Raking the Ashes by Anne Fine

considering”?’
    ‘Quite well, considering,’ he had to admit. Then he went all the way. ‘Actually, she looks bloody awful.’
    ‘Will she be able to cope?’
    ‘She says she thinks so.’
    ‘I’m glad,’ I said. (I did sincerely wish her well.) And that was when Geoff put his foot straight in it. ‘Yes. Listen, Til. I know I should have asked you first, but I did say to Frances that, if she can’t manage, then we’ll have Harry and Minna back.’
    ‘Back?’ I glanced round. Sure enough, in the short time that I’d been out of the house, all Minna’s cut-outs had vanished from the hall table. The sports gear wasn’t in the corner. The coat rack looked less colourful and cluttered. ‘What? Have they gone already? Without even saying goodbye?’
    ‘Oh. Sorry. I didn’t think.’
    For a moment I went blank. Then – think of a live wire on the loose. The question is, will it touch anything? If it does, hair will startle and skin will fry. And, if it doesn’t, no one would know the difference. I’m not quite sure how long I stood there, wondering where to go next in this quite hopeless quest to make this man see me, not just as some living, breathing instrument of use to him and his family, but as a human being in my own right, with actual feelings. It took a while to gather courage to look his way. But, when I did, I saw him eyeing me uneasily in the hall mirror. He’d worked out that he’d blown it yet again. All he was wondering now was which form the attack would take, and when it would come.
    And I couldn’t be bothered. It was as simple as that. I couldn’t raise the energy to make the effort. As all the fellows on the rig would say, ‘Shit, or get off the pot.’ The man was
hopeless
. Either he was thick or he was stubborn. I found it hard to believe that someone with brains enough to tie his shoelaces could be so stupid as to continually fail to learn from experience. But there you are. It had to be a possibility. The only alternative was that he was determined to make it crystal clear that he was always to be in total control of any decision relating to his former wife and children, whatever the cost to the two of us.
    But, given the way he blinded himself, whenever convenient, to those children’s emotions, that seemed unlikely.
    No, he must be thick.
    So there I stood, watching him in the mirror watching me. The moments passed. I thought about how men talk on the rig. How, when you listen, it becomes quite clear they have a gift for shoving separate chunks of their lives into separate boxes. (Look at Sol. Loved me, and quite sincerely loved his wife.) Men who would kick themselves for idiots if they designed a drill system with no regard for the pumps, or planned a draining line without a thought for the electrics, can blunder their way through their personal lives like utter imbeciles, seemingly incapable of taking more than one person’s feelings into account at any one time.
    So. The same old hairy question. Stay, or go? Tick, tick. I watched poor Geoff endure each waiting moment like a man who can’t breathe till the guillotine falls.
    Meanwhile, the smell of casserole filled up the hall.
    ‘What are you cooking?’
    He fell on the straw he’d been offered. ‘
Boeuf bourgignon
. I thought we should celebrate having the house back to ourselves.’ He couldn’t wait to take the chance to steer away from danger. ‘I made a berry
pannacotta
too, and there’s some of that heavenly cheese we keep finding at Lacey’s.’
    I straightened up and told myself: Right, Til. You work on and off oil rigs, so it could fairly be argued that, at least in part, you are a rigger. And at a moment like this, what would a rigger say and do?
    Nothing more to decide. ‘Jolly good!’ I said. ‘Foul visit to the nursing home. Horrible disapproving nurse and Mum more bats than ever. It seemed to drag on for hours. I’m bloody starving. How long will supper be?’
    I clearly hadn’t put aside all