Chapter 10·Ruth Vale · Manchester

Ruth Vale. Manchester. Monday 15 March 2032, 17:40.

The flowers had lasted the weekend, which was more than she'd expected of them.

Ruth took them out of the jar and ran the tap and rinsed the slime off the bottom of the stems, and cut a finger's width off each one with the kitchen scissors, on the slant, the way her mother had, and put them back in fresh water with the sticker still on the plastic. Carnations, mostly. Something white she had no name for. She set the jar on the windowsill where the light would get it in the morning and turned round.

Gavin was on his knees at the kitchen door with a tub of filler.

The door had a crack across the bottom panel. It had been there since the summer before last. It had let the draught in two winters and neither of them had ever mentioned it, and now he was on his knees in front of it in his work trousers with a putty knife, pressing the stuff in. He pressed and scraped, and wiped the knife on a bit of kitchen roll, and pressed again, and his hands were dead steady. He had good hands for that sort of thing, everyone had always said so, his mother and his mates and the lads at the depot. Gav'll do it. Gav's got the hands.

"It'll want sanding," he said, without turning. "Once it's gone off. Then a coat of the white. Should be alright."

"Should be."

"Been meaning to."

Poppy was at the table with her reading book, doing her voices. The school had sent nothing since Saturday and she had decided that meant she was still meant to read, twenty minutes, like the sheet said, so she was reading. A dog and a boy and a lost ball. She did the dog in a low voice.

Ruth dried her hands on the towel and stood at the sink and watched him work the knife along the split, smoothing it flush, tilting his head to see it against the light.

The depot had rung on Friday and told him not to come in. That was three days. He had cleaned the bathroom on Saturday when they got back from the shop. He had done the oven on Sunday, which had never been done, and hoovered the stairs, and put the shelf up in Poppy's room that had been in its box behind the wardrobe since her birthday. Today the door. He had started on the door at four, when the light was already going, and had not stopped for his tea.

"They had a woman on this morning," he said. "Radio. Some doctor. Saying it's not the doing, it's the meaning it. Saying it reads what you meant." He ran the knife along the crack. "So a bloke'd be alright. If he didn't mean it."

"Mean what."

He scraped. "Nothing. Doesn't matter."

"Line six, Gav. An accident's not a crime."

"That's not what I meant." He wiped the knife, one side and then the other. "Yeah. Line six."

She folded the towel over the rail, in half and in half again.

"Got milk," she said. "Corner shop's still doing milk. Cash only."

"Right."

"There was a queue outside St Anne's."

He stopped scraping.

"On a Monday," she said. "Round the side. Down to the bus stop."

"What for."

"I didn't ask."

He put the knife in the tub and wiped his fingers on the kitchen roll, one at a time.

"Confession," he said. "That's what that is."

"I expect so."

"Getting it off their chest." He said it to the door. "Before."

Poppy did the boy's voice. The boy said, here, boy. Here.

He read to her at bedtime, which he had never done. In eight years, not once. It was Ruth's job, one of the things that were Ruth's, like the bins and the car were his, and tonight he went up with her at half seven and Ruth heard the bed creak as he sat on the end of it, and heard him ask which one, and heard Poppy say the horse one, and then his voice, going careful, like he drove.

She stood on the landing outside the door with the washing basket on her hip.

He read slow, and did no voices, and read it like a man reads something he has to get right, one word after another, and when he turned a page he did it with two fingers at the corner, and she stood in the dark on the landing and watched his hand do that, and could not have said for how long.

"Dad."

"Mm."

"Are you scared of Thursday?"

Ruth stood still on the landing with the basket.

He was quiet, and the page stayed where it was.

"A bit, chick," he said. "Everyone is. It's alright to be a bit scared of a thing when you don't know what it is. That's just sense."

"Mum's not."

The bed creaked.

"Isn't she."

"No. I asked her at the shop and she said she wasn't. She said there's nothing to be scared of if you've not done anything."

The house ticked. Somewhere down the street a car door shut, and an engine started, and went away, and did not come back.

"Well," Gavin said. "There you are, then." A page turned. "There you are. Nothing to be scared of. Your mum's got it right. Where were we."

"The horse is in the river."

"The horse is in the river. Right."

Ruth took the washing basket down and put it on the machine and stood in the kitchen and looked at the door.

The door was drying. The filler had gone a paler grey across the crack, and you could see where the knife had gone along it, and you could still see the shape of the crack under it if you knew where to look, and she did.

He came down at eight and put the kettle on, and she sat at the table and let him.

"Reads well," he said. "Better than I did at her age."

"She's good."

"She is. She is that." He got two mugs down and put a bag in each and stood with his back to her and waited for the kettle with his hands on the counter either side of it, and she watched them.

"Pop says you're not scared."

"Pop's eight."

"Are you."

She thought about the stockroom, and the sandwich, and the ninth line.

"No," she said.

He nodded at the kettle, which was starting to tick.

"No," he said. "No, course you're not. Why would you be." He turned round. He leaned on the counter and folded his arms, and then unfolded them and had nowhere to put them, and put them behind him, on the edge. "Two sleeps. That's how Pop's counting it. Two sleeps and then a Thursday."

"Yes."

"Wednesday night. Midnight. Not even Thursday, really, I looked it up, it's midnight our time. So you go to bed Wednesday and." He stopped. The kettle got louder. "Ruth."

"Yes."

"I want you to go to your mum's."

She let him get to it.

"You and Pop. Tomorrow, or Wednesday morning, whenever. Take the car. Stop till Friday." He was looking at the floor between them. "I'll stop here. I'll finish the door. And Friday, either I ring you or I don't, and either way you'll." He breathed. "You'll know. You won't have to be stood there. Pop won't have to be stood there."

The kettle boiled and clicked off and he left it.

"Marcy's Sean went to his mum's," she said.

"I know. You said."

"Wrong way round."

"Yeah, well." His mouth did the small thing. "Sean's Sean."

She looked at his hands on the edge of the counter behind him. She looked at the door. She thought about a Friday, and a phone that rang or didn't, and her mother's front room with the gas fire on, and Poppy at the window.

"No," she said.

He looked up.

"No what."

"No, I'm not going to my mum's."

"Ruth."

"I'm not going anywhere, Gav. Nor's Pop. This is our house."

He stood there and looked at her as he had from the sofa on Thursday, longer than he needed to, and she held it, and she saw him try to read her and not manage it, and saw him understand that he was not going to manage it, not tonight, and maybe not by Wednesday either.

"Why," he said.

She got up and went past him to the kettle, and poured the two mugs, and stood with her back to him pressing the bags against the side with the spoon, first one, then the other, and did not turn round.