A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvvette Edwards Page B

round here use me. Probably because of the hair. They never know how to manage our hair. So they get me in and I do it, fix their hair and repair their faces, make them look comfortable, give their families back some peace. That’s what I do for a living.’
    ‘What kinda job is that?’
    ‘I enjoy it,’ I answered. I could not explain that it was the only thing I truly enjoyed, that among the dead was the only time I felt happy, that I was able to feel while I did my work: pride, vanity, grief, sadness, loss, something . That while I worked on those cold bodies, sometimes I found myself humming.
    ‘Can’t you get a job in some kinda beauty parlour instead?’ he asked, and I laughed aloud.
    ‘I could, but I don’t want to.’
    ‘Seems a strange way to make a living.’
    ‘Someone has to do it. Someone did it for Mavis. Bet you appreciated it then.’
    ‘It’s no kinda life.’
    ‘It’s the only life I have.’
    ‘It ain’t…normal.’
    ‘It suits me.’
    I wanted him to link my work to her . It was an obvious link, but I needed him to make the connection himself. Then I could explain it was some kind of atonement and tell him why. I waited.
    ‘You better not be planning to get them hands on me,’ he said.
    Despite my disappointment, I laughed again. ‘I can wait.’
    ‘Good,’ he said, but he shook his head slowly for a long time afterwards and I knew he was disappointed too. He wanted more for me and I knew it would have been impossible to make him understand that for most of my adult life there had been nothing more that I wanted, nothing more that I needed, nothing more.
    I put the TV on, sat back down beside him, and watched it in silence. Or at least I acted like I was watching it, face fixed resolutely in the direction of the screen. It felt strange, the close proximity, the sharing of the sofa, the evening. It reminded me of the years I’d spent watching TV in this same spot on another settee, with my mother, just us two; easy years, carefree times. I found myself more relaxed than I could remember being in a long time. And when he casually slipped his arm around me, over my shoulders, and pulled me closer so I was leaning into his warmth, I didn’t resist or pull away. I snuggled up against him as my son had done, and felt just like a child.
    In silence he held me, gently rubbing the top of my arm with his warm palm and I felt safe. For the first time since she had gone.
    I felt it.
    Though I was no closer to telling him the terrible truth, I felt okay and I was grateful. I knew it was merely a lull, the calm before the storm, yet his being there with me made me feel like maybe, somehow, there was a chance, the smallest suggestion of a hope, that things might turn out okay.
    She made saltfish and Johnnycakes for breakfast. We’d never had it for breakfast on a weekday before, because the saltfish needed to be soaked overnight and boiled two or three times before it was ready to be used. And her Johnnycakes were a slow job, requiring sifting and kneading and frying on a low flame, to ensure that the outside didn’t cook while the middle was still doughy, and by the time the middle cooked, the outside wasn’t burned. It was a Special Treat, one we’d normally have for breakfast on Christmas Day or at Easter, and always on my birthday because, as we both knew, saltfish and Johnnycakes was my favourite breakfast.
    We both also knew she’d cooked it because of the slap.
    She must have gotten up at the crack of dawn to have it ready before I left for school, and I was glad – glad she’d recognized that what she’d done was weird and wrong, and even more glad that it had kept her awake, gnawed away, forced her out of the warm bed she now shared with Berris and into the kitchen at a time of day when those with clear consciences were still hard and fast asleep.
    I ate without speaking, swallowing bulky mouthfuls slowly, pretending not to watch as she packed up Berris’s precious portions into