Free Last Rites by John Harvey

and above the one of Ryan Giggs. Along the landing, Sandra’s room was pristine in comparison, everything folded, hanging, shelved; pony books stood alongside Mills and Boon romances and Pride and Prejudice; they’d watched that together on the television, agreeing, despite Sean’s sneers, how gorgeous Colin Firth was as Darcy. A Greenpeace wall chart showing endangered species shared space with the Spice Girls and Gary Barlow from his days with Take That.
    Lorraine sat on her daughter’s bed and closed her eyes. “You don’t love him, do you? Even if you ever did, you don’t love him any more. I can tell.”
    When the phone rang, she gasped and it was as if, for a moment, her heart stopped. The receiver was cold as she fumbled it to her face. “Hello?”
    “It’s me. I was just wondering how you were.”
    Eyes closed, she rested her head against the wall. “Derek, I’m fine.”
    “You’re sure? ’Cause like I said, I can always …”
    “No, I’m … Derek, it’s sweet of you, but really, I’m okay. I just need a little time, that’s all.”
    Silence at the other end of the line.
    “Derek?”
    “Yes?”
    “You do understand?”
    “Yes. Yes, of course. Only …”
    “Only what?”
    Another silence. Then, “It doesn’t matter.”
    “Derek …”
    “No, really. As long as you’re okay. I’ll see you this evening, yes? Take care.” And the connection was broken.
    Slowly, Lorraine replaced the receiver and turned away.
    Cutting through toward the Jacobs’ house, Resnick glanced at the well-tended shrubs and borders, and wondered what had been there before. Other houses, smaller, a spread of terraced back-to-backs perhaps, workers’ homes so-called? Or had it all been open ground, sprawling north from printing works and bakery, allotments possibly? Prize marrows, dahlias, runner beans.
    For a couple of years, maybe more, his father had shared an allotment with another family from the Polish community. Resnick remembered watching him settle his cap on his head before setting out early on a weekend morning, trundling his wheelbarrow through half-deserted streets, fork and spade rattling against the rim. On lucky days, inside a sack, his father would be carrying manure, claimed swiftly from outside their house whenever the rag-and-bone cart had passed by; yellow-brown loaves of shit that lay steaming on the road’s smooth surface and crumbled open at the spade’s first touch.
    Sometimes Resnick had gone with him, helped to dig shallow trenches, forked over brittle earth, watched as his father bent and prodded and poked. After an hour, he would become bored and wander off, constructing elaborate daydreams detailing how he would run away and where: the adventures that would be his if and when he left, wiped the dust of the city from his feet. Thirty or so years later, it still clogged his pores, veiled his eyes, clung to his skin.
    And he regretted, looking back, all those times he had scorned his father’s company, shunned his presence—times that could never now be recovered or replaced.
    As Resnick pushed open the gate of number twenty-four, he glanced up and saw, framed for an instant in one of the upstairs windows, a woman with dark hair pulled back from the pale oval of her face, staring down.
    Lorraine was wearing black trousers and a blue shirt, faded, which hung loose over her hips; pale tan moccasins on her feet. No trace of makeup on her face. The skin around her eyes was puffed and dark, the tiny lines at their corners etched deep. She offered Resnick coffee and he followed her past the foot of the stairs into the first of two reception rooms, the dining-room, he supposed; connecting doors partly opened into the living room beyond—a leather sofa, deep armchairs, cut flowers in a tall glass vase. Everything smelled of polish, wax, spray-on shine.
    “Why don’t you go on through?” she said. “I won’t be long.”
    Where he had anticipated hostility, without knowing exactly why, the