Thicker Than Water

Now the fire was a log-effect gas burner, and the bottles just looked like old soldiers who know that the ceasefire has sounded and are waiting for the order to stand down.

Mum came back into the room, carrying a mug of milky tea in which a teabag still floated. She’d never really been into the idea that we eat first with our eyes. She handed it to me, then kissed me on the cheek, putting her hands on my shoulders and squeezing tight.

I cast around for something to say, but found nothing. I wasn’t even sure if she knew, until she buried her face in my shoulder and let out a single, throat-tearing sob.

Mum never cried: not actual tears. Maybe when Matt got his ordination, but tears of pride are different. The world had never wrung one millilitre of tribute out of her in any other way; and even now, her eyes were dry as she raised them to stare into mine. Hollow, troubled, red-rimmed, but dry.

‘If it had been you, Felix, I would have understood.’

‘Cheers, Mum,’ I said.

‘I don’t mean that I wouldn’t have cared, love.

But Matty’s world is different from yours. It always was.’ She shook her head, giving it up. ‘I just don’t see how this could have happened,’ she said mournfully.

‘He didn’t do it,’ I said. ‘I can tell you that much.’

Mum flared up, but not against me: against the world that was misjudging her son. ‘I bloody well know that!’ she said. ‘Didn’t I raise him? Isn’t he mine? Of course he didn’t bloody do it!’

‘Well, okay then,’ I said. ‘Just making the point, that’s all.

’

Mum sat down heavily in the armchair, picked up her glass and took a deep swig of beer, then refilled the glass with what was left in the bottle. I took the sofa, which meant I had to sit on the edge of a cushion, balanced on a single buttock, in order to face her. I put the mug of tea down on the table’s bare wood, adding another ring to the many already there. Maybe you could use them to tell its age.

Mum was looking at me with a solemn, musing expression, the heat of her anger gone as quickly as it had come.

‘Three years,’ she said, softly. ‘Three years, Fix.’

‘I did call,’ I countered, but it was a feeble defence. The last time had been more than a year before, to ask her how she was doing when Matt had told me she was recovering from a chest infection. It had turned out to be low-grade pneumonia, and I’d still found reasons not to come up and visit. Given the dista›Givhe nces involved, there was no defence.