Read Online Every Day Is Mother's Day by Hilary Mantel - Free Book Online Page B

lie by a person broken-hipped or hypothermic. It was early in the year for hypothermia. And the daughter was quite young, wasn’t she, and able-bodied, and reasonably capable? She had enough sense to get help, if anything was really wrong. The note in the milkbottle, left early, suggested people who had gone out and would be away for the evening; as if they might come back late, talkative and giddy, and forget to do it. It seemed an unlikely picture, but she supposed they might have friends, this odd mother and daughter who were familiar to her only from a buff-coloured file. The strangest people have friends, she thought, even me.
    On the front path, she hovered again. One day, she thought, I shall always know what to do in these doubtful situations. When I am perfectly wise. When I am thirty years old. The rain began to fall harder. Deciding quickly, she turned and dashed back to the car, splashing the back of her tights. She was just going to miss the rush-hour traffic.
    Up at her bedroom window, Florence turned away, to resume the living of her own life.
     
    The new offices were open-plan. It was four-thirty-eight when Isabel got in. The day was winding down. In the old offices, with their brown peeling doors, over-subscribed lavatories, dingy walls, you could shut yourself into the little cubbyhole that was designated to you and rub your hands over your own one-bar fire. They had merits, but they were not pleasant for the clients to visit.
    “Tea?” she said unhopefully.
    “We’ve had it.”
    “Messages?”
    “On your desk.”
    She walked over the expanse of blue cord carpet. There had been a phone call from the Probation Service. The HousingAid office reported their failure to find housing for someone. A child with leukaemia would have to go back to hospital. What concerns are these of mine, she thought tiredly. The Education Welfare office had been ringing. And Mr. Sidney. This year social workers had become “generic.” It was a new dispensation, for everybody to know everything about everything: and how to heal it.
    “What’s this?” she said to the secretary.
    The woman looked up resentfully. “Your messages.”
    “This last one—Mr. Sidney. Who is Mr. Sidney?”
    “A personal call, that was.”
    Oh yes, Isabel thought. Colin. Who’s going to leave home for me. She sat down at her desk and took the evening paper out of her bag. She read of a car-crash and a dog that had drowned. She did not want to go home, did not relish the evening ahead of her. But then she did not look forward, either, to the next working day. There is something radically wrong with my life, she thought, that I have fallen to such vicious amusements; and such stretches of emptiness between them.
     
    It was almost seven when Isabel arrived home. The house was a brick-built bungalow, ten years old, of a solid and uninspired design. The lamps burned at each side of the wrought-iron gates, but Mr. Field had not drawn the curtains. She put the car into the garage, and let herself in at the front door.
    There were no lights on in the hall, and before she found the switch she caught her foot against something soft, lying beside the telephone table. She bent down and explored it with one hand. It was a plastic carrier bag, a small one full of laundry. A tablecloth—which had been clean, she thought—a few pairs of socks, one shirt. Token laundry, this. Damp blue powder clung to her fingertips. She flicked it off. Her heart began to beat faster. Anger and fear, she thought, fight, and flight. Ifonly we could ever do either. She tried to calm herself, standing with one hand against the wall. Mr. Field appeared at the top of the stairs.
    “Is that you, Bella? You’re very late.”
    “Just as well, it seems to me.”
    He cringed at her tone.
    “Come down here,” she said.
    “I’ll make you a cup of tea. Oh Bella, please don’t work yourself up.”
    He came down and stood before her, blinking and contrite, a man of