The Bottle of Tears by Nick Alexander

Author:Nick Alexander [Alexander, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2019-07-22T16:00:00+00:00

As Sander drives her up the M2, Penny cries. Occasionally, unpredictably, the tears stop and she attempts to phone her sister, then her nephew, yet again. But neither of them is answering their phones. It’s most upsetting.

Martin, who she has spoken to, has promised to phone her back the second he finds out where his wife and son have vanished to. But that doesn’t stop Penny calling him twice during the journey, just in case.

By the time they reach the halfway point, she feels all cried out and just sits, numbly, watching the countryside spin past. From time to time, she glances at her phone again to check, but the only text is from Will, letting her know that he and Ben have arrived in Whitstable, and that the kids (who, still sleeping when they left, have not yet been told of their grandmother’s death) are both fine. Which is at least one thing she doesn’t have to worry about.

On arrival at Vivian Court, they are led into the manager’s office and offered cups of horrible, bitter coffee.

‘I can do this for you,’ Sander tells Penny for the third time. ‘You don’t need to be here.’

‘She’s my mother,’ Penny breathes. ‘Well, she was.’

‘OK,’ Sander says, reaching for Penny’s hand.

‘Don’t do that,’ Penny says, snatching her hand away. ‘Don’t be nice to me, or I’ll cry. And I need not to cry. At least until we’re out of this horrible place.’

‘OK,’ Sander says. ‘You old monster.’

‘Do I look terrible?’ Penny asks, fumbling in her bag for her compact. She removed her make-up in the car but is suddenly unsure whether makeup-less red eyes are any better than panda eyes.

‘You look fine,’ Sander says. ‘That was just me not-being-nice, as requested.’

Mr White, the facility manager, a suited young man who looks more like an accountant than anything else, arrives with a second tray of coffees. ‘Oh, you already have coffee,’ he says. ‘Oh well.’ He slides the tray on to his desk next to the first, identical one, and then takes a seat. ‘You are Mrs Thompson’s daughter?’ he asks.

Penny nods. ‘Yes,’ she says.

‘I thought I remembered you,’ he says, even though they have never met before. ‘But I do have to check. It can be terrible in this job if you get people mixed up.’

He explains that Marge’s body, or Penny’s ‘mother’, as he still refers to her, has been transferred to the local hospital. ‘You’ll have to go and . . . you know . . . visit her,’ he says vaguely.

‘Visit her?’ Penny repeats, suddenly grasping at a foolish hope that there’s been some kind of mix-up and sitting up straight in her chair.

‘Yes, you’ll have to, you know . . . identify the body, I’m afraid. It’s procedure,’ he says. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Of course,’ Penny says, slumping back down, devastated anew. You stupid man, she thinks.

He asks if they would like to visit Marge’s flat, an offer which Penny declines. ‘I’m not ready for that, I don’t think,’ she says, her voice wobbling.

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