Free The Last Weekend by Blake Morrison Page A

‘We’re half an hour late already. The girls will be furious.’
As we drove back, I thought of Em’s mum, who died of breast cancer last year (her dad died of a stroke three years before). We used to visit her every day at the hospice, or rather Em did — I preferred to sit in the car, reading my paper and watching for the parking warden. On Sundays, when you could park without a ticket, I sometimes went in with her and sat in the lime-coloured room staring at the water jug, the glucose drip, the bedside cupboard. On one occasion Em left me alone with her mum while she went to the Ladies. She was asleep at the time, or seemed to be, but the moment Em left the room she opened her eyes and beckoned me with her taped and tube-strapped right arm. It disgusted me to go near: her eyes were yellow and there were grains of half-chewed tablets between her teeth. But I had to get close in order to hear. ‘Make sure to look after my daughter,’ she whispered, or something like. You daft old bat, I thought: as if I wouldn’t. But I took her hand a second and nodded, to let her know, and I’m sure that eased her passage. She died a few days later, trusting Em would be all right.
Em mostly is all right. But the loss of two parents within three years has been hard on her — harder than the loss of myparents would be on me. She never used to cry. But these days almost anything can set her off: family photographs; television programmes her mum used to watch; the tasteless knick-knacks her parents left behind. There’s the baby issue, too: her mum was desperate to have a grandchild, and nowadays Em is desperate too, if only to grant her mother that wish posthumously. Baby or not, it tests my patience to see Em so weepy. Surely a year’s more than long enough. I’ve told her that when the tears dry up I’m giving the house a name as well as a number (it’s 27, by the way) and putting it on our garden gate: Dungrievin.
Not funny, Em says. Very little amuses her in her current state. But I know she’ll stop moping in due course. And at least she is reasonably healthy. Unlike Ollie, whose tumour I brooded on as he drove us back and insects exploded on the windscreen.
The girls will be furious, Ollie had said. But they did not look furious in the least. They were sitting in the orchard talking to someone, a third girl it looked like, and laughter skirled back at us as we walked towards them. Only Em’s face, when she turned round, belied the high spirits. I could see trouble there.
‘I’m afraid we’ve polished off the bottle,’ Daisy said.
The third girl had her back to me, but when she turned, the late sun on her curls, it was Archie. Black drainpipe jeans, black sleeveless T-shirt with a skull and crossbones, tattoo on his left shoulder, looped metal chains dangling down his thigh, leather wristband, bead necklace and bare feet — what had happened to my godson? His hair was darker, and he’d either been getting no sleep or was wearing eyeshadow. We have goths in Ilkeston, too, but Archie reminded me more of a guitarist from a 1970s heavy metal band.
He and Ollie ignored each other. But he managed a handshake, from a sitting position, for me. The hand was soft and the face deathly white between the acne. So here was the ghost from upstairs.
‘Hello, Archie.’
‘Hi.’
‘Come and join us,’ Daisy said, patting the wooden chair beside her.
Rufus’s tail thumped the grass as I stepped past him. The yellow bales out in the field were casting blue shadows. The solitary tree in the middle looked frozen.
‘Sit down, Ollie,’ Daisy said. ‘You’re making me nervous.’
‘It’s nearly time to go,’ he said.
‘Already?’
‘It’s gone half seven. The table’s booked for eight fifteen.’
‘We’d better change then. Come on, Em. Let’s make ourselves beautiful.’
Ignoring the girly banter (which I suspected was Daisy’s way of soliciting a protest that she looked quite beautiful enough already), Em got up and