Free Acts and Omissions by Catherine Fox

so he could despise it with a clear conscience, but no such luck. It’s actually rather good, despite being written by an Evangelical and recommended by Paul Henderson. Dammit. Unlike his happy-clappy brethren (who seem to natter with the Lord all day long), Dominic seldom thinks he’s heard God address him directly in actual words. He could count those occasions on the fingers of one hand. All the same, last Sunday – as he leafed snippily through The Desires of the Heart – he very nearly heard a voice say: Get over yourself, queen.
    The words come back to him during the imposition of ashes. ‘Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return,’ he says to each person as he marks them with the cross. ‘Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.’ On his own forehead he can still feel the cold smears of ash. Remember you are dust. Get over yourself. Remember.
    Jane has neither given nor taken up anything for Lent. Yeah, like the knowledge we are dust is ever far from her thoughts! On Thursday morning Danny Skypes. Danny’s father wanders past in the background. ‘Hey, babe. Happy Valentine’s Day.’ He blows her a kiss and ambles out of the screen. Jane drives to Poundstretcher University. It could have been different. She could have dropped everything nineteen years ago. Gone to New Zealand.
    Oh well.
    She parks and gets out. Another grey day. Someone has lost a balloon. Jane watches as the red foil heart sails off over Lindford. Smaller, smaller. Gone.

Chapter 9
    Monday. Jane wakes. 8.20 a.m. and Sunningdale Drive is spookily quiet. No cars. No oafs surging past in a fug of Lynx and hormones. No screams or ‘omigod!’s. Unless the Rapture has occurred and Jane’s been left behind, it’s half term. At Linden University, half term is called Blended Learning Week. Because it is a week for blended learning, that’s why. Not because Poundstretcher has totally given up on expecting seven days of reading from their students. It’s a week without teaching, at any rate. There’s a peer appraisal day on Thursday, but unfortunately, Jane has a migraine then.
    She should get up. Her ‘To Do’ list hasn’t changed since she finally forced herself to shovel handfuls of paperwork into a big envelope for her accountant, so she could cross off ‘Tax’. Which means the rest of the list has started to accuse her. Bloody car needs servicing. Dentist check-up long overdue.
    Interesting: the thought of visiting the dentist appears to be the only thing capable of generating an urge to tackle Danny’s room. It’s been untouched since he left, and is acquiring a Miss Havisham aspect – had Miss Havisham been a stinky great crap-eating rugby slob. Half the crockery in the house is probably lurking in there somewhere, under rancid duvet covers, pizza boxes and busted lever-arch files spewing semi-literate A-level work. There’s still a note from last July stuck to his door: TIDY YOUR ROOM, PIG! Underneath, in tiny, tiny letters, the reply: You do it, bitch!
    Ah, dammit, now she’s crying again. Jane gets up and stomps to the shower. Danny’s so like his father. What was she nineteen years ago? Apart from an idiot, obviously. Just an incubator for a blunderbuss-load of mongrel genes, that’s what. Scots, Irish, Spanish, Maori, Samoan? God knows what’s there in the Mickey mix, but he discharged it with a will, ba-boom, and now there’s Danny, apparently undiluted by Rossiter DNA.
    The hot water widdles down onto her head. Why is her shower so crap? Why is her life so crap? And how come her boy has turned out to be one giant lump of contentment? A seal basking on a rock. He simply lets the waves of maternal stroppiness wash over him, then says, ‘Yeah, so anyway, Mum, can I have five quid for the train?’ Big grin? Please?
    She gets out and dries herself, towels her hair, blots her tears. The mirror is not her