Your Father Sends His Love by Stuart Evers Page B

of blue, some with pot-plants outside, some with children’s bicycles tethered to nearby drainpipes – towards the stairwell. The road and cars below are sun-lit, but the walkway remains in shade. She holds her breath against the piss smell as she descends.
    On the street all is quiet. The newly built flats opposite are a grid of windows, six by six. In three across, two up, a woman stands, her body framed by purple curtains. Evie sees her most times she visits – how quaint to call it a visit! – and had once waved to her. The woman had not waved back, but disappeared quickly into darkness. Shedoes the same now, sees Evie and, holding her cup of tea and saucer, darts back into the gloom. Evie can imagine the woman sitting on a plump-cushioned armchair, biscuits arranged on a plate, telling the policeman – so young, so short these days – that she’d seen the woman many times. Yes: many times. She looked the sort, you know.
    Evie’s car – rusting, a small red Ford with just enough room for the four of them – is parked next to a dirty-panelled white van. Kids have used their fingers to write obscenities on it, jokes on it, DS 4 RB on it. Phil and Chris will soon be old enough to do the same: leave a mark, show off to their friends, or a girl. Their fingers, their only current offence being to pick at their noses, might soon write fuck or cunt anywhere.
    Evie sits in the car with the key in the ignition. She doesn’t like to drive away immediately; she enjoys the airport feeling of concurrence: the wish to stay, the wish to return home. The car is hot and her thighs would stick to the leatherette seat if she was wearing a skirt. When Jim used to pick her up in his car, his borrowed car, her then-narrower thighs did that; made a sucking sound too when she got out of the passenger side. Somewhere in the loft those skirts are bundled and folded inside a packing case. She reminds herself to hunt them out, but her attention is diverted by something stickingout from under the passenger seat. She leans over and with her fingertips teases out some brightly coloured paper. When she straightens it, she’s holding the wrapper from a chocolate bar.
    Evie does not eat chocolate bars. She holds the wrapper, holds it like it could be infected, and wonders whether it could somehow incriminate her: whether it could have covert meaning to someone else.
    No, she could not have left it there. Nor Ross; he has never been inside her car. It is just a Mars Bar wrapper. Advertising and branding as distraction. Ever more sophisticated stratagems to ensure we are good consumers. Work, Rest and Pay. Talking, talking the way he does, impatient. She admires and is amused by his seriousness. Everything is important. The world is connected and running towards its end. Can you please just stop?
    â€˜Come on,’ she says. ‘The kettle’s boiling.’
    She blows the wrapper from her palm and it floats down to the rubber mat on the passenger side.
    Waiting for the kettle to boil while the world burns crazy. Another Ross phrase. At functions, coffee mornings, schoolyard gates, she finds herself thinking the kettle’s boiling as she smiles and listens to people talking at her. Sometimes she says it out loud and people look at her blankly. She ducks her head then, pours more tea or buttonsup her cardigan. No one has ever asked her what she means.
    â€˜Come on,’ she says again. The key remains unturned in the ignition, the car still sticky hot. She looks at her watch but there’s plenty of time to pick up the boys. She turns the key and turns on the radio. But the radio is broken, it just plays static, and she tells herself to remind Jim to mend it. On the passenger side, on the rubber mat, the chocolate bar wrapper lies. She picks it up and stuffs it in her handbag. We are all detectives.
    She starts the car and pulls into the road. The car has had no other passengers, which means