The Taxi Queue Read Online Free Page B

about. No funeral. Nothing. ‘It’s what he wanted,’ she said. The sentence seemed the oddest thing she had ever said – morethan grown-up, terrible. She wondered whether she might spend the rest of her life saying such things. She and Abe looked at each other.
    Then Abe said ‘I’m having upstairs’ and everything was fine again. Kirsty remembered liking the downstairs; downstairs had more character. The top floors had always been peripheral.
    After they left the pub, Abe went into town and Kirsty returned to the flat in New Cross that she shared with her boyfriend, Luka, and two second-year students, Zoë and Leanne.
    Kirsty told Luka about Neil’s house and said that she and Abe were going to move in together. Luka carried on pouring milk into his tea until the mug overflowed. Then, after a moment he said, ‘But he’s your brother.’
    â€˜And?’ she said.
    â€˜You don’t even like him.’
    â€˜Yes I do. He’s been really helpful lately.’
    Luka was letting the spilt tea drip over the edge of the table and just watching it.
    It was true that Kirsty criticised Abe as a matter of routine. Some of the things he did left her breathless. Luka couldn’t grasp that it’s possible to feel more than one thing at a time, or even nothing at all plus one other feeling. It was natural to hate and love a brother. It felt quite normal. There was no need to agonise over it.
    â€˜We’ll carry on seeing each other,’ Kirsty said, stretching out to touch Luka’s pale face. He looked very serious.
    â€˜
Will
we?’ Luka jerked his head out of reach.
    Kirsty hadn’t asked him to move to Iverdale Road with her. The absence of the invitation hung there like a huge change of address card with only one name on it.
    â€˜This will be hard for Eugen,’ Luka said. Eugen was his great friend – also from Croatia. He had had a short affair with Abe and turned gloomy when it ended.
    â€˜He’ll get over it,’ Kirsty said.
    They stared at one another.
    â€˜You won’t be on your own. Zoë and Leanne are still here,’ Kirsty said.
    â€˜You didn’t say you wanted to leave,’ Luka said.
    â€˜This just happened, Luka. My dad died. I didn’t plan it.’
    â€˜So you wouldn’t have left in the foreseeable future?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Kirsty said. She remembered the cement-patched steps to Neil’s front door and the gabled dormer window in the roof that looked like a silly miniature house in its own right. She had never heard Luka, or anyone young, talk about the foreseeable future. As a concept, it was impossible. He had probably been taught the phrase in English lessons at school in Zagreb.
    Luka’s eyes challenged her but Kirsty didn’t rise. A picture – or a feeling – of a deep pot containing two children came to her. No one else, looking in, would know what it felt like down there. She felt the day – endless and exhausting – had been wasted. She and Abe should have taken everything more slowly. They shouldn’t have laughed so much. Now the day was over and the only way to reclaim it would be to talk about the man who had been her father and to ask questions that had no answers. She wanted to understand how Neil could have ignored his children and then left them everything he possessed. She had said things in the wrong order and she couldn’t go back. It was impossible to go back. If you changed one thing, everything changed.

4
    ABE’S FEET SHIFTED with the rhythm of the tube train. Warm air pumped through the ventilators inside the carriage and he took off his hat and scarf and stuffed them in his pockets. Deep in the underground tunnels weather was absent. The puny inch or so of snow that lay above ground was irrelevant, existing only as an anxious thought in the faces around him. Other passengers were standing but not so tightly packed that