Free Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell Page B

across the room, she was aware of the floorboards rippling and undulating beneath her shoes, felt herself to be on the verge of collapse. She had suddenly realized why the day had been odd, why she’d been on the brink of tears, why the air around her had felt charged, frayed. She knew. She knew what Michael Francis was about to say. She knew what it was but she didn’t want to hear it. Something had happened to Aoife. A car accident, a drowning, an overdose, a murder, a horrible illness. Her brother was ringing to tell her that their sister was dead.
    She couldn’t get her legs to work; she couldn’t make it through the door. She wanted to stay here, with the wine and the casserole. She did not want to hear this.
    It was a new sister for her, the nurse said, as she stood with Monica at the nursery window, where babies were laid out likebuns in a baker’s shop. A little baby girl. It was hard to tell because she was wrapped in so many blankets and swaddles and bits of cloth. She had a red face and tiny fists, squeezed shut. She was called Aoife. Aoife Magdalena Riordan. A long name for such a small person.
    And then, it seemed to Monica, the baby opened her mouth and started to scream and that she did not stop screaming for a long time. She screamed to feed, she screamed while she was feeding, she screamed after she’d fed, so much so that she brought up all the milk she’d taken, in surprising yellow-white jets that hit the walls, the fabric of the sofa. She screamed if laid flat, even for a moment, on a bed or in the pram. She beat the air with those fists of hers, filled the room with sound; she clawed at Gretta’s hair and neck, gripped by her own private agony, she wept tears that ran over her face and into the collars of her matinée jackets. Her legs would work up and down, as if she were a toy with a winding mechanism, her face would crumple in on itself and the room would fill with jagged sounds that could have cut you, if you’d stood too close. Gretta would sink her head into her hands and Monica would rise from her homework and take the baby, and together, she and Aoife would go on a grief-filled tour of the kitchen.
    Her mother took the baby to the doctor, who glanced into the squalling pram and said, give her a bottle. So they trailed, Monica and Michael Francis and their mother and the pram, to the chemist and bought gleaming bottles with orange lids and a tin of powdered milk. But Aoife took one suck on the bottle and turned her head away and howled.
    Monica stood in the hallway, which Jenny had painted a dark brown that resembled melting chocolate. She’d meant to get around to redecorating it—it made her feel queasy every time she passed through it. But she couldn’t decide what color. Shell pink or cheerful orange? A dusky yellow? A springlike green?
    She picked up the phone receiver and held it in her hand. Her brother, she knew, was going to tell her about their sister’s death. He would give details, times, dates. And then what would she say? There would be arrangements to make. Aoife, she knew, was in New York. Their parents were in London. How to get them all in one place? And which place? Would they all go to New York? Or London? Or Ireland? Where would be the place for this?
    She lifted the receiver to her ear and listened for a moment to the noise of her brother’s house; a voyeur, she was, ear at a keyhole. A child was wailing in the background—a blaring, rising note. Another child’s voice was clear over it, saying something about Mummy and a bedtime story. She could hear her brother saying, “… going to count to five and by the time I get to four, I want you down off that windowsill, do you hear me?”
    “Michael Francis?” Monica said, sending her voice down the line to reach him, all the way in London. She didn’t want to hear what he was about to say, she didn’t want to accept the words, to take them from him and fold them into herself, where they would stay for the