Claire Moss - Who Do You Think You Are?

‘Well, that’s always nice to hear. I’m not interrupting am I?’

‘You are interrupting, but you’re interrupting me watching cricket on the internet.’

‘Oh, right. What match is it?’ I have no interest in any sport but was willing to feign one now.

‘England and South Africa, one day international.’

‘What’s the score?’

‘England are batting, 226 for 3.’

I nodded. Good or bad? I wasn’t sure so I kept my face neutral. A Yorkshireman who didn’t get cricket was beyond shameful.

She clicked a button and sat back in her chair and looked up at me. ‘I haven’t got a clue what any of that means, by the way. My dad was into cricket and I never could be bothered to find out about it when he was alive. I thought I’d give it a go now but – ’ she shrugged ‘ – I have absolutely no idea what’s going on. Why do they keep hitting the ball and then just standing there and not running? No wonder they’re all fat.’

I laughed. Thank God. A girlfriend who knew more about sport than I did would be far too demeaning. Not that she was going to be my girlfriend of course.

‘Well, maybe I’ve got something else for you to concentrate on instead.’

‘Oh no, you haven’t brought me work have you? And I thought you just wanted an excuse to see me again.’

‘Well, that too, I mean, of course, you know…’ I stuttered to a halt.

‘What have you got for me then?’ She obviously felt sorry for me and was willing to gloss over my ham-fisted attempts at charisma.

‘Would you be able to tell me any more about Edgarsbridge pit? Just a bit of info on, I don’t know, productivity, particularly during the strike, how many were employed there, how many were working during the strike. Any photos, any reportage – anything really. ‘

‘You think we were onto something with that “other” Peter Milton?’

‘I don’t know.’ I liked the way she said ‘we’, as though we were colleagues working on a joint assignment. ‘I want to try and find out a bit more in case we are heading in the right direction.’

‘Have you spoken to anyone else?’ She was making notes as she was talking. ‘Did you manage to get in touch with his mother?’

‘No. I was right, she’s dead.’

Tash nodded. ‘OK. Any other family still around that you know of?’

‘Maybe his sisters. Or, you know, maybe brothers, who knows?’

‘Yeah.’ She was nodding slowly. I couldn’t tell if the raise of one eyebrow was her trying to be languidly charming or because it was so painfully obvious that I was lying. Or at least avoiding the truth. ‘Yeah, you should look into that. Check the electoral roll and whatever.’

‘Right.’ I nodded. ‘I will do. So, do you think you could find me any more stuff about Edgarsbridge?’

She stuck out her bottom lip. It was an oddly sexy mannerism she had. Or maybe it was that I was beginning to find everything about her oddly sexy. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I would have thought so. I’m not sure what exactly, but I’ll have a dig around and see what I can find.’

I smiled. ‘Excellent.’

‘OK, then.’ She looked up at me, one eyebrow raised again. Languidly charming, I decided. ‘Don’t tell anyone though – they’re very strict about us not doing people’s research for them.’

‘They’d rather you were watching cricket on the internet?’

‘No, they’d rather I actually got some work done, but they can’t have everything.’

I smiled. When was the last time I met a woman like this? One who made me laugh on purpose, rather than because I suddenly realised how comically mismatched we were.

‘So, when do you need this by?’

I took a breath. ‘How about tomorrow night? Seven o’clock outside again?’

She nodded with what appeared to be genuine enthusiasm. ‘OK. I’ll look forward to it.’

‘Me too. Especially if you wear that short skirt again.’

This time she raised both eyebrows. ‘OK,’ she said slowly. ‘See you then.’

I cringed to myself as I walked back to the door. If only she were ugly and boring, I would have slept with her by now.

I stayed late at work that night, waiting to meet Ed. It was something I had started doing occasionally anyway. It made me look keen in front of the bosses, plus it delayed the awful moment of returning to Mum and Dad’s house. It was better than it had been, being back there without them, but only in the same way that acute appendicitis is better than a ruptured spleen.

The first few weeks I felt as though an evil set-designer had arranged things to be as poignant and painful as possible. The calendar marked with appointments and arrangements for months to come. A half-finished crossword on the side table with a pair of reading glasses folded on top. Unwashed plates by the sink, a load of wet laundry still in the machine, books with bookmarks twenty pages from the end. They’re never coming back, everything screamed at me, and they didn’t even know it.

At the beginning I’d needed all the stomach-clawing reminders every five paces: I didn’t want to run the risk of forgetting, even for a millisecond, and having to face remembering all over again. But slowly, the knowledge became absorbed in every part of me. I was a person whose parents were dead. I was an orphan. I couldn’t forget it, any more than I could forget about being absurdly tall, or being shortsighted, or being a librarian. So I’d tidied the worst of it away after six weeks or so, once I started washing again, and even, occasionally, eating. I went out and bought a brand new duvet set with a comforting, old-fashioned pattern of pink and turquoise roses. It was a woman’s duvet set, I decided, a duvet set that made no concessions to masculine sensibilities. I put it on the bed in my old room upstairs and I started going to bed there every night. Some nights I even slept.

But still, I was happier – well, not happier, but less miserable – when I wasn’t in the house. I generally went round to Geri’s straight from work but on the rare occasion she was busy or the more common occasion when I felt I ought to give her a break, I would stay at work a bit longer, reading the papers and surfing the internet until I felt tired enough to leave.

That night, though, I was genuinely absorbed in work, ferreting away for Ed’s Pete Milton mystery. Even if I had been a real person with a normal life I might have stayed late that night. I felt enthused, like I used to when I’d been doing what I still thought of as ‘my’ job at the Sentinel . I couldn’t give a shit about history, local or otherwise, and I was finding it increasingly hard to even fake an interest in some middle-aged woman’s family tree and whether her great-uncle was christened John but known as James or vice versa. But helping a journalist research a story, gathering the facts in order to get to the heart of the matter – that was what I did. Doing it again made me feel that my old self and my old life had not entirely disappeared. Maybe, one day in the distant future, this could be me again.

‘Hello, Tash.’

The woman’s voice behind me made me jump, and, as I recognised the blustering, over-friendly tones, I allowed myself a small grimace before turning round. Dolly Cheswold, the queen of the family history nutters, and the nuttiest of them all by a very long chalk. And believe me, she had some stiff competition on that score.

‘Hi Dolly.’ I forced a smile, sneaking an anxious glance at the clock. It was twenty to seven. My shift had technically finished at six, but the library didn’t shut until eight, and now Dolly knew I was here I risked being stuck with her for as long as she could carry on talking, which was usually an extremely long time. ‘Back again? I didn’t know there was a meeting tonight.’ Dolly ran the family history group, Who Does Doncaster Think You Are?, out of one of the library meeting rooms. I dreaded their weekly meetings because they never washed up their coffee cups, and someone, usually me, had to wait around to lock up and make sure they actually left the building and didn’t camp out behind the microfiche, so deep was their obsession.