Free Ghosting by Jonathan Kemp

that’s all.’
    ‘So you rang Paul as well?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And what have you told them?’
    ‘I’m just worried about you, Grace. No need to bite my head off.’
    ‘I told you, there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m fine.’ She thinks about that joke: F.I.N.E. – Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic… something.
    ‘We care about you, that’s all.’
    ‘I’m
fine
,’ she says before hanging up. Emotional, that’s it. Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional.
    She brings to mind a woman she used to see wandering the streets back in Wythenshawe barking obscenities at passing traffic. She remembers sitting behind her once on the upper deck of a bus, watching her screaming,
‘Suck shit for your fucking fare!’
and wondering what must it feel like to have so much rage inside that you lost control.
Am I losing control?
she thinks.
Shall I lose control? Would it do me some good if I did? Should I swear obscenities at full throttle? Smash something?
    A Polish friend of her mother’s who’d survived a death camp – a blurred blue serial number on her wrist – used to keep in her handbag at all times a china saucer wrapped up in a tea towel, along with a small hammer. In moments of stress she would remove them, taking the hammer to the saucer until it was in pieces and all her anger had disappeared, and her face would be serene. Going over to the cupboard by the sink, Grace selects an old, chipped side plate and wraps it up in a white cotton tea towel. She takes the hammer from the toolbox beneath the sink, feeling the muscles in her right arm flex with its heft. And then for five minutes she vents her frustration by pulverising the plate, emitting deepgrunts and high yelps of exertion and frustration, and cursing like a navvy under her breath. She would have gone on for longer, till the plate was powder, but when the phone starts ringing she stops to answer it.
    It’s Paul. She tries to calculate the time it is where he lives, but she never can work it out, even though they’ve been in Melbourne ten years now. ‘Hello, love,’ she says.
    ‘You sound out of breath,’ he says.
    ‘I just ran for the phone; it’s worn me out! Listen, Gordon had no right to go worrying you all; there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me.’
    ‘What’s all this about you seeing Dad’s ghost?’
    ‘Take no notice, it was something and nothing. It’s been blown out of all bloody proportion.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘You didn’t see a ghost, then?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘But why would he say that?’
    ‘So you’re taking his side?’
    ‘It’s not about taking sides, Mum, it’s about making sure you… you know, that you’re OK.’
    ‘I wish everyone would just stop worrying about me; I’m perfectly fine. I saw someone who reminded me of your dad, that’s all. Gordon’s gone and turned it into a full-scale drama. Just forget about it. How are you?’
    ‘I’m great. Working like a madman, as usual, but essentially great. We’re all doing great.’ He works as a hedge fund manager, whatever that is. He’s explainedit to her umpteen times but all she really understands is that he makes lots of money. Lives for making lots of money. Always has. As a child he wanted to be the banker in every game of Monopoly, and would sulk if he didn’t win, more than once overturning the whole board in rage.
    ‘What time is it there?’ she says.
    ‘Ten-thirty at night.’
    She asks after the wife with whom she’s never really bonded, and for whom she harbours a quiet resentment for taking her son to the other side of the world.
    ‘She’s fine; we’re all great.’
    She asks after the grandchildren, Theda and Raffa, aged seven and five. She’s not seen them since they were babies, apart from the occasional photograph.
    ‘Did you tell them about Hannah yet?’
    ‘Caroline doesn’t think they’re old enough yet.’
    She feels the boat tilt with the weight of someone stepping on to it and her body