Free The Lost Life by Steven Carroll Page B

couple who haven’t yet discovered, because they are too young, that when young lovers part, even ardent young lovers, they doso forever. Her heart goes out to them, but she is also aware it is not only for the eighteen-year-old Catherine and her young man that her heart goes out.

    At first Catherine isn’t sure what it is that has caught her mother’s attention, for her mother has, from time to time, looked up from the armchair where she is preparing her lessons and glanced at her daughter with puzzled curiosity. But it is almost furtive, and each time Catherine catches her glance, her mother quickly looks down again. The next time she looks up Catherine is quick enough to follow her mother’s eye and sees she is looking at her dress — at her knee, to be precise. And at first this is a mystery to Catherine, until she sees it, the thing that has caught her mother’s attention — a grass stain.
    Catherine’s impulse is to cover the spot with her hand or the newspaper she is reading, but concludes that there is no point concealing it now. It has been spotted and conclusions are being drawn. Presumably disturbing ones. Now, it is Catherine’s turn to studyher mother, with her eyes on the notes in front of her, her face hidden under her dark, springy curls, almost wiry, the complete opposite of Catherine’s hair. Catherine’s deep brown eyes come from her mother, but her hair, fine and straight, comes from her father. Her mother taps lightly on the notes with the pencil she is holding, as she always does when thinking or pretending that she is. She hasn’t looked up since Catherine noticed the grass stain (for the first time) because, Catherine concludes, she knows her daughter is on to her. She now knows what her mother has been furtively staring at, and her mother is now scrupulously avoiding staring. Which, of course, only draws attention to the fact that she was staring. When two people have lived closely together over many years, Catherine thinks, they learn to read each other’s movements and gestures. And just as Catherine is sure her mother knows she’s on to her, she is also sure that she is drawing disturbing conclusions about the stain on her dress. Her mother is thirty-eight, and to Catherine’s knowledge has only ever had anything to do with one man — Catherine’s father. And although he bolted on her, she never passed on to Catherine any of the anger that she must have felt. She has never been warned off men, neverbeen told that they are all shiftless and untrustworthy and only ever want one thing, although, in the circumstances, her mother would have been perfectly entitled to. No, Catherine’s mother, a school teacher in the town, has always seemed remarkably composed about the whole affair. Who knows, she might have been glad to be shot of him. She has said as much on a couple of occasions, how she’s watched bad marriages stumble from bad to worse through the years, putting on a brave face to the world and doing nobody any good, and how she was possibly lucky to get it all out of the way and over and done with years before. And everybody, especially Catherine, better off for her father having bolted because he would have been a dead weight and bloody pest anyway. And the only thing you could rely on, of course, was his un reliability. Still, nobody likes to be left, and the two of them must, at some time, have had something that’s worth getting a bit teary about, her mother and this father of hers whom she’s visited back in Manchester from time to time, as you would an uncle. So Catherine has never felt that the hurt or whatever damage may have been done has been passed on to her. And this is something for which she is now grateful. She has, at school and in the towns they’velived in, seen the damage done in damaged homes passed on from parents to children, as if it were only right and proper that they share the damage as they would the household jobs, one big happy damaged family. But