Belief Chapter 10

I slept restlessly and when I finally got up before 6, I was tired and grumpy. I went to the gym again before work, but found it difficult to concentrate. I had kept myself awake with an anxiety and uncertain dreams. By the time I was on the treadmill I had convinced myself that I was being ridiculous. Not only that, I was embarrassed with myself. What was the matter with me? I was being unreasonable and suspicious. So what if my father had come to some arrangement with my sister. She could have lent him money for anything - maybe she got a better interest rate, I had no entitlement to any money, and my parents had always helped out whenever they could, they had lent me money for my car, I had paid them back quickly, now I was earning and they had been retired, they needed all their money to live on and were always promising us the house when they died- although I had always thought of that as very far off. And both of them somehow. It was trivial. It didn't need discussion. I needed to get a grip.

At lunchtime, the office was full of people. There were interviews going on and a housing association had sent some representatives to discuss working with us. Kate was bustling around the office and asked if I would talk to the housing association people. Someone had bought lunch in and several of us were hovering around the sandwiches. Katja and Ed were introduced as my guests and I led them to a quieter corner, I didn't have an office, just a desk, and the comfy chairs were being used by interview candidates.

Katja was in her twenties, glamorous and serious, she didn't smile at anything, I told myself that her strong Polish accent meant that she hadn't understood all my witty comments, but her English was clearly too good for that. She had all the figures at her fingertips and was very convincing. Ed, in his thirties smiled gently and mostly let her talk. He was clean shaven, and a little too groomed for my taste, generically good looking in the sort of style your mother would approve of. (Not my mother, I thought.) When Katja walked back to get a coffee - I hadn't seen her eat - Ed smiled at me confidentially and became a bit more chatty.
"We're a good charity." he said. "Do you like working here? Do you work with lots like us?"
"Er...yes." I replied, slightly wrong-footed. "Mostly housing associations, and the council, not all vulnerable people, but mostly adults. And it's good, nice place to work. What about you?"
"I like it." he said. "Always a bit uncertain, you know. Do you live locally?"
"Yes, other side of town." I said. I wasn't good at these conversations at the best of times, and it was an unfamiliar feeling for me, but I thought he might be flirting a little bit. Or he was just being charming. I wasn't sure I liked it. He was younger than me, I felt quite confident with men my own age or older, but I was worried he might be mocking me.
"I haven't been here long." he said and turned to face me a little more directly. "I lived in London for a bit, but it's so expensive."
"Um.." I didn't want to encourage him too much, it wasn't quite my kind of conversation, but he seemed to be the sort of man who didn't need too much encouragement to talk.
"My parents used to live up here, so I wasn't unfamiliar with it. It's nice though, I didn't think there'd be so many...y'know... cases like this. Benefits and stuff."
"Yes, no." I felt like he hadn't yet been in our world for long enough yet, a world where politically correct terms and euphemisms came easily alongside inappropriate jokes. Perhaps he was only used to mixing with people from a similar middle class background to his. He perhaps hadn't known life was like this in a Midlands market town. He thought life was in a city. I smiled at him a little more kindly than I intended, I meant to be maternal and pitying, he mistook it for encouraging. But I was grateful, he had taken my mind off my immediate issues and made me more aware of the wider world again.
"I don't have a card yet." he said. "Have this one, then you can get hold of me if you need to. Maybe you should show me the sights." He laughed at his own joke, and wrote his number on the back of a card with Katja's name on. "Genuinely." He held my hand with both of his as he gave me the card. "Give me a call. I'd love to see you again."

Belief Chapter 9

The conversation with Anna on its own wasn't quite enough for me to phone my mother. It took a further day at work of feeling as if everyone was tiptoeing around me. At lunchtime I walked out into the town centre and bought a sausage roll from Greggs. It felt like rebellion, my lunch was still sitting in the fridge at work. I rang my mother but there was no answer, so I telephoned her mobile, which was of course, switched off. I sent a text, but it meant that by the time she rang me back I was already sitting at my desk, staring at a screen, and about to telephone one of our tenants.
"Hello?" I half whispered, "I'm back at work!"
"Hello Claire, it's your mother." Mum said, although I had already read that it was her on the screen of my phone which was why I had answered. Actually it said "Mum and Dad".
"Yes Mum. I...Can I come round? After work? Help with anything? Erm, the paperwork, banks and stuff." I did not manage to articulate the carefully structured sentence that had been in my head.
"Yes. Yes love. See you later. Love you." By this point she was whispering too and it was all I could do not to laugh out loud.
"Mum, no one else can hear..." She had hung up.
The tenant caught me in a surprisingly cheerful mood, hardly appropriate for demanding overdue rent.

When it came to the end of the day however, I felt a little less ready and drove myself to the gym instead. I hated the gym and mostly ended up swimming. I got into the water and started to swim lengths as I normally would. Usually I found the muzak and background noise worked to help me tune out my thoughts and I would slip into a meditative swim. This time I could not stop thinking. Instead of counting the lengths or the minutes I was going over and over in my head some of the words I had used to my sister and my mother over the last few days, then I started thinking about the last things I had said to Dad. I tried to be sure if I had said "Love you." as I hung up the phone. Everything Anna had said the night before was running like a music sample. It became the rhythm of my swim. I got to the shallow end and had to stop. I looked up at the clock. It had been only 15 minutes. I started to feel an odd sensation in the top of my head. It felt as if my face were burning. Almost before I knew it my eyes were filled with hot, hot tears threatening to spill down my face. I got out quickly, hoping the swimming pool water would hide the wetness on my face. I stood in the shower cubicle unmoving for a few seconds, not undressing even. The heat of the shower on my face seemed to staunch the flow of tears and I battled with wanting to just let go and acknowledge my misery, even though I was not sure exactly what I was crying about, while at the same time feeling I had to hold on to something, that this was private and the gym was public. I was scared that the tears weren't the only thing I would release, I could feel sobs inside me, that if I let my tears go, would drag a child's aching misery from me. I would keep it to myself for now.

I no longer felt like crying by the time I got back to Mum and Dad's. She was pleased to see me, she had her make up on and had done her hair, but there was a frown to her face that looked new. She made me tea and had made a meal for us to share. We sat at the table straight away, I felt like I had arrived late, even though I hadn't given a time. The vegetables and potatoes were a bit overcooked.
"Are you back at work?" she asked.
"Yes..." I replied, missing the implication of the question.
"Oh, " she said "I thought maybe they'd let you have a couple of weeks."
"Oh." I said. "Yes, I think they would have done, I wanted to go back."
"Well, it can't be nice sitting at home on your own." She said. I almost rolled my eyes out of habit, then caught the look on her face and realised that she was scanning the room and that my father wasn't there. She seemed to realise it at that moment as well.
"You've been to church with Ali." I tried to keep the criticism out of my voice.
"Yes. She needed someone to do the teas and wash up." Ah, that was how Ali had got her there.

I had expected a pile of unopened post on the kitchen work top, but it wasn't there. I guess Ali had got in there quickly. Mum took me to Dad's computer and I managed to access most of the bank accounts and checked the bank statements. Apart from a few savings, Mum and Dad still did most of the banking from one account. I started to go through the statements to look for regular payments. Dad was pretty organised, most things were there, although I could see that they still paid car insurance annually, something I never seemed able to afford to do. I started to make the phone calls to change the details. It was more difficult than I anticipated.

After an hour or so, it was too late to phone, I had made a list of things for Mum to do and a list for me. I kissed her goodnight, promised to return next week and headed off home. When I got home I stared at my list, there were a few payments I needed to sort out, but there were also a couple of others I needed to ask Mum about. One of them was a regular monthly payment to Ali. I was shocked when I saw this. I looked through everything three or four times, but I couldn't find a savings account into which there was money being paid for both of us. I found savings accounts for the boys separately and even another University fund for both boys, but there was nothing I could see as an equivalent payment to me. I don't know why I didn't ask my Mum about it straight away. I felt I needed to control my emotion first. What had shocked me? Why was I cross? I didn't need the money. Perhaps there was a rational explanation. Tomorrow, I would ask.