Afterwife (9781101618868) by Williams Polly

Author:Williams, Polly [Williams, Polly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101618868
Publisher: Penguin USA
Published: 2012-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

Anyway, back to my ankle boots. Off they go again! Click clack. They’ve dropped Ludo off at the classroom, where the moment her back is turned he swings his school bag hard against little Rex’s eczema-raw knees. She is back at the school gate now. She is looking around for somebody. Ollie, I suspect. But, unbeknownst to her, Ollie has made a quick getaway and is dashing up the stairs to the school office to deliver the check for Freddie’s school lunches, which is four months late. Tash hovers, then gives up and starts click-clacking back to her house, checking her phone repeatedly and texting as she walks.

I’m through the letter box back in her house before she is, watching from the banister as she fiddles in her cavernous black handbag for her door keys. She opens the door and freezes. Suddenly she is looking right at me. She pales. Like she’s seen a ghost. (Ha!) For one strange moment I wonder if I’ve been spotted. Although, being invisible to everyone but Tash would be like some kind of paranormal sick joke. But no, no, she’s looking away now, flurrying through to her kitchen to make herself a coffee. The moment’s passed.

I settle in to watch.

Only now do I understand why womankind designed net curtains. In the space of five minutes, Tash, beautiful, fragrant Tash, sitting at her oak Conran table on her three-hundred-pounds-a-pop Eames Eiffel chair—her house is full of famous designer chairs—farts loudly, goes for a pee, doesn’t wash her hands and takes a bite out of a lump of Parmesan in the fridge. She then sits down, switches on her iPad and spends five minutes updating her status on Facebook and Twitter—“Natasha is having an existential bedlinen crisis”—another ten idling JohnLewis.com’s virtual aisles looking at duvet sets, not buying anything. Another eight minutes is idled away in ASOS’s accessories section. She puts a gold-plated chain bracelet—seventy-seven pounds—in her basket but doesn’t check out. She idly eats some seeds from a jar. One more fart. (Seeds, huh?) She spends the next seventeen minutes of her precious life ordering new socks and pajamas for Ludo from Marks and Spencer’s website, but she can’t remember her password, cocking up the order. Cursing, she spends another seven minutes on email. She goes there to find the new password sent by Marks and Spencer and gets diverted by a sensational email from Brigid regarding the infamous psycho mother who thinks the no-nut policy is an infringement of her son’s human right to have peanut butter sandwiches in his packed lunch and is picketing the school gate with leaflets. Her coffee machine whirs noisily and spits up a coffee, which she throws back into her open pelican throat, chased by a packed lunch fruit bar. She moves a basketful of washing from washing machine to tumble dryer, skim-reads a magazine, then, bloody hell, it’s eleven o’clock!

Where does the time go, eh? Well, I tell you what, it goes like that.

My ankle boots are tripping up the sisal stair carpeting now.

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