The Favourite E-Book

S. V. Berlin

• Herausgeber: Myriad Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Welcome to the dark heart of the family – the secrets we keep, the memories we treasure and the relationships we feel bound to, but long to escape. Edward and Isobel haven't spoken for years and live on opposite sides of the Atlantic. When their mother, Mary, dies unexpectedly, they are thrown together to sort through the family home. With Julie, Edward's diffident but devoted girlfriend, making an awkward third, each stumbles through the practicalities and funeral preparations, trying to make sense of their emotions and their feelings towards one another. Then Isobel makes a disturbing discovery and her fateful decision has consequences for them all, challenging their beliefs about the past, hopes for the future, and understanding of Mary's role in keeping them at once apart and together. This utterly immersive novel is rich with insightful and wickedly comic observations of family members behaving badly in stressful situations – of sibling rivalries, a parent torn between the two, and a grieving process that takes time to unfold. Beginning in a small coastal town during the Spring Bank Holiday, the novel moves forward through the point of view of each of the characters in turn, and culminates on Christmas Eve.

Leseprobe

THE FAVOURITE

S.V. BERLIN

For Anne

Contents

Title PageDedication  I:  House 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9  II:  Home 10 11  Acknowledgements About the Author Copyright

I

House

1

Monday

White Galoshes

She was in New York when it happened, on the way to a party, laughing and joking in the back seat of a cab. Now, in the grey light of an English morning, she followed her brother along the hospital corridor and wondered how she had got here. She could remember almost nothing of the last twelve hours – the message that flashed up on her phone, stark and to the point, the mad dash back to her apartment, the journey to the airport and the flight itself. And yet, there remained the simple fact of being here, which felt inexplicable and unexpected, and in that way had all the hallmarks of a dream.

As they continued through another pair of swing doors and down several flights of stairs, she listened to their shoes squeak on the linoleum like footstep sound effects. Ever since she was a small child she had mentally rehearsed for this event, but today those careful scenarios had vanished, the reality flat and unreal against its surroundings – the plain red bricks of the hospital building and the ordinary tone of their voices – while that other voice, the constant observer developed through therapy and other American pastimes, the voice which analysed and commented, had today been utterly silenced.

‘They really do keep these places in the basement,’ she murmured to her brother as they descended the stairs. He looked tall and remote – and much older, of course, since the last time she had seen him. He acknowledged her with a slight, not unfriendly shrug, while his girlfriend – a timid-looking person who had scarcely uttered a word – continued to follow a few steps behind them. A minute or two earlier she had found herself trying to make small talk with Peter, the attendant who had met them at reception. Now she heard him clear his throat. ‘I know it’s a cliché,’ he said, ‘but she really does look very peaceful.’ This disclaimer was clever of him, she thought. He had taken the measure of his visitors, calculated perhaps that despite the circumstances they considered themselves cynical and knowing, above common displays of hysterics or emotional outpourings – and adjusted his words accordingly. They reached the bottom of the stairwell and entered a dim passageway. Not long now, she thought.

They arrived in a furnished waiting area, where Peter opened a side door. ‘We’re just in here,’ he said in a low voice, and ushered them through into some sort of anteroom. She saw a large interior window and beyond this another, smaller room, carpeted and softly lit, its walls swagged in a thick curtain material. In the very centre of this room was a bed, and on the bed was a person who was clearly fast asleep.

Her brother was the first to speak. ‘She looks asleep,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said. It was true. You could see breath in the rise and fall of the sheet, even at this distance. A memory came to her, like an object thrown up by a wave – of King Lear, how the king thought he saw Cordelia’s breath upon a mirror – and she turned away from the window and saw that Peter the attendant was waiting, with his discreet shop assistant’s air, a little behind and to one side of them.

‘Please,’ he said, motioning towards the little room, ‘take as long as you like.’

She glanced back through the window, at the figure on the bed.

‘I brushed her hair,’ he added nervously, ‘the way I thought she might have liked it.’

‘Thank you.’ She didn’t know what else to say, struck again by the immense tact and complexity of his words, and overcome by an almost unbearable feeling of gratitude for this person, whose voice was full of kindness and apology, who had – as the duty nurse had pointedly informed them – left his own family and come into work on a bank holiday for the benefit of someone else’s.

Peter gave her a wan smile and excused himself

‘Do you mind if I go in alone first?’ she said, turning to her brother. He shrugged.

‘I’m not going in, thanks,’ he said.

The room felt hushed and separate. And friendly, she decided – definitely friendly and warm, like a friend’s sitting room. She was relieved to be allowed to make her approach gently and from a distance, rather than having it sprung on her as she had always feared. She had always imagined that when the time came she would be met by an officious and indifferent man in white overalls and brought into somewhere clinical and cold. Their shoes would echo off steel and tile and she would be marched up to a metal trolley where he would whip the sheet off with a magician’s flourish and no warning. Slowly she neared the bed and noticed that her mother’s face was framed by a kind of white ruff or flouncy Elizabethan collar – a gesture that showed care and thoughtfulness. Edging closer, she stood motionless for several seconds, waiting. The room was silent. Her mother’s head was turned slightly to one side, to the right, and her eyes were closed. She looks exactly like herself, she thought gratefully. If her features looked wispy and indistinct, incidental in some way, this lent her the careless look of a sleeping figure in a painting – a Pre-Raphaelite Ophelia, hair fanned out in the water. In a crack of her mother’s lips there was a fleck of dried blood, and she had the urge to dab it off, as her mother would have done for her at one time, with a scrap of licked tissue that held the faint odour of lipstick.

She leant down and gently kissed her forehead. It was something she had never done before, and doing it now felt artificial and faintly dishonest. Her mother’s skin was very cold – or rather she assumed it was, because, as she straightened up, the sensation, or the memory, seemed to vanish. She wondered how you were supposed to say goodbye. Were you to say it out loud, the way people did in films? Or were you to quietly think it to yourself? She murmured it under her breath, feeling foolish and fraudulent, the word inadequate and not enough. Last chance for everything, she thought: to see her mother’s hands, which really were those of a pianist – the first part of ‘Für Elise’ anyway, and most of the difficult second part, long, tapering fingers moving rapidly across the keys. Effortless.