Read Online Are You My Mother? by Louise Voss - Free Book Online Page B

over my body, a chilly sort of fear.
    ‘ What is it? Is it Stella?’
    She shook her head, tightened her grasp on my arm and frogmarched me, dripping, along the landing to the top of the stairs. I looked down the staircase and saw through the banisters the top of a policemen’s hat. When I turned back to Annette she was crying, silently but indisputably.
    I ran down the stairs two by two, clutching the towel to my breasts, almost tripping at the bottom and half-skidding on the wooden hall floor, until coming to a halt at the policeman’s feet. If I hadn’t been so frightened it might have been funny. The policeman took off his hat and held it awkwardly by his side, twitching it slightly as if it was a Salvation Army tambourine. He looked at about retirement age: craggy, with bloodshot, basset-hound eyes and a bald spot, old and tired after too long being the bearer of bad news.
    ‘ What’s happened?’ I croaked. ‘Where’s Stella?’
    Swiping a hand across her face, Annette pointed to the closed door of the sitting room. ‘She’s in there, watching a video. She’s fine. She let me in but didn’t see… him arrive, PC…. what’s your name?’
    Now she sounded almost cross, as if he was a troublesome schoolboy.
    ‘ PC Fletcher,’ he supplied deferentially.
    ‘ Yes. Well. Why don’t we all go in the kitchen and sit down? I’ll make some tea.’
    I resisted the urge to shout at her: ‘Stop behaving like you own the place. You’re just the babysitter! Whatever this is, it’s nothing to do with you .’
    Nonetheless, the policeman and I sat down, awkwardly, across from each other at the kitchen table. Annette had taken off her coat and filled the kettle but now continued to stand at the sink, motionless. She was quite plump, and from behind she resembled a joint of meat tied up with string: bulges popped out on either side of her bra strap, her waist, and the place where her knickers cut into the sides of her hips.
    ‘ Look, whatever it is, please can we get on with it? I’m going out in twenty minutes’ time and I’m not even dressed yet.’
    The policeman cleared his throat, but when he spoke, it was to Annette’s back.
    ‘ Could you fetch Miss Victor – Emma - a dressing gown or something? She looks cold.’
    Annette turned then. ‘Where is it?’
    ‘ On the back of my bedroom door,’ I replied automatically. When she’d left the room, the kettle still not switched on, the policeman looked me in the eyes. I felt dizzy. It was all I could do not to put my fingers in my ears and start singing la la la to drown out what was coming.
    ‘ I’m so sorry,’ he began, as I knew he would. I stared mutely at him, elbows on the table, fist holding up the towel, my whole body now shaking.
    ‘ Can you confirm that Ted and Barbara Victor are your parents’ names?’
    I nodded, feeling sick.
    ‘ I’m so sorry…. They’ve been involved in a car accident on the M3.’
    I nodded again.
    Annette returned with a dressing gown, but in her panic she had gone into my parents’ room and unhooked Dad’s bathrobe, a navy towelling one with a fraying cord and pockets stuffed with tissues. She draped it over my bare shoulders and the smell of him filled my nostrils.
    ‘ Are they dead?’
    PC Fletcher reached across the table and patted my hand. ‘I’m afraid they are, yes.’
    ‘ Do I have to identify their bodies?’ It was all I could think of to say. I had an unbearable mental image of me in a cold stainless steel room, with someone pulling separate drawers out of the wall containing Mum and Dad’s broken remains, toes tagged.
    I felt a tickle on my shin, and looked down to see a cluster of bubbles sliding down over my ankle and onto the floor. I watched them trace their slow path, spotlit into a shifting beautiful iridescence, more tenacious than life. Just hours earlier, Dad had changed the bulb which now illuminated them.
    The policeman cleared his throat again. He spoke as quietly as if he was trying