The Red Room Read Online Free Page A

life more now--and eaten apple crumble. Made
my excuses and left. Now I was alone. My
footsteps echoed in the empty streets, where
puddles glinted and cans rattled in gateways.
A cat wrapped itself around my legs then
disappeared into the shadows of an alleyway.
At home, there was a message on the
answering-machine from my father. "Hello," he said,
in a plaintive voice. He paused and waited,
then: "Hello? Kit? It's your father." That was
it.
It was two in the morning and I was wide
awake, my brain buzzing. I made myself a
cup of tea--so easy when it's just for one. A
bag and boiling water over it; then a dribble of
milk. Sometimes I eat standing at the fridge,
or prowling around the kitchen. A slice of
cheese, an apple, a bread roll past its
sell-by date, a biscuit munched
absentmindedly. Orange juice drunk out of
its carton. Albie used to cook huge
elaborate meals--lots of meat and herbs and
spices; pans boiling over; strange misshapen
cheeses on the window-sill; bottles of wine
uncorked at the ready; laughter rolling and
swilling through the rooms. I sat on my sofa and
sipped the tea. And because I was alone, and in a
maudlin kind of mood, I took out her
photograph.
She was my age then, I knew that, but she
looked ludicrously young and long ago. Like a
faraway child; someone glimpsed through a gate at the
end of the garden. She was sitting on a patch of
grass with a tree behind her, wearing frayed denim
shorts and a red T-shirt. The gleam of sunshine
was on her, dappling her bare, rounded knees.
Her pale brown hair was long and tucked behind her
ears, except for a strand that fell forward over one
eye. A moment later, and she would have pushed it
back again. She had a soft, round face,
sprinkled with tiny summer freckles, and gray
eyes. She looked like me; everybody who had ever
known her always said that: "Don't you look like the
image of your mother? Poor dear," they would add,
meaning me, her, both of us, I suppose.
She died before I was old enough to keep her 31
as a memory, though I used to try to edge myself
back through the foggy early years of life, to see
if I could find her there, on the bleached-out edge of
recollection. All I had were photographs like
this, and stories told to me about her. Everyone had
their own versions. I had only other people's word for
her. So it wasn't really my mother I was missing
now, but the impossibly tender idea of her.
I knew, because of the date my father had written
punctiliously on the back, that she was already
pregnant, though you couldn't tell. Her stomach
was flat, but I was there, invisible, rippling
inside her like a secret. That's why I loved the
photograph: because although nobody else knew it,
it was both of us together. Me and her, and love
ahead. I touched her with my finger. Her face
shone up at me. I still cry when I see her.
    2
    I have always been nervous of New Year's
Eve. I can't make myself wholly believe in a
fresh start. A friend once told me this meant I
was really a Protestant rather than a Catholic.
I think she meant that I trail my life behind
me: my dirty linen and my unwanted baggage.
Nevertheless, I wanted my return to work to be a
new beginning. The flat was cluttered with all the
things that Albie had left behind. It had been six
months, yet I still had a couple of his shirts in
the cupboard, an old pair of shoes under my
bed. I hadn't properly thrown him out. Bits
of him kept turning up, like pieces of
wreckage washed up on a beach after a storm.
That Sunday evening, I put on a pair of
white cotton trousers and an orange top with
three-quarter-length sleeves and lace around the
neck, like a vest. I put mascara on my
lashes, gloss on my lips, the smallest dab
of perfume behind my ears. I brushed my hair and
piled it, still damp, on top of my head. It
didn't matter. He would come, and then a bit
later he would go away again, and I would be in my
flat on my own once more,