Read Online Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell - Free Book Online

returned home from school whether her mother was in or not just by the quality of the air, the thickness of the atmosphere. If she was out, the house had an odd, suspended feel to it. Like a stage set before the lights go up, before the actors emerge from the wings, the house felt to Monica unreal, as if the furniture and vases and plates and crockery were only props, as if the walls and doors were nothing more than painted scenery that could topple if leaned against.
    But if Gretta was in, there was a sense of bustle, of urgency about things. The radio would be on or the record player would be churning out ballads by that tenor with the trembly voice. Monica might find her emptying a cupboard, jam jars, teacups, soup tureens, candle stumps strewn around the floor. Her mother might be cradling a tarnished silver spoon in her lap, muttering to herself or the spoon, and, on seeing her daughter, her face would break into a smile. “Come here now,” she’d say, “till I tell you about the old woman who gave me this.” Gretta might be energetically scissoring up one of her dresses to alter it for Monica. Or Monica might find her passionately engaged in one of hershort-lived hobbies: crocheting milk-jug covers, varnishing plant pots, threading beads onto twine to make a “gorgeous” necklace, edging hankies with chains of daisies, pansies and forget-me-nots. These projects would be found, abandoned, half finished, a few weeks later, stuffed into a drawer. Gretta’s hobbies burned brightly and for a short time. Years later, Monica’s first husband, Joe, after watching Gretta balance her checkbook in about five minutes, would remark that maybe all her mother’s craziness was caused by never finding an outlet for her intelligence. “I mean,” he said, “she never even went to school, did she?”
    But that summer, it seemed at first that Monica had lost her instinct when it came to her mother. She remembered very clearly the day she came through the front door, felt the flat, dampened air of the house and assumed her mother was out. Doing the altar flowers, perhaps, lighting a candle for somebody, visiting one of the neighbors down the street. Monica let her satchel slide to the floor, chewing the end of her plait, and walked into the sitting room, where she was confronted by the sight of her mother stretched out on the good sofa, in the middle of the day, asleep, with her hands crossed over her, her feet on the upholstery. Monica could not have been more astonished if she’d come in and found her serving tea and scones to the Pope himself.
    She waited in the doorway a moment longer. She stared at her mother’s sleeping form, as if to be sure that this was her mother, that she was really sleeping, that this wasn’t one of her elaborate jokes, that she wasn’t going to spring up in a moment, shouting, “Fooled you, didn’t I?”
    Her mother was asleep. At four o’clock in the afternoon. The paper was folded next to her. Her chest rose and fell and her mouth was slightly open, taking small sips of air. When Michael Francis crashed in through the back door a few minutes later, Monica was still standing there. She hushed her brother frantically and they both stood and stared at the unbelievable sight of their mother napping in the middle of the day.
    “Is she dead?” Michael Francis whispered.
    “ ’Course not,” Monica snapped in fear. “She’s breathing. Look.”
    “Will I go and fetch Mrs. Davis?”
    They had been told to call on the next-door neighbor if there was ever an emergency. Monica considered this option, her head on one side. Although Michael Francis was ten months older than her, it was generally left to her to make all the decisions. They were in the same class at school; people took them for twins. He was older but she was more responsible. She and her brother had forged this arrangement between themselves and never questioned it.
    “No.” She shook her head. “Mammy wouldn’t want us