The Second Life of Sally Mottram. David Nobbs

wondered if he and Tricksy … did things together. On allotments. At night. They believed in equal marriage, although they couldn’t really think it was worth all the time and money the House of Commons had taken up with it when the sea would boil in twenty years and the oil would run out next Thursday and seven million illegal immigrants were arriving at Dover every three days – Ben’s dad was given to exaggeration. Ben had once told his dad that he exaggerated 367 times a week, and his dad hadn’t seen the joke.

      They were enlightened people, but they didn’t want Ben to be gay. For his own sake, you understand. Mind you, it wasn’t just that. They didn’t even know if he was gay. They didn’t know if Tricksy was gay. They would just have been happier if their only child was showing signs of having more than one friend.

      Ben had heard the sigh and it made him very angry. Earlier, when he’d been teasing his dad, it had been all right, but now, over Tricksy, he couldn’t tease. He could explode, or go to bed. He made a surprisingly sensible choice.

      ‘Right. I’m off. It’s bedtime.’

      ‘It’s past bedtime.’

      ‘Whose fault is that? You’ve kept me talking.’

      ‘Point taken. Guilty as charged.’

      His dad suddenly smiled. It was entirely unexpected, and it threw Ben. He turned at the door, and said something he hadn’t said for several years, and had had no intention of saying that night.

      ‘Love you, Dad.’

      He wished he hadn’t said this. Saying it shocked him. He realized that it was no longer true.

      It was three minutes past twelve as Ben set off upstairs. Sally Mottram hadn’t reached home yet. She didn’t want to reach home. She was walking increasingly slowly along Oxford Road. There were no lights on in Dr Mallet’s, no lights on at the Sparlings’, no lights on at the Hammonds’, no lights on in Oxford Road. The council had recently started to switch the lights off at midnight, perhaps so that murderers couldn’t see their victims well enough to stab them or shoot them accurately enough to kill them.

      Sally opened the gate, walked slowly up the path beside the lawn, put her key in the lock, turned it, opened the door, went in, and closed the door carefully from long habit, so as not to wake anyone, although there was no longer anyone to wake.

      She decided to go straight upstairs, get it over. She didn’t know how she would find the courage to walk past where he had been. But she had to. She had to start.

      She climbed the stairs at a steady pace, quaking but resolute. She tried not to look, but she had to take a quick peek, and there he … wasn’t.

      She crossed the landing, opened the bedroom door, went in, and closed it.

      She thought back to the strange words that she had thought to herself at the bottom of the stairs. ‘You have to start.’ What had she meant? Start what? She had no idea what she had to start. Just to live the rest of her life? Just to survive?

      Or something more?

BOOK TWO

       NINE

       Going south

      The taxi had been late, and she had arrived at Potherthwaite station just in time to see the 10.22 snaking round the corner towards a better world.

      Six weeks had passed since Sally Mottram had made that horrendous discovery at the top of the stairs. For six weeks there had grown in her an overwhelming desire to leave Potherthwaite, to go back down south. At times her desire had been to leave not just Potherthwaite, but this world. She didn’t see any point in her living any more. Her children were settled and didn’t need her. Her life was pointless.

      She wheeled her suitcases along platform 1, past baskets of dull, neglected flowers. She passed the steps that led on to the footbridge, and pressed for the lift. The lift arrived with a sigh, as if utterly tired of its tiny routine. The doors opened. It was quite a job to get her two cases into the lift. They were too large. She had brought too much stuff. She hadn’t been capable of deciding what not to bring. She was no longer capable of making decisions.

      ‘Going up,’ said the voice of a surprisingly posh woman, bossily and unnecessarily since there was nowhere to go but up. The lift rose to footbridge level like an asthmatic old man on his last legs.

      ‘Footbridge level,’ thundered the bossy woman with just a hint of pride at the lift’s achievement.

      It was now quite a job to get the two cases out of the lift. Sally wheeled them halfway across the footbridge and stopped for breath.

      The railway line runs along the bottom of Baggit Moor and is therefore slightly above the level of the valley floor. As she stood there, Sally could see the town spread out before her. Grey stone buildings, grey slate roofs. She could even see back to Oxford Road, though it was impossible from this distance to single out ‘The Larches’. What a feeling it had been, that morning, to walk out of the front door and know that she wouldn’t have to pass the top of the stairs for at least two weeks, maybe longer, depending on how she got on with Judith. And of course she was far too far away, here on the footbridge, to see the ‘For Sale’ sign.

      Everybody said it was good that she was selling. She would never quite get over the shock, if she stayed. Everybody also knew that she was having to sell. She had no money.

      She’d overheard Gordon Hendrie, in the supermarket, near the rather sad fish counter – she hated fish counters, all those dead eyes – she’d heard him say, in his idea of a low voice, ‘It’ll have been because of sex or money. It always is.’ She’d known that he had been talking about Barry.

      She’d hoped that it had been because of money, which was absurd, because if it was money she would live the rest of her life in poverty. But if it was because of sex she would have shared her marital bed with a monster, kissed a pervert, been made love to by a dirty dirty man, and that would have been even worse than poverty.

      It had been money. Mottram & Caldwell had been struggling. There weren’t so many people in Potherthwaite who had been able to afford lawyers’ fees. Tom Caldwell had handled his money sensibly. Barry, that precise sober lawyer, had gambled, and gambled badly on both money and horses. A lad who was on the dole had been pleased enough to get a bit of pocket money to put his bets on for him. Barry Mottram himself had never been seen in William Hill.

      Much of this had been revealed at the inquest. The truth had hurt her. The fact that she had known nothing about any of it had hurt her more.

      Dr Mallet, who wished that he had changed his name to something more befitting a psychoanalyst – Bronovsky, perhaps – had been persuaded to give evidence too, reluctantly, because the fact that Barry had killed himself had not been a good advertisement for a psychiatrist who had been treating the man for depression. This news too had hurt Sally. The fact that she had also known nothing about this had hurt her more. Not only had she known nothing of these things, but no suicide note had ever been found. That hurt her most of all.

      Despite the lack of a note, there had been no difficulty in reaching the verdict that Barry Mottram had killed himself.

      She could just see the roof of the building that housed Mottram & Caldwell. Her eyes passed on, drawn instinctively towards the uniform rooftops of Cadwallader Road. She saw, vividly, Ellie Fazackerly stuck there in her great bed.

      ‘Having a quiet moment?’

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘I said, “Having a quiet moment?”’

      ‘I was, yes.’

      ‘Good for you.’