Free Unlike a Virgin by Lucy-Anne Holmes

you coming in?’ It’s Mum calling from the porch.
    ‘Rosemary,’ he says, throwing the letter back at me, ‘you look ravishing.’ Danny always turns into a smarmy maître d’ around my mother, but I’m grateful of it today because it gives me a moment to compose myself. I put the statement and the other unopened letters back in the glove compartment and close it.
    ‘Hey, Mum, you look nice,’ I say, getting out of the car. My mum gives me the glassy smile that I’ve become used to over the years.
    ‘Danny, I was wondering if you’d mind changing somelight bulbs for me; you’re so nice and tall,’ my mum tweets. Not as in online networking; as in flirting. ‘And whenever you get a second, I’d be so grateful if you could pop over and do the lawn.’
    ‘Not a problem, Rosemary.’
    ‘I spoke to your father this morning, Grace.’
    Whoa. I wasn’t expecting that so fast. She normally waits until pudding to drop the ‘I’ve been talking to the dead’ lines.
    Mum talking to my dead father is a relatively recent phenomenon. It didn’t happen when I lived at home, or at least if it did she didn’t mention it. In the early days after Dad’s death, when we were all a bit loopy, she used to wake in the night and claim to have seen him watching her from the end of the bed. But that only went on for a few months. She’s often dreamt about him, and occasionally she would mention the dream, but they used to be the ‘I dreamed your dad and I were in Cornwall’ type statements to which I would usually reply, ‘I’ve never been to Cornwall,’ or, ‘Cornwall’s supposed to be beautiful.’ There didn’t seem anything particularly unhealthy about it, until one day about three months ago, she called me at work. Wendy put the call through to me and made an eek face, as she sometimes does when Mum sounds a bit odd. So I picked up the phone and said, ‘Hey, Mum.’
    ‘Grace, Grace, I’ve spoken to your father.’
    She made it sound as though she’d been trying to get through to him for ages and the number had been engaged. Her delivery was so matter of fact that I couldn’t respond.
    ‘He … he …’ she was starting to sound excited now and couldn’t get her words out. ‘Grace, you’re not to wear purple.’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘That’s what he said. I heard his voice this morning and he said, “Gracie, don’t wear purple.” Don’t wear purple, of all the things!’ She was starting to trail off and sound emotional now. ‘Are you wearing purple now?’ she whispered.
    ‘Yes.’
    She gasped.
    ‘You’d better go home and change then.’
    So I did, and all the time I worried that Mum, who for a long time had had a scatterbrained approach to the plot, had finally lost it.
    I feel Danny tense behind me. I’m not surprised. He’s probably worried I’ll get back in the car and he won’t get his roast, and it does smell good.
    ‘Oh?’ I’m trying to be casual, which I think most people would find tricky under the circumstances. ‘What did he say?’
    ‘He’s worried about you, Grace.’
    ‘What? About me wearing purple?’
    I see my mother’s perfectly aligned back go rigid. This is what my mother does to ward off confrontation. She tenses various parts of her body, mostly her back and her jaw, but sometimes you’ll see an arm suddenly stiffen or a hand quickly clench. The latter can be disconcerting. The first time Dan saw the hand clench, he ducked.
    ‘No,’ she says tightly. ‘Sit down at the table, Danny. Perhaps you’d open the wine.’
    ‘Of course, Rosemary,’ says Danny. ‘Oh, these flowers are nice. Have you got an admirer?’
    I glance quickly at him. He’s pointing to a large vase of fresh flowers on the table. I haven’t seen fresh flowers in this house for years.
    ‘Who gave you … ?’ I start, but Mum ignores me.
    ‘He’s worried about you.’
    ‘What’s he worried about?’ I say, following Dan to the table.
    ‘He thinks you should start singing again.’
    I