The Book of Other People Read Online Free Page B

coax out those smiles? What gentlenesses? Whatever they were, they outlived Dear Olly, and, in these portraits, my dear man’s humour and compassion will outlive us all. Diamond-anniversary couples; babies on rugs; sisters in easy poses, extended families in stiffer groups; matriarchs amidst tribes of grandchildren; shiny newly-weds; surly, softened adolescents; a Sikh family even, here in Dorset. What a miracle it is, how two faces become one in their children’s.
    Families, I decided, come in three types.
    First, families who participate in each other’s lives.
    Second, families who merely report their lives to each other.
    Third, families who don’t even do that.
    We Castles, I suppose, are type two. Philip has his sights on type three, which is his lookout. But my fondest aspiration is to belong to the first type of family. To belong to a family who won’t push you away for the crime of desiring intimacy! Even if I suggest to Camilla, my daughter , that I visit her in London, it’s No, Mum, this week’s no good ; or Sorry, Sinead’s having a party this weekend ; or Later in the summer, Mum, work’s gone mental right now . Then August arrives and she clears off to Portugal with her father and Fancy-Piece. How am I supposed to feel? So Muggins here does her best at the bookshop, the drama society, my England in Bloom Committee, and what do I get? The likes of June Nolan dubbing me a ‘busybody’ of course, that’s all water off a duck’s back, but where’s the sin in wanting to be needed? In telling one’s loved ones those home truths they need to hear?
    Everything would have changed, post-wedding. Everything. Olly, his sisters, Leo here, plus better halves, plus toddlers, gather at their parents’ home every weekend. I’d be a peace-broker, a soft-shoulder, a mucker-inner, a washer-upper. We swear, Judith, we don’t know how we got by without you.
     
    ‘ So sorry to keep you,’ said Leo. ‘You wouldn’t believe how - ’
    The phone rang.
    ‘Not again !’ Leo rolled his long-lashed eyes. ‘Do you mind?’
    ‘Go ahead.’ Judith Castle-Dunbar’s voice is armoured in self-belief, and brings to mind the huskiness of Margaret Thatcher. I like it. ‘You must have so much to sort out.’
    ‘This is too rude, and you are too kind.’
    ‘Not at all.’ I toyed with my pearls, wondering if he’d guessed the identity of little old moi . ‘You’re holding up valiantly.’
    Leo smiled his roguish smile and answered the phone in his masculine way. I perched on a bottom stair and did some pelvic-floor exercises. ‘Jimbo!’ Leo muffled his voice this time, speaking low and turning away. ‘Olly’s not here, no . . .’
    An acquaintance had yet to hear the dreadful tidings, doubtless.
    ‘He’s not answering the phone for a day or two.’ Leo spoke low, but my hearing is excellent. ‘He met this woman on the Internet, right - yeah, I know, how dodgy is that? So they meet up, just the once, just a week ago, right, in Bath - and in sink those female talons . . . Nah, she said “mid-forties” but Olly reckons it’s more “mid-sixties” . . . It’s not that, though. After just one meeting , right, she books herself in at the Hotel Excalibur no less to - exact words, I josh not - to “consummate our relationship”! “ Consummate our relationship ”! Couldn’t make it up, could you? So Olly comes on his knees to me, right, to phone her up and tell her he’s dead. It’s not funny! No other way to get her off his back . . . Whassat? . . . I dunno . . . some tragic menopausal hag. Like she’s desperate to be loved, but she pounces on anyone who might love her, so desperately, so hungrily, they run a mile! What? . . . Oh, that’s the funniest part. I meant to say he’d had a heart attack - nice and clean, see, no complications - but when the crunch came, right, out came this garble about a hit-and-run driver . . . Stop laughing! Then , of course, Miss Hormone Replacement Therapy demands a