Candelo Read Online Free Page A

I’m mad. And now I’m starting to think I am. Now I’m starting to wonder whether I have just been imagining that he’s up to his old tricks
, and I watched as she scratched the end of the match into the wooden railing, one thin black line.
Perhaps I have just made it all up. Perhaps he does still love me
.
    And she flicked her ash down into the garden.
    He says he does
.
    I was silent.
    And why shouldn’t I believe him?
    I did not answer her and I did not meet her gaze.
    She thanked me for coming up. She thanked me for coming to see if she was all right. Because when she opened the door, I had told her that I just wanted to know if she was okay.Speaking softly, knowing he was there, just on the other side of the wall.
    I appreciate it
, she said, as I told her I had to get going, that I was late for work.
    I turned to the stairs, the stairs I had made Marco fix, and she watched as I made my way back down to my flat. I could not see her, but I knew she was still there, leaning on the railing, watching me, the ash from her cigarette floating down, drifting past me, and into the garden below.
    And I wished I had been able to speak to him.
    That it was over and done with.
    And not the unknown, still to be faced.

five

    You see
, Vi says to me,
the personal is, by and large, a distraction. A self-indulgent excuse
.
    I drum my fingers on the table. Loudly.
    I am not saying always. But often. We get embroiled in trying to make our lives measure up to petty fantasies and we ignore the larger issues in life
.
    When she talks like this, I try to stay calm, but more often than not, I fail. I want to tell her that in her case, the global seems to be the distraction, the way of hiding from the personal. But if I begin to voice this, she gets furious.
    You are being ridiculous
, she says.
I always gave my utmost to the three of you. I don’t think you could ever say that I neglected you. You were enormously privileged
, and she lowers her glasses so that she is looking me straight in the eye.
    I cannot explain to her that this was not what I meant.
    If ever a choice needed to be made, ever
, and she pauses as she pushes her glasses back up onto the bridge of her nose,
I always chose my children
.
    She shakes her head and I can see how much I have upset her.
I loved you all
, she says.
I still do
.
    I see the dark circles under her eyes, her grey skin, soft, paper thin when I kiss her cheek, and I feel ashamed for having criticised her.
    I tell her that I know she does.
    But as I reach for her hand, I wish it didn’t always end like this. I wish we could sometimes speak of the things we need to talk about.
    Like the decision I was trying to make at the time of Mitchell’s funeral.
    Like Mitchell himself.
    The fact that his name had remained unmentioned for so long, the fact that none of us had seen him or spoken to him for all those years, did not mean I couldn’t picture him. With my eyes closed, he was there.
    Mitchell Jenkins.
    His bag at his feet. The zip broken, a pair of underpants, leopard print, sticking out of the opening. The dust coating his feet dirty grey.
    I looked at him from the ground upwards.
    Tall, thin and slightly bow-legged. Tight jeans, thongs and a checked shirt, sleeves rolled up to tanned forearms. Dark eyes looking at us, the three of us, through a fall of long blond hair. Looking at us and grinning.
    This
, Vi said,
is Mitchell
, and she turned to us.
This
, she said,
is Simon, Ursula and Evie
.
    He held out his hand and the smile widened. Impossible inits breadth. Challenging the wariness that was, without doubt, evident in our faces.
    Gidday
, and he turned to each of us, one by one.
    But it wasn’t just his smile that I saw; it was his foot tapping, his mouth chewing gum, the fingers of his other hand clenched against his thigh; these small signs of nervousness beneath the bravado of that grin.
    And I did not give an inch.
    Simon, however, reached out to return the