Liz Nugent - Lying in Wait

‘There are worse things to be than fat,’ Laurence said insolently.

‘Oh dear, please let’s not fight,’ I said, trying to broker a truce, but Andrew ignored me.

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘Nothing,’ said Laurence, sullen.

‘I’m sorry you heard me say those things. I know I haven’t been very… well recently…’

Laurence left the room abruptly, slamming the door behind him, not allowing his father a chance to apologize.

Andrew turned to me. ‘He knows. ’

‘Don’t be silly, darling. He doesn’t know anything.’

‘But the way he looks at me… he won’t even be alone in the same room as me any more—’

I cut him off. I was determined the dead girl wasn’t going to ruin Christmas for us. ‘We are not talking about that. You should speak to Laurence. Let him know that you actually care about him.’

‘For God’s sake, Lydia, of course I care about him, but I don’t intend to smother him like you do. He’s eighteen. He’ll have moved out of the house by the end of next summer.’

‘Don’t say that. He can live here as long as he likes.’

‘Well, if I was him, I’d be gone like a shot. You indulge him like he’s a little boy. You need to let go.’

‘I would have been able to let go if you hadn’t destroyed our plan by killing that girl. ’ I whispered it.

‘So now it’s OK to talk about it, is it? When it suits you ? Her name was Annie.’ Andrew’s temper flared. I knew to stay quiet. He would brook no interruption in this mood. He whispered furiously, ‘You carry on as if nothing has happened, and I’m living a waking nightmare, in dread of every knock on the door. You have it all arranged. If anything happens, I go to prison and you and Laurence go away and live a very nice life without me. Can you imagine how a judge might be treated in prison?’

I moved the glass and decanter out of his reach because he was very angry, angry enough to smash something, but he barely noticed.

‘Have you ever loved me the way I love you? Really? I actually liked Annie. You chose her, remember? I didn’t mind that she was a plain-looking girl, because it was less of a betrayal of you. She was different of course, but she was sweet and funny…’

I put my hands over my ears, but I could still hear him.

‘…but it was only ever you, and now I have to look at her fucking grave out the kitchen window every day! I did it all for you—’

I wanted to speak up then about the violence of his language, but he put his hand up as a warning to me.

‘And no, of course you didn’t ask me to kill her, but you kept on and on at me – “Don’t let her make fools of us”, “Get the money back from her”, “You should never have trusted her”, “Why did you believe her?” – on and on and on until the pressure was unbearable. And when Annie threatened to blackmail me, I snapped. And she was a living human being. I’m on a knife edge, Lydia, don’t you see?’

He clutched at his chest and I thought he was being overly dramatic but then he gasped for breath. I watched in horror as he tried to steady himself against the table. I reached out to stop him falling and he grabbed my hand.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ I said, like an idiot, because any fool could see he was having an attack of some kind. He slipped downwards, and I tried to hold him up. His eyes were open, pleading and desperate. He could no longer speak, but I could see that he was begging me to help him. I pulled at his shirt collar, but he had taken off his suit after Mass and was wearing a loose open collar and no tie. I tried to hold on to him, but he was too heavy. He fell through my arms and slumped past me, across the table, displacing the turkey carcass from its serving platter, and then he was face down across the table, his hair in the turkey grease.

I looked at the turkey, which had dropped off the end of the table and slid along the slight slope in the kitchen floor to rest at the skirting board beside the door. I had ordered a big turkey, even though there were only three of us. Daddy had always said a small turkey looked mean, and we could make sandwiches and stews from the leftovers, and all these thoughts about the turkey and how many ways I could prepare it went through my head as my husband died, there and then, in front of me. I stood in shock in those ten seconds while he fought to breathe, until he was entirely still. I looked from him back to the turkey on the floor, trying to believe what I was seeing. And then I tried to shake him. I turned him over and blew into his mouth, but nothing I did worked. I screamed for Laurence. He came immediately and took in the scene at once. My poor brave boy.

Without saying anything at all, Laurence picked up the turkey and put it in the swing-top bin, forsaking the sandwiches and stews. He went to the cloakroom to call for an ambulance and returned with a brimming glass of brandy for me. He mopped the floor and then moved Andrew carefully on to it and put one of the kitchen cushions behind his head. He wiped the grease from the side of Andrew’s face and his hair with a tea towel. I wanted to close his eyes, but there was a kind of empty innocence in them and I needed Laurence to see that. He went to ring Andrew’s brother, Finn, who could relay the news to their mother, Eleanor.

Perhaps because it was Christmas Day, the ambulance took an hour to arrive, or maybe it was because Laurence had told them that Andrew was already dead and therefore it was not an emergency. Eleanor, Finn and his wife, Rosie, were there by then. Finn was shocked but stoic about his younger brother’s passing. They were not close.

Rosie swung into action, making phone calls and filling glasses while Eleanor just cried silently in Andrew’s leather armchair. I resented her sitting there. Andrew was her baby. Eleanor and I tolerated each other most of the time, but she never pulled her punches. Her role as the family matriarch entitled her to say whatever she wanted, and it was usually critical. She could never refrain from commenting about Laurence’s weight. Andrew usually visited his mother alone, and when she came to visit us I sat on my hands and bit my tongue. In our grief on this saddest of days, we did not make any attempt to comfort each other.

I think I went into shock after that. Finn and Laurence found my tablets and fed them to me. I was put to bed and woke up hours later, screaming for Andrew. Laurence came and sat with me, rubbing my arm, assuring me that everything was going to be OK and that he would look after me now. It seemed so stupid to me, a little boy saying he was in charge. The pain of this loss was so much worse than all of the miscarriages.

In the few days before the funeral, I stayed in bed, leaving all the arrangements to Finn and Rosie and my son. I lived in a tranquillized haze. There was some fuss over the clothes that Andrew was to be laid out in. Laurence had chosen Andrew’s favourite mustard-coloured corduroy slacks and burgundy cardigan, and Eleanor was horrified that he wasn’t in his best suit. I was beyond caring.

The funeral happened without my input. I felt as if I were underwater in a swimming pool and everything was happening above my head, beyond the surface of the water. I watched, absorbed, but could not engage. I stood in a receiving line, shaking hands with hundreds of people: politicians, broadcasters, coroners and lawyers. Laurence, by my side, kept me upright and supplied me with tissues. My emotions broke through when I watched Laurence carrying the coffin that contained his father’s corpse. I began to scream, and everyone stood away from me in horror until Rosie and one of her sons hustled me out of the church into the waiting black Mercedes. She found some pills in my bag and I was glad to take them. Eleanor got into the car and told me that I must conduct myself with dignity, and I wanted to slap her, but the pills began to work so I looked out of the window on the way to the graveyard, watching people carrying shopping bags, waiting at bus stops, chatting over hedges, as if nothing had happened. When the coffin was later lowered into the ground, Laurence held firmly on to my arm.