Free The China Factory by Mary Costello

listened to the waves crashing on the rocks. She had not thought of the child for hours. She closed her eyes for a second. We are here, now , she thought. We have come through it .
    Emily woke that night, crying. David lifted her into their bed. Water dripped from the ceiling into a bucket. It was 3am, the dead of night. The hearse was moving across the country, its headlights cutting a tunnel through the dark. Soon it would round a bend and the dark bulk of Croagh Patrick would loom over it.
    â€˜Sleep,’ David whispered. ‘Sleep… It will all be over tomorrow.’
    She listened for the plop of each drop in the bucket. She knew now that Matt’s stamp on her was permanent. She dozed off and fell into a dream. A phone was ringing in an empty house. It rang for a long time and when she picked up, it was Matt, calling from abroad. There was static on the line, followed by little blips, like Morse code. Then his voice broke through. ‘Guess who died?’ he said.
    The weather held all day. In the church the priest said Matt’s name over and over. Paul read from the Scriptures and a fiddler played a slow air. In the front pew his mother and sisters sat still and upright. Behind them Paul, with a back like Matt’s, sat next to his wife Anna and their teenage sons. The coffin of Lebanese cedar was ten feet away. She could feel his closed eyes watching her. A shaft of sunlight fell through a high window and hit the head of the priest, and dust particles floated down from the raised Host. She tilted her head, and followed the slanting ray of sun, and a memory rushed inof a day—an evening—in autumn, eighteen months after Charlie’s death. Some instinct had prompted her to take a walk, and down the street, the sun disappeared and she felt drops of rain on her head, but forced herself on, because every small triumph counted in those days. But then the drops came heavier and she turned and hurried back to the house. At the front window she stood for a moment and looked in. He was sitting on the couch talking on the phone, and just the sight of him restored her. Then she tapped the glass with her fingernail to startle him—no, surprise him—with her unexpected return. He jumped up in panic and dropped the phone into its cradle. She stepped back onto the grass and crushed a snail underfoot.
    â€˜Who were you calling?’
    â€˜No one. I wasn’t calling anyone.’ She saw the gold flecks in his eyes and they were jumping.
    When he went out she pressed the redial button. A woman answered, ‘Hello.’ And again, ‘Hello.’ In the background there were children, a TV, a kitchen maybe. Ruth hung up and redialled and the woman on the other end was silent.
    There were other signs too, that made her insides quicken, and eventually she knew he wanted to be found out. He showed no remorse. She, Ruth, had grown distant. He had felt her silent blame every day—with her dead eyes she had accused him. For months she did nothing—she could not countenance being without him. Then, when the woman in the kitchen began to call and calmly ask for him by name, Ruth left.
    The congregation stood and there was a rattle of chains, and a cloud of incense rose to the roof. The coffin was wheeled outside and they walked behind it down the hill to the graveyard. Was it Solomon’s chariot that was fashioned from cedar wood? Was it the cedars of Lebanon that wept? She pictured his house back in the city—bills on the table, dishes in the sink, his bike in the hall. Shethought his death had imperilled her, too. She thought how its timing had hovered over him, hidden from him. How he had risen each morning for weeks, months, years and moved through each day and lain down each night, but the countdown had begun—he was already hurtling towards this moment, as she was towards hers.
    Flocks of seagulls circled and shrieked above the grave as the mourners gathered close. The