The Phone on the Table

Denise was counting packets of buttons when Mum and I arrived on Friday morning.

Her market stall sold haberdashery, cheap reading glasses, sewing kits and a surprising number of replacement zips. I had bought two hair clips from her when I was eleven and spent the next month trying to arrange accidental reasons to visit Rowan's kitchen. Now the table was covered in stock she had brought home because she could not make herself go back to the market and could not afford to forget what she had paid for it.

“Don't look at the room,” she said. “Look at the kettle.”

Mum went directly to the kettle.

I put our bag of groceries beside the fridge. Denise had asked for them. Mum had made her send a list instead of guessing what a grieving family ought to eat.

“Did you get the ordinary cereal?” Denise asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. Someone brought a box with dried berries. Alice thinks it tastes like a hedge.”

From upstairs, Alice called, “It does.”

Denise gave a small, exhausted smile.

I sat at the end of the table where there was a gap between zips and took a packet she pushed towards me.

“Ten in each bag,” she said. “Except the yellow ones. Twelve. Don't ask me why. I didn't make the rules.”

We counted for several minutes. The buttons were warm from the sun through the kitchen window. Some had little ridges around the edge; others were smooth, pale discs that slipped through my fingers.

Denise's phone lay face up beside the sugar bowl. Every time it lit, her hands stopped.

“Do you need to get that?” Mum asked on the fourth message.

“No. It's my cousin. She wants to know about flowers. I keep telling her we don't have a date yet.”

Alice appeared in the doorway wearing a school jumper over pyjama shorts.

“Can I stay home?”

“You're only going in for the meeting.”

“Can I stay home from the meeting?”

Denise closed her eyes briefly.

“You said you wanted to talk to Mrs Kelly.”

“I did yesterday.”

“Right. Well. You can tell her that when she rings.”

Alice came to the table, took a yellow button and balanced it on the back of her hand. She flicked it into the air and caught it.

“Rowan could do four,” she said.

“He could do two,” Denise said. “The other two went under the fridge.”

“That's because you watched.”

I almost smiled. Then Alice tried four and three of them scattered across the floor.

Mum got down to help find them. Denise told her not to be ridiculous. Mum said she had bent down before and expected to do it again.

For a moment, the kitchen was busy with a very small problem.

When we had found the last button, Denise asked Alice to bring down the folder from Rowan's desk. Alice's expression changed.

“Not the black one,” Denise said. “The blue plastic one. I need the receipt for the printer.”

Alice went reluctantly. I watched the doorway after she had gone.

“She thinks I'm giving everything away,” Denise said. “I'm not. I just need to know what belongs to whom.”

“Could you tell her before you move things?” Mum asked.

“I did. I told her yesterday.”

“Maybe again.”

Denise rubbed her forehead. “Yes. Maybe again.”

The folder contained appliance warranties, a bus pass application, a leaflet for a comic fair and a printed booking confirmation for a table Rowan meant to share with two people from college in August. He had drawn a pigeon in the margin beside the fee, holding a knife and demanding a refund.

“He paid his part last Tuesday,” Denise said. “He was annoyed because he thought the table would be bigger.”

I touched the edge of the paper, not the drawing.

“What was he taking?”

“Those little books he was making. The council birds. And some postcards. He'd priced everything differently in pencil about six times.”

Alice put a second sheet down between us.

“He wanted to give me ten per cent for helping staple.”

“Did you agree?” I asked.

“No. Twenty.”

“Fair.”

“He said I was exploiting him.”

She looked pleased for a second, then unbearably young.

Denise's phone lit again. This time she picked it up, stared at the screen, and set it down without answering.

“Can I ask you about that message?” I said.

Her hands rested on the open folder.

“The one on Friday.”

“You don't have to,” Mum said to her.

“No. It's all right.”

Denise unlocked the phone and opened the conversation. Above the last message were ordinary things: a photograph of an empty milk carton, a complaint about Alice stealing a charger, a request to buy tape. The departure message sat among them like a guest who had entered the wrong kitchen.

“Did he ever call you Mother?” I asked.

Alice made a face.

“When he wanted something and thought he was funny,” she said. “Mother dearest, release the biscuits.”

I looked at her. I had been ready to make the word into a clean distinction. She had complicated it without trying.

“But not like that,” Denise said.

“No,” Alice agreed. “Not like that.”

Denise scrolled up and found a message from February. Rowan had addressed her as Supreme Mother of the Household and asked whether he could borrow twelve pounds. Under it she had replied with a photograph of the washing-up.

“He could be very formal when he was being a pest,” she said. “I told the officer. I don't want to say he never used a word when he did.”

I nodded.

“Did he talk about going to Northbridge?”

“For the fair. Not on Friday.”

“He could have changed his mind,” Mum said gently.

“He could.” Denise's voice remained even. “He could have had plans I didn't know. I know I'm his mother, not a camera following him about.”

I felt my face grow warm, though she had not meant it for me.

“But he asked me on Friday morning whether I'd wash his black hoodie for Sunday. He'd left money for Alice's lunch because she was going out with a friend. The whole day had little pieces of next week in it.”

She looked down at the message.

“That doesn't prove anything. I know. But it's why I rang again. Before they found the bag. I couldn't make this fit with the person who had been in the kitchen.”

Alice took the phone, read the last message once and put it face down.

“Can we stop looking at it?”

“Yes,” Denise said immediately.

We went back to the buttons.

Later, while Mum helped Denise put away the groceries, Alice took me into the front room. Rowan's drawing of the giant pigeon was propped against the television. The crown had been coloured a thick, uneven gold.

“He said you laughed at this,” she told me.

“I did.”

“He said you laughed in the wrong place.”

“I probably did that too.”

She sat on the arm of the sofa.

“Did you like him?”

It would have been easy to answer the question she had not asked: whether I liked boys, whether Rowan and I had ever been a thing. I knew that was not it.

“Yes,” I said.

“Then why weren't you friends?”

I looked at the pigeon because looking at her was harder.

“I put something in a film that he asked me to take out. I thought it made the film better. That mattered more to me at the time than doing what he'd asked.”

“Was it the bit about Dad?”

“Yes.”

She picked at the seam of the sofa arm.

“He hated that people talked about it.”

“I know.”

“No. You don't. He'd come in and tell Mum things people said. Nice things, mostly. He hated the nice things too.”

I sat down on the floor in front of her.

“You're right,” I said. “I didn't know that part.”

She looked relieved by the answer, and angry with me for making her need it.

After a while she handed me a stack of postcards. Rowan's birds appeared on the backs of buses, on a shopping trolley, on the roof of the council offices. One stood outside a closed library holding a sign that said I CANNOT READ BUT I SUPPORT THE PRINCIPLE.

“Can you help me count these?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Don't put them in a film.”

“I won't.”

She watched me until I started counting.