To the Lake

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My mother died on Tuesday, November 17th. It was her neighbour who rang me; ironically she was the last neighbour Mum or I ever wanted to have contact with; she was a grumpy woman, always whingeing. She had an unfriendly face which looked as if it was carved from stone; during the fifteen years my mum and I lived on the same floor with her, there were several years when I didn’t say hello to her at all, and would deliberately press the button inside the lift before she could make it to the doors, breathing heavily and moving her legs with difficulty. The doors would close just as she reached them, and she had this funny expression on her face – a look of permanent umbrage. She had the same expression when during that time (I was fourteen or fifteen) she would ring our door bell – Mum never invited her in – and convey her displeasure on various matters: water splashes from my boots in the corridor, a confused guest who rang her door bell instead of ours after ten at night.‘What does she want again, Mum?’ I used to call loudly from inside the flat, when my mum’s voice started sounding helpless. She never learnt how to bite back, and even the slightest squabble in a shop queue – when other shoppers, their eyes glinting, would get animated by the sight of people arguing – gave her a bad headache. It gave her palpitations and tears too. When I turned eighteen, our neighbour’s weekly attacks on our flat suddenly ended – perhaps she realised that I was old enough to answer the door myself, so she stopped her glowering assaults.

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