hundred Names (Special Edition)

bedside manner. Kitty had her summed up already.
    Caroline looked away from her mother, finally allowing her to take her pills in peace without an audience, and she began a story about a new vaccine on the market and a conversation she had had with somebody in the World Health Organization about it. At least some of the brothers were doctors too, because they seemed to understand the terminology, even added to it when they had the rare opportunity.
    ‘Molly, is there any chance I could get some of Birdie’s special tea?’ Kitty asked.
    Birdie, who had been drinking water at that exact moment, snorted with laughter and her water spluttered down her top. Caroline stopped her story to look at her mother in surprise. In fact, everybody did. Even the teenagers looked up from their electronic equipment and one even cracked a smile to the other as they watched their grandmother giggle. Kitty handed her a napkin to wipe her face.
    ‘Thank you,’ Birdie said, composed, though her eyes were moist. ‘Excuse me for interrupting you, Caroline. Please do continue.’
    Caroline studied her mother for a split second before continuing her conversation but she made sure to direct her speech at her mother so as to avoid another interruption or so she wouldn’t miss the next inside joke. They were the kind of family who, when one person spoke, kept all eyes and ears on that person until the story was finished. Pockets of conversations couldn’t break out among the others or else the entire story would come to an abrupt end until the narrator had everyone’s full attention again.
    Kitty wondered why on earth nobody asked her or Birdie how they knew one another, and why Kitty was there interrupting their family get-together. Birdie couldn’t have told them who she was before she’d arrived – Kitty was due to have been there and gone two hours previously – but if she had told them, hadn’t they any follow-up questions? Hadn’t they any interest in their mother at all? Kitty was angry on Birdie’s behalf; she felt like she was standing on a busy motorway with cars speeding past her while she waited for a gap in the traffic to run across.
    The gap came when Alice’s baby, Levi, choked on something, which sent both Caroline and Alice into a panic. Caroline took over without asking Alice for permission, which Alice succumbed to without a fight.
    Kitty saw her opportunity.
    ‘I don’t know if you’re aware but I’m a journalist with
Etcetera
,’ Kitty said to the group, then turned to a surprised Birdie. ‘Did you fill them in?’
    ‘No, I didn’t.’ Birdie seemed a little embarrassed, if not slightly nervous.
    ‘What did she say?’ one son asked.
    ‘
Etcetera
,’ a daughter-in-law replied. ‘It’s a magazine.’
    ‘A kind of social and cultural magazine, would I be right?’ another asked, and Kitty agreed.
    ‘Did I read in the
Times
that the editor passed away recently?’ a son asked.
    ‘Yes, she did,’ Kitty replied. ‘Constance Dubois.’ She still wasn’t used to saying it, that Constance was gone, dropping it into casual conversation over scones and tea as if her friend was just a topic, like hypochondriac patients and new vaccines.
    ‘Oh, yes, she was the woman who gave that dreadful man a voice. That anti-medicine man, what’s his name.’
    ‘Bernard Carberry,’ Kitty said, her blood boiling. He was a nice man, a very well-respected and highly educated man, who also happened to send her a Christmas card every year.
    ‘That’s it, the man who preaches against the evils of GPs,’ Caroline continued, laughing to belittle him, though her disdain and rage was clear. ‘He believes we should be eating grass and drinking more water.’
    ‘He believes GPs unnecessarily prescribe antibiotics and other medications without actually getting to the root of the problem, whereas the other drugs he recommends are less damaging and can build up immunity.’
    ‘Utter tosh,’ Caroline said dismissively. ‘So do you work for this man then?’
    ‘We work for the same magazine and our paths have regularly crossed.’ Kitty was determined to stay polite.
    ‘And do you agree with his conspiracy theories?’
    ‘I believe Constance Dubois was an incredibly progressive figure who had the ability to see what the new and interesting were before other publications. She recognised Dr Carberry’s studies were of great interest to a wide audience twenty years ago before the topic was really being discussed and now