Nightingale Point. Luan Goldie

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СКАЧАТЬ degrees already.’ Malachi leans over the sink and pushes on the condensation-streaked glass. It screeches loudly as it gives way, allowing the heat from outside to do battle with the steam from Mary’s cooking.

      ‘I have the vent on, see.’ She indicates the tiny, spinning, dust-covered fan. ‘You look tired,’ she says gently, keen not to nag the boy. ‘Too much study, study, study.’

      He looks up at the window and undoes the top button on his shirt. Mary does not like the way he has taken to wearing collarless shirts; she watches MTV sometimes, and knows this is not a fashion among young people. She notices too, as he goes under the sink, that his trousers – muted green cotton with a sharp crease down the middle – are for a much older man.

      ‘What you looking for?’ she asks as he rummages around her collection of multi-buy discount cleaning products, fifty pack of sponges and long abandoned, but not yet disposed of, cutlery holders and soap dishes.

      ‘You need to oil your window.’ He twists the nozzle on a rusty can of WD-40.

      ‘Don’t worry about my window.’

      He stops and looks down at her. His almond-shaped eyes search for something.

      ‘What?’ She touches her face, wondering if a stray Rice Krispie is stuck on her cheek.

      ‘You’re saying I look tired. You all right? You look a bit … frazzled.’

      ‘I worked forty-eight hours already this week – what do you expect me to look like? Imelda Marcos?’

      Malachi blesses her with one of his rare smiles and then positions his knees into the two small free spots on the worktop. He seems more sullen than usual.

      ‘Are you okay?’ Mary asks as he squirts the window frame.

      ‘Yep. I’m always okay. Just hot and this smog, it plays havoc with my asthma.’ He jumps down and stares blankly across the kitchen.

      Mary knows he’s still hung up on the blonde girl from upstairs. ‘Well, I’m glad you’re not still sad about whatshername.’

      ‘I have a hundred other things to think about,’ he snaps.

      She was the first girl of Malachi’s Mary had ever met. He even brought her over for dinner once, one wet afternoon where they sat, with plates on their laps, eating chicken bistek.

      ‘Some things are not meant to be. I could see it from the start,’ Mary lies, for all she saw that afternoon was Malachi buzzing around the girl like she was the best thing since they started slicing bread. ‘I always know when couples don’t match. I even said it about Charles and Diana, but did anyone listen to me?’

      ‘I really don’t want to talk about this.’

      Mary throws her arms up. ‘Me neither. Goodbye, Blondie. Plenty more pussy in the cattery.’

      He wipes his face to hide his embarrassment and she’s pleased to see the tiniest of smiles emerge on his sad face.

      ‘Why’d you make so much food?’ he asks.

      ‘I told you, I need to work every day next week so I’m stockpiling. Like a squirrel.’ She wraps an old washed out ice-cream tub with cling film and hands it to him. ‘This is for your tutor.’ She had been sending food parcels to anyone related to Malachi’s education since his first semester of university. Anything to boost the boy’s chances. ‘The rest is for your freezer.’

      ‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’

      ‘And I appreciate if you put on some weight. What is this?’ She pinches the flesh of his side.

      ‘Ow.’

      ‘Heroin chic!’ she announces. ‘I saw it on GMTV. Teenagers with bodies like this.’ Mary holds up her pinkie finger. ‘No woman wants that, Malachi. You need to eat properly.’

      She had looked in Malachi’s and Tristan’s fridge a few days ago and saw nothing but a loaf of value bread and jar of lemon curd. The freezer was even worse: a half empty box of fish fingers and two frosty bottles of Hooch, which Tristan explained were ‘for the ladies’. If their nan knew they were eating so poorly under Mary’s watch there would be murder.

      ‘Freezer, you hear me? Tell your brother he can’t eat, eat, eat all in one sitting. And why has he got zigzags shaved in his hair? Does he think he’s a pop star or something?’

      ‘You know what he’s like. He’s a little wild.’

      ‘He can’t afford to be wild.’ Mary tries to put the word in air quotes but uses eight fingers and makes a baby waving motion. ‘Too many riffraffs around here going wild like this.’ She makes a stabbing gesture and tries to look menacing, but her only reference point is West Side Story and she makes a dance of it.

      Malachi puts a hand under a piece of kitchen roll and drags out a bamboo skewer of prawns. Mary slaps him.

      ‘Did you hear me say help yourself? Does this look like the Pizza Hut buffet to you?’

      ‘You just told me I need to eat.’

      ‘Not prawn. Too early for prawn.’ She turns her back to him as she rewraps the skewers. His eyes burn her; she must explain her snappy mood. ‘I need to leave my spare keys with you in case David gets in early. He’s on standby for a flight so could be here tonight, tomorrow or next week. Oh God.’ The reality of him arriving hits her again. It sends her elbow into overdrive.

      ‘David?’

      ‘Yes, David, my husband. Remember him?’ There’s a hysterical edge to her voice. She puts a hand on her forehead to save herself as Oprah has taught her. ‘I don’t even want to talk about it.’

      ‘I didn’t know David was coming back.’

      ‘No. But we didn’t know Jesus was coming back either.’

      Mary takes her nurse fob watch from her pocket – a present from David on one of his rare jaunts back home. An obscure-looking Virgin Mary with oversized arms ticks around the clock, hung on a thick, gold link chain. Well, it was gold once, now it’s more silver, the shine, like everything else to do with David, rubbed away by the sweat and grime of real life. Quarter to twelve.

      ‘Mary?’ Malachi waves his arms to get her attention. ‘Hand me these keys then. I need to get back home.’

      Mary nods as she looks in the junk drawer, rifling through papers, wires and replacement batteries for the smoke alarm until she finds the spare keys. Tristan had once attached a plastic marijuana leaf to them thinking it was funny. Mary had given him a lecture about the dangers of drugs but never bothered to remove the key ring.

      She fusses with the catch on the watch as she pins it to her uniform, swearing to get it fixed. ‘You want some tea before you go?’ she asks Malachi.

      He spins the keys around a long finger. ‘No, thanks. Too hot.’

      ‘You call this hot? It’s thirty-five degrees in Manila today.’ She lifts the kettle СКАЧАТЬ