“Good-bye. Thank you for coming.” “It was the least we could do. Er, if you need anything, to talk or something, just let us know.” “Thank you, I will. Good-bye. Thank you for coming.” Inaudible murmur. “Good-bye. Thank you for coming.” “We were only too pleased to pay our last respects. She was such a lovely woman.” “Yes, absolutely,” Lisa agreed, her smile as firmly fixed on her face as at the beginning of the afternoon before she closed the door on the last departing guests. “Actually, she was an old cow and you were only here to see what you could pick up in the way of free food and drink because you’ve spent what little money you have on maintaining the image required for suckers like her to adopt you,” she spat at the closed door. Wearily, she crossed the hall of her mother’s Mayfair flat into the sitting room and surveyed the remnants of the funeral feast. Only the ‘A’ and the ‘S’ of Annabel Emily Carruthers’ commemorative cake were left. Even the dates, 1928 – 1998 had disappeared. Crumbs, crisps, sandwiches and ash had been trodden into the carpet. Someone had used a cream dish as an ashtray, the dark stub of the cigar sticking obscenely out of the sticky white mess. The reek of spilt wine mingled with that of sweat and smoke. Lisa picked up a wine bottle. Empty. Unsurprised, Lisa reflected that for years her mother had surrounded hersel
f with scavengers who made a swarm of locusts look like gardeners out to prune the hedges. It had been the only way for her to sustain the illusion of having a vibrant social life, most of the friends of her younger days either being dead or mouldering away in institutions paid for by children determined to keep them out of sight. Lisa went through to the kitchen and rummaged through the cleaning cupboard for a bottle of vodka she had hidden there before the funeral. Long experience of her mother’s friends had taught her that it was not only teenagers who raided people’s kitchen for extra alcohol while the hosts were busy elsewhere. The kitchen clock ticked loudly in the silence as she poured vodka into a dirty wine glass. Briefly she wondered if she ought to dilute the spirit but dismissed the idea at the thought that she would then have to find something with which she could do so. Somehow one never diluted vodka with plain water. She sat down at the kitchen table and thought about what to do next. She really ought to go through her mother’s papers. The solicitor had told her that her mother had left everything to her, apart from the lease of the flat which only had a few weeks to run in any case. “You died just in time, Mother,” she raised her glass in a toast to the walls, “unless you had some money stashed away that I don’t know about. But then you always were a canny old bitch, getting out just in time. “Lately I’ve even wondered if my father walked out on you before I was born or if you got out before he spent all your money. Were you even married, Mother, dear?