Free Anticipation by Tanya Moir Page B

sixty-four thousand dollar question. Do I?
    ‘Fuck off,’ I say, ‘if you don’t like it.’
    It takes another two years and an audit temp called Cheryl, but in the end he does.
    It was unpleasant, of course. The division of things. Like unpicking a jumper. No matter how badly the pattern is turning out, you’ve still got something before you pull the thread, and nothing when you’ve finished.
    But it’s better now. Better here, a thousand miles north. Freer, you might say. There’s nothing as heavy as the touch of a man you used to love.
    Besides, the breaking up doesn’t matter a lot. Endings can happen to the best of couples. People don’t judge you for being divorced any more — the ones who don’t know you, at least. It’s almost something to be proud of. As if you’ve attained a higher level of consciousness, beyond the happily-ever-after, above the expectant yammer and bleat of romantic love.
    ‘So you’re planning on staying alone?’ Jake says, with a little smile like he doesn’t believe it.
    ‘Yep.’
    ‘You don’t worry …’ He stops.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Nothing.’ He looks around and sips his wine.
    ‘About getting old, you mean? Dying alone?’
    ‘Well, you are a long way from help here.’
    I shrug. ‘So they won’t find me for a few months. So what? It makes no difference to me.’ I prod the dog with my foot. ‘Although now, thanks to you, I’ll probably be half-eaten when they get here.’
    Jake laughs in a shocked sort of way, and I wonder how old heis. If he’s scared of dying. He’s put on a clean shirt after his swim; I can see a fine crust of salt drying on his skin. I could have offered him a shower. Should I have? Is that what nice people do?

    Not long after the rabbit episode, my mother and I inherit the dining table. Since it’s going to Maggie anyway, there’s not much point — says Nanny Biggs, aged fifty-nine — in moving it to Nelson. Maggie is touched: it’s easily the nicest thing my grandparents own. In fact, it’s always looked a bit out of place in their bungalow, hunched in a corner, looking down its elegant legs at the Axminster and remembering grander times.
    ‘You will be careful with it, won’t you?’ Nanny Biggs scowls at my hovering fingertips as if they might sprout scouring pads at any moment. ‘It’s George the Second, you know.’
    Maggie smiles. ‘I can remember hiding under it at Granny’s house.’
    ‘Oh yes,’ muses Sarah, eyeing the gin bottle that William is packing away, ‘May slept there most of the war.’
    She’s not doing a lot of packing herself, which is why I come to be going through her dresser drawers at afternoon tea time. At first I think the newspaper under the hankies and plastic pantyhose eggs is just a lining. But there’s something about the old black and yellow bride — the dress, the hair, the smile — that looks familiar. So I unfold the page.
    Baby-Burner’s Mother Found Dead
, I read. Page three of the
South London Examiner
, 3 June 1957.
The mother of suspected arsonist and child-killer Margaret May Buxton was found gassed to death in her Wimbledon home yesterday
, the lead paragraph continues.
Neighbours described 68-year-old Mrs Evelyn Harding as ‘a nice lady’ who was ‘very respectable’ and ‘popular in the street
’. (Which, all things considered, was good of them — the neighbours, I mean. Perhaps that’s why they cut the story out and sent it here. To show there were no hard feelings. Poor old Evelyn couldn’t help what she’d bred.)
    I look over my shoulder. No one’s watching, so I tuck theclipping into the bottom of a box, put Nanny Biggs’ handkerchiefs — a set cross-stitched with M for Mummy or Maggie or May or something else — back on top, cover them with pantyhose and scarves and gloves and socks, old raffle tickets and fleshy-pink things I don’t have names for. Pack it all down.
    ‘Janine?’ Maggie pokes her head round the door. ‘Would you like a biscuit?’
    I