Page 120 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

SHE’D MISSED Alex’s forties: “I’m in my fifties, now, Mum . . .” He didn’t look

it . . . maybe he was lying, maybe your baby’s just always your baby. But she
didn’t feel able to stay at home with her son who was now older than her. There
was a lot she could’ve learned from him, she knew, but that would’ve meant
staying in that flat where the temperature was so far below zero that the numbers
were now meaningless. She didn’t feel able to send Alex away either. She
washed. Not just her fringe, she washed all over. And she took a different outfit
out of her suitcase and put it on. She didn’t say good-bye to Alex, but left him

sleeping on a mattress they’d set up in the second bedroom, between the puppet
stages, still makeless, though by twelve-thirty his presence would have faded
away altogether. Jill locked the front door behind her and made two journeys:
first stop work, to ask after her boys, the ones she still had hope for. The front
desk warden made a few phone calls in a low voice with her back turned, then

told her they were fine, nothing out of the ordinary had happened, and wasn’t it
tomorrow that she was due back?
“Good, yes, that’s right . . . see you tomorrow.”
—

JILL’S SECOND JOURNEY ended at home in Holland Park. On the train she thought
about the likelihood that Vi would be there with Jacob. She’d been there in the

camera shot with Jill and Jacob, however momentarily. His answer had still
come to her, and when she got home the front door was unlocked and she found
the house as dark and as cold as the flat she’d left earlier; it was twelve-thirty
and she found Jacob slumped over the kitchen table with his headphones on. She
took them off and asked him again: “What’s the hottest time of day?”
The answer, without verbal deadweight this time: “2PM . . .”

His arms around her, and hers around him, knots and tangles they could only
undo with eyes closed. “You’re so warm.”
“About Presence,” she said. “Scrap it. Don’t do this to anyone else.”
“Agreed.”

—

JACOB MENTIONED ALEX once, as they were comparing notes. “I wish we had a

picture, at least,” he said, and Jill knew what and whom he was referring to. She
didn’t agree, but neither did she contradict his wish. It was his own, after all.