Out of Mind by Catherine Sampson

Author:Catherine Sampson [SAMPSON, CATHERINE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780446562980
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

IN the morning, Finney left for work looking distracted and hurried. Neither of us was in a mood to revisit the conversation of the night before. I checked my e-mail and found a message from my mother after several days of silence.

The sun is getting to me. It is doing things to me I wouldn’t have thought possible. It’s Peeling something away, and easing my joints, and Soothing the aches and pains of Old Age, smoothing out the wrinkles like a hot iron. I walk around barefoot, and the earth burns through the soles of my feet. Apparently they don’t smoke cannabis here as much as they used to, which is a great Pity. Nevertheless, London is receding to the edges of my consciousness, my Daughters and my darling Grandchildren are secure in my Heart, of course, but I have to admit that you’re not uppermost in my Mind. I am being challenged—so I am told—not to Think, but to Feel.

There is a great change in circumstances here. I’ve told you all about my friend Nancy. As you might remember, she is married to Nate, but I discovered when I got here that, although they have the same address, they are both with new partners. Nancy has taken a Lesbian lover called DeeDee, and Nate has a Boyfriend—a sixty-year-old boy—called Clark. DeeDee and Clark were previously living together as man and wife, but they have Swapped Partners!!! The two Men live together in the attic, the two Women live in a garden house, and they all get Together for dinner. I have been on the lookout for problems—Surely there must be Problems—but so far I have detected only Peace and Light.

The Subject of your father came up in conversation at lunch the other day. I was asked by Nancy, after I had spoken briefly on the subject, whether he—your father—had any Redeeming Feature. I said No, and she and DeeDee looked at me with Pity. Does he love anything or anyone? DeeDee asked. I told them I didn’t know and then I’m afraid I said I didn’t really Care. I am sure I set back my Personal Transformation by weeks. But I’m right, aren’t I, that he has no Redeeming Feature?

I read and reread, reveling in the vision of my mother in California. But the bit about my father unsettled me. My mother had never before wavered in her silent contempt for my father. It wasn’t clear that she was wavering now, but I found her uncertainty disconcerting, and it stayed with me all day long.

I went to the office, where I made arrangements for Majorca. A sixteen-year-old schoolgirl had last been seen there in a nightclub in the early hours of the morning two months earlier. Her three friends only realized the next day that she was gone, and when she failed to turn up for their flight home, they became alarmed. Local police had been looking for her ever since, but her parents seemed to have spent more energy quarreling than looking for their daughter.

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