Homemaking for the Down-At-Heart. Finuala Dowling

is the matter, darling? Whatever is the matter?”

      Margot felt the skin on her face lose all its warmth as her sweat reached the surface and cooled. “It’s just low blood sugar. I’ll be alright in a moment. Perhaps we should have coffee before we stroll.”

      What with Margot’s bottom occupying the steps and her mother hanging on the railing with both hands, they were thoroughly offending other members of the public. “Really, this is a most inconvenient spot for you to stop,” said a robust woman with pursy lips.

      “Aren’t you Margot from the radio?” asked another passer-by. “I’ve been wanting to get hold of you because my son wants to become a radio presenter too. Here’s my card – I’d appreciate it if you could drop me a line and we can chat about his future. He really is extremely talented. He was the announcer at the school fête and everyone said how brilliant he was.”

      Only endure, thought Margot, as she heaved herself up and guided her mother towards the quayside restaurant. She ordered coffee and a bran muffin to share.

      “Aren’t you famous?” asked the waitress. “You look like someone famous.”

      “Well, I’m on the radio,” said Margot.

      “I don’t listen to the radio,” said the waitress. “It must be from somewhere else.”

      Let’s get this over with, she thought. “The company I work for has recently put up billboards with photographs of me and my colleagues along the M5.”

      “Mmm.” The waitress shook her head as she considered Margot.

      “I really urgently need the coffee and the muffin. Maybe it’ll come back to you.”

      When the waitress returned with their coffee, her expression of doubt had been replaced by one of enlightenment.

      “I’ve just spoken to the chef. He says you’re quite famous. He listens to you when he has insomnia. He wants to meet you.”

      The chef arrived with their muffin. “Here you are, ladies. Great to meet you, Margot, really great. But you know who I really used to love in the old days was Robin Alexander. What a legend. Always so positive, no matter what. I really miss that guy. You should try to reach out the way he did. Anyway, enjoy your muffin.”

      The more public the place, the greater the loneliness. Her mother’s presence only made it worse. Rather be solitary, with all the freedom of one’s flitting thoughts, than sit opposite a communicative cul-de-sac. Once Zoe would have held forth about Simon’s Town’s history, or joined Margot in making up stories about the other restaurant patrons. Most likely of all, her mother would have discussed the muffin: its texture (too dry – add grated apple). But today she looked disorientated and nervous, as if morning coffee were as intimidating a prospect as the security cordons at Heathrow.

      Zoe was spooning jam and cream onto her plate and some onto the tablecloth. Margot used the paper napkins to clean up after her. What had happened to life? There was the briefest window of freedom between raising a baby and caring for an ancient parent – that was all. And she had missed it. The tedium of her mother’s custody was as confining as being responsible for a baby, but in this case, there were no rewards: no beaming smile, no gummy I love you’s, no flashes of verbal precocity, no astonishing leaps of development. Rather, the reverse: the failure to smile, to reach out, to converse. The inexorable downhill. Oh, she’d been on the Internet and read all the saccharine propaganda put out by the NHS about how looking after someone with dementia could be so fulfilling. Utter garbage. The truth about senility of a parent was that you had to sit still and watch your mainstay sink. You had to do it in a world that seemed not to notice your trouble. You could faint in a pedestrian thoroughfare and people would step over you to get to their own destination. She wished she could like people more, but they really needed to make more of an effort.

      Above all, Margot missed her mother. She was with her, but she missed her. If only her real mother were here now, and not this imposter. Ma, she could say, I never got it, your whole homemaking thing. And her real mother would say: Of course you did, darling – just look at the wonderful child you’ve made! Or she could say: Ma, I had a terrible show last night; Pia woke me up early, worried about Leroy’s visit, and now I’m exhausted. And her real mother would say: Poor thing. You have a nap while I take care of supper. I’ll make sure there’s fair play.

      If only it were possible to say to a living person: I miss the way you were in the eighties. Leroy today, for example, bore no resemblance to the Leroy that once was. He’d changed so horribly over the years that you’d have to identify him from his dental records. For a long time she’d stayed in the marriage, waiting for the original Leroy, as though he were a missing person who might return if she were only faithful to his memory. Leroy would be in the same room, and yet she almost strained towards the door to see if the real Leroy wasn’t about to arrive. That time when he’d left her at a restaurant table and chatted for ages to a gorgeous theatrical agent dining alone at an adjacent table. Talk, talk; laugh, laugh. Not once did either of them look back at her. She’d eaten her soup surreptitiously, not sure whether to observe her husband flirting with the beautiful, engaging woman. Once he’d talked to her, Margot, in that animated way, reaching out to touch her wrist when they were in accord on some point. If only she had poured soup all over him there and then, instead of thinking about it forevermore. What a missed opportunity: life was full of them. Tureens full of hot tomato soup not poured. Not so much to humiliate him as to mark him out for other women: beware.

      Curtis said he was going inside to write an e-mail. Pia said she was going to investigate a murder.

      “How will you do that?” asked Curtis.

      “I’m going to look for clues. I’ll probably find some on Ponder Steps or on Duignam Road.”

      She contemplated the jackets hanging on pegs near the door and settled on Mr Morland’s pea coat, with the collar turned up. The shopping list was an ideal size for a notebook, so she tucked that into the jacket pocket, along with a plastic bag for evidence.

      “What else do you need to solve the murder?” asked Curtis solemnly.

      “A magnifying glass.”

      He smiled and brought it to her. “Will you be safe?”

      She scowled at him from inside her middle-aged male character.

      “Sorry,” said Curtis.

      The street looked quite different to her now that she was a detective. She hadn’t realised what a suspect place it was, awash with evidence. She picked a discarded train ticket out of the gutter and examined it through the magnifying glass. A pedestrian walked by, and Pia adopted a casual demeanour, almost the lounging teenager. When she felt safely unobserved once more, she climbed through the railings of Ponder Steps to explore the long grass. She felt aware of her new size. Once she would have slid through easily, but now the railings resisted her. The land on the other side of the railing was unkempt, rocky and littered. No one gardened here – plants seeded themselves at will, taking what rain they could collect. Curtis said that burglars sometimes stashed their stuff in dense vegetation and came back for it later. She parted the sun-baked grass. There it was: incontrovertible evidence. A T-shirt belonging to the deceased. She stuffed it into her plastic bag.

      Some girls she knew were passing along Duignam Road above. They wore tight vest-tops that showed their new breasts.

      “What are you doing down there, Pia? Are you playing? Pia’s playing, everyone.”

      “Why are you wearing that funny jacket, Pia? Who are you pretending to be?”

      Pia hid the magnifying glass in one of the capacious pockets of Mr Morland’s coat. They saw through her, the bitches. All the joy of the morning drained away. She was not a detective but a clumsily sized thirteen-year-old girl wearing a ridiculous, hot coat.

      “I’m not playing, stupid,” she lied. “I’m collecting rubbish.”

      “But why are you wearing that coat? You look like a homeless person.”

      Pia