Like a House on Fire Read Online Free

still sometimes when he least expected it, even after three years: moments when he missed him with an intensity almost like an electric shock; something searing that flashed and left a lingering ache. Scott would have known exactly what to do — pour them both a whisky, probably, and then sit him on the verandah talking till they’d killed the whole bottle. Chris wouldn’t have been standing here now, either, feeling useless and tongue-tied, embarrassed by the floundering pause between his mother and himself, like two strangers observing someone else’s ritual. Scott would have known how to give the moment some ceremony.
    He stands beside the car dangling the bag, waiting for her as she pauses by a craft shop and browses through things outside in a rustic barrow. Chris can see what’s piled there — miniature teddies, lavender sachets, fabrics. She has a wardrobe full of unfinished craft projects at home, although, thank Christ, he suspects she’s finally given up and stopped knitting baby clothes. Totally absorbed, she picks up a bag of bath salts and examines it with all the time in the world.
    â€˜Your mother could shop in a service station,’ his father used to say, poker-faced. He’d wait outside countless shops for her in an attitude just like Chris’s now, leaning resignedly against the car. She’ll want something to commemorate the trip, Chris knows, a souvenir she can store on a shelf and refer to bravely, and sure enough she gets back in the car with a paper bag.
    â€˜Lovely silver frame,’ she murmurs. ‘Half price. There were a few of them too. I wonder if I should have got one for Pam.’ She sighs, comforted by her purchase, the slight of the fake cream forgotten.
    Chris is looking for the turn-off. He thinks he’ll know it when he sees it, although he hasn’t been up here for twenty-five years. Then another twenty kilometres or so to get to the lake. As far as he can remember there’s a little jetty there, past the campsites — a good spot to stand and do it, rather than the muddy shore. He’s got the digital camera all charged up.
    His father’s car has some kind of cruise-control check that beeps at him every time he inadvertently goes above the set limit, and he keeps jumping when he hears it, feeling a ludicrous start of guilt. The late-morning heat in the car is making the familiar smell of his father even stronger. When was the last time he’d stood close enough to his father to inhale the real thing? Not at the hospital; nothing there but the smell of antiseptic and drugs. He punches a CD into the player and another little memory-bomb goes off in the back of his head — it’s the Three Tenors, the CD he bought for his parents two Christmases ago. That would have been the last time: a fraternal, quick arm-squeeze and back-slap, both glad to have it over.
    There’s a headache starting behind his eyes. He can feel what’s coming: his mother wants to talk, and he must pay attention to divert her in time from dangerous territory.
    â€˜People said the service was so lovely and dignified,’ she begins. ‘Graham and Laura were asking me whether I was going to have a memorial plaque for your father at the crematorium gardens. Well, I went out with Neil and Shirley to have a look, because that’s what Elaine did when John died, but Laura told me it cost her thousands. And they don’t even inter the ashes, just scatter them. It’s all just garden beds, you know; it’s not as if there’s even an actual plot.’
    Chris waits for the next bit, about the lake. He can’t help it, this roiling, sneering intolerance. She’s grieving, he knows; vulnerable, needing contact, prone to these banal litanies of repetition, but he just can’t help it. He clenches his jaw.
    â€˜I told them we’d just be going to the lake, just the family. It’s better to do something