Vacant Possession. Hilary Mantel

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      It’s not fair, she thought. I never wanted to come back here. I might meet Colin in the supermarket. I might meet his sister, Florence. Then again, I might meet Sylvia. I’ve never seen Sylvia, but I feel I’d know her at once. Instinct, if you like. Women who have shared a man can probably scent each other out.

      What about this shopping list? She turned it over. She could write on the back, why not? Just to get started was the main thing, to get some relief from the thoughts going round and round in her head. A good search through her handbag turned up a biro. She sat down at the kitchen table. She took a deep breath. Yes, I might meet the Sidneys en famille, she thought. Then again, I might meet my old client, Muriel Axon. That would be worse.

      ‘Ten years ago, I lived in this town, I was with Social Services, I was seeing Colin. I lived at home with my father; that was all of my life. But I had this case, and this is the case I want to write about. Muriel Axon, No. III/73/0059. Everything about this case bothered me. It still does.

      ‘Muriel Axon and her old mother Evelyn lived at number 2, Buckingham Avenue, in that part of town where people have big gardens and keep to themselves. Next door to them, but round the corner on Lauderdale Road, lived Colin’s sister Florence Sidney. We didn’t make that connection until the end. Why should we? When I met Colin – sneaking off to some pub somewhere, hoping we wouldn’t meet anyone we knew – we didn’t talk about his sister, and where she lived, or my clients and where they lived. But if I had known, I might have been able to ask Florence Sidney about her neighbours. Get some sort of – clarification.

      ‘Then again, I don’t know if I wanted clarification. I was afraid to find out what was really going on in the Axon household. Later, when it was all over, and Muriel’s mother was dead and Muriel herself had been put in hospital, their house came on the market and Colin bought it. He wanted a big house, and to live next door to his sister. He got it cheap.

      ‘I did warn him against it. I saw him at the inquest, and I told him I wouldn’t care to live there. I tried to convey to him that horrible things had happened in that house. He wouldn’t take a hint. I couldn’t do more than hint. I really didn’t know. I couldn’t expose my imaginings. I would have sounded superstitious, unbalanced, and he already thought I was that. By that time, everything was over between us.

      ‘After all, it’s just a house. Just an empty shell, when the people are taken away.

      ‘I expect I’ll find out how Colin’s getting on. This is a small town. They’re all around, I’m sure; old colleagues, old clients, old lovers. Of course there was always a risk, with Jim moving about for the sake of his career. If you’re in banking and you want to get to be a manager quite young you have to be prepared to move about. I’d rather have stayed in Manchester.

      ‘But I couldn’t produce any good reasons why we shouldn’t come back. Not reasons that convinced Jim. He doesn’t take much notice of my opinions. That’s understandable. I’m always crying, you see, bursting into tears, and falling over, and losing things. I was in banking too when we got married – I thought it would be restful and uncomplicated – but now I just sit about at home.

      ‘I’m not fit for anything, Jim says. He wonders what’s the matter with me. I spend my days thinking.

      ‘So I thought I could write a book, you see, about the Axon case and all that, and when it was done I could send it to the Sunday papers, and then everyone would know how social workers operate and why things go so badly wrong. How you get cases you can’t handle, and how clients conspire against you, and circumstances seem to conspire too. How it messes up your personal life. How you live with yourself afterwards; when disaster has occurred.’

      That will do for a preface, she thought. I can call it Confessions of a Social Worker, I suppose. She had long ago overflowed the shopping list and been forced to write on the piece of packing paper that had come around the teapot. The spout had got broken, but it didn’t matter; there wasn’t much call for tea. I’ll buy a proper notebook later, she thought, on my way to the off-licence.

      It was 12.30 pm when Sylvia came home from the CAB. In the hall she paused and called out, ‘Hello, Lizzie, all right are you?’ A clattering from the kitchen told her that her daily woman was hard at work. What a comfort to have the basics taken care of, she thought. She told herself that she hated housework, though in fact for most of her married life it had been her pride, pleasure and retreat.

      Going up the stairs, dragging her feet in their striped trainers, she acknowledged that she felt tired. The wrangle at the breakfast table was always a strain, and now her head was buzzing with Social Security regulations and unanswered questions about the legal aid scheme. The house was quiet. She went into her bedroom, kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed. Her eyes closed; she dozed for five minutes, wrapped in the midday heat. Suddenly a shrill ringing brought her upright, shocked out of sleep. Damn that cooker timer, she thought, it’s gone off by itself again. Why doesn’t Lizzie stop it? Heart still racing, she padded over to the door. Opened it; the ringing stopped. She sighed. Better turn out those drawers, I suppose. Skip lunch. Don’t need it, this weather.

      She knew that if she began with the bottom drawer, she would find her photograph albums; and then she could sit on the bed and browse. It was something she’d not done in ages. She’d never had much time to herself. Lizzie’s advent had been a blessing – even if she was a bit odd. You didn’t engage a cleaner for her looks or fashion sense, or for her conversation; you just needed someone honest and with a bit of initiative. Lizzie always reminded her of how she’d come up in the world. She reminded her a little of someone she’d known before her marriage; one of the girls on the Pork Shoulder line.

      She leaned back against the pillows. Wedding pictures, baby pictures; Suzanne grinning in her pram in the postage-stamp garden of their very first house. Suzanne had left home now, was studying geography at Manchester University. Then Alistair, scowling from under a woollen hat in the same pram. It was very like his present scowl, except that now he had more teeth. Here was Karen, two years old, digging in the garden of their house on the estate. Here she was again, a little older, mouth drooping, swinging on the rickety gate. Everything about that house had been rickety, leaky or shoddy; it was a triumph of jerry-building. No wonder they’d been keen to move to Buckingham Avenue, despite its neglected and depressing condition.

      The move had been a stroke of luck for them. With Claire on the way, they’d needed a bigger place; but how to afford it? Normally she’d never have considered the Lauderdale Road area – all those big detached houses, too gloomy and too expensive. Colin had grown up on Lauderdale Road, and his sister Florence, who had never got married, still occupied the family house; his father was dead, and Florence had put their mother in a home. Florence had called her up one day and said, ‘The Axon house is on the market, just round the corner, the one with the garden backing onto ours. You ought to enquire about it.’

      ‘What?’ she’d said. ‘That place where those two peculiar women lived? It’s falling down.’

      ‘It’s going cheap,’ Florence had said. ‘Suit yourselves. But you could do it up.’

      Sylvia suspected Florence’s motives, of course. She was possessive; she wanted her brother next door, on call for mending her fuses and unblocking her sink. But still … out of curiosity, Sylvia phoned the estate agent.

      ‘It is in need of sympathetic renovation,’ the man confirmed, ‘but it’s basically very sound. Of course, it’s very well situated. Within easy reach of shops and schools – ‘

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