The Telling

carrier bag to sling into the car, anything to be busy, to be occupied, to feel capable. Then I stopped : there was no point packing the kitchen stuff up yet. We’d be needing it over the weekend. But I had to keep busy, had to do something, had to get things into some kind of order before they came.
    The fridge smelt bad. The unwrapped end of a block of cheddar had gone translucent and started to crack. I lifted the milk carton and shook it gently. The milk was solid. I’d have to go into town.
    *
     
    I walked into the first estate agent’s I came upon. The blonde woman with the beautiful nails. She gave me a seller’s pack, a sheaf of leaflets on similar properties, her card, and a lovely smile. A seller’s market at the moment, she said. Lots of families looking: property of that kind often went well above the asking price. She seemed quite excited. I stuffed the papers into my bag and slipped her card into my wallet; it all felt rather unseemly. I thanked her and said I’d be in touch.
    A youngish man was at the counter of the charity shop. They didn’t deal with furniture, he said, but he gave me a card for an organization that did. A few quid to take it away, then they renovate it and sell it on; skills training for the long-term unemployed , cheap furniture for those in real need of it. I said that it seemed really worthwhile, and I’d definitely give them a call. I put the card in my wallet. I gave him a smile. It was Friday. There was no point calling anybody now.
    I hadn’t planned to go to the bookshop.
    I was climbing the stairs into the dusty light, passing framed prints and maps. I was walking the hushed aisles, picking up books when I should have been trying to get rid of the ones I already had. I bought an old blue-bound collected Milton, a battered The Flora and Fauna of the British Isles , and an old book on geology, the cover burgundy and faded gold, the frontispiece an engraving of a classical temple. It was built high on rocks; the sea had risen to lap at its columns and receded again; had left bite-marks in the stone.
    I went to the supermarket. I was hopeless at it. I had forgotten how to do it. I glazed over at the vegetable section: flow-packs of sweet peppers, pillow-packs of salad leaves, punnets of mushrooms , strawberries, blueberries, sealed plastic packs of chives, basil, rosemary, chillies, sage. Oranges, bananas, papayas, mangos , avocados, persimmons. Golden Delicious and Macintosh, Williams and Conference. Anya, Charlotte, King Edward. Organic, basic, or Fair Trade. I felt dazed with choice, befuddled by the shades and nuances of distinction. And I was thinking of the seasons, of the true distance from one harvest to the next. I took stuff and dropped it into the trolley; I had to get something.
    I was in the bread section, gazing blankly at a wall of loaves; seeded and unseeded, wholemeal and wheat-free and white and white-but-wholegrain, and sandwich loaves and toaster-loaves; when I remembered avocados for Cate. Had to wheel the trolley around and go all the way back through the store for them. Always going back to that, to avocados.
    Her little toothless gums munching away like a tortoise’s, me scraping the bowl to spoon the last of the creamy green mush into her mouth. Taking the bowl to the sink and washing it, and then dropping it into sterilizing fluid, and looking out across the garden below, the garden that belonged to the flat downstairs. That dry ache in my nose and throat. Washing the plastic spoon. My daughter seven months old, sitting in her highchair babbling, slapping the tray, avocado on her vest. My hands pressed down on to the countertop, my shoulders high and shaking. I was going to dry my eyes, and blow my nose, and turn around to Cate with a smile, and say she was a good girl, she was my lovely girl, and we’d get her zipped up in her suit, and out and around the park, she’d like that, wouldn’t she? I was going to get on with it, I was going to be fine, and I wasn’t going to inflict any of my misery on her. But I heard his key in the lock, and the door opening, and he was coming down the hall, and was at the kitchen door, and it wasn’t his time yet, he wasn’t due for hours, but Cate crowed with delight to see him, and I turned from the sink, trying hard to be bright, but red-eyed and puffy with tears, and feeling terrible, feeling guilty, as if he’d caught me bingeing, caught me stoned or drunk alone in charge of our child. He leaned