Yesterday's Weather by Anne Enright

course. They kept wishing their mother would cry, but she didn’t. Grief had made her astonishing. Kate’s mother wore a suit of dove grey, with a blue scarf at the neck, and she looked like Bacall might have done at the death of Bogart: untouchable. She hugged and shook hands with neighbours and friends, and not one of them made a dent in her. It wasn’t a good sign. Kate was on the other side of the crowd, inviting people back and organising lifts, when she finally heard the noise they had all been hoping for since – well, since her father had gone into decline. It was the sound of weeping. She pushed through to her mother and found her, collapsed and sobbing, in a strange man’s arms.
    ‘There, there, now,’ said the man, stroking her blonde-grey hair. ‘There, there.’
    He was dressed in a safari jacket the colour of sand; his neck was thick and red, and his eyes were an uncertain blue. Beside him, a tiny woman in a trenchcoat picked up her mother’s hand and stroked it.
    ‘There, there,’ said the woman, joining in. ‘There, there, Marjorie. There, there.’
    From behind her mother’s heaving shoulders the man stretched out a stubby arm, but Kate did not need the introduction. She already knew his name.
    ‘Lewis Carter,’ he said. ‘My sympathies, at this time.’
    And later, when the three of them sang ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ in the corner of the living room, Kate was not surprised. She had expected that too.

N ATALIE
    Natalie put me straight. Who knows what Natalie wants or what she likes, but we know what she doesn’t like, that’s for sure. At least we do now.
    ‘Well,’ I said, after I put the phone down, ‘I won’t be getting in your way again.’
    Natalie should be a star. When she grows up, that is. Natalie should be something really impressive. Because if she isn’t, then it’ll get pretty lonely, won’t it? I mean, how many friends has she got, to lose?
    I will be a writer when I grow up and I will put it all down on the page, the tangle between Natalie and me, which is supposed to be about Billy’s mother, but I don’t think it is, really. Billy is Natalie’s boyfriend. I nearly went out with him once, but that is so long ago and it wasn’t even a proper thing. Now he’s best friends with my boyfriend, who couldn’t care less, and neither could Natalie, so that isn’t what this is about, either.
    I wake up in the middle of the night I am so upset. I mean, when I put down the phone I didn’t know what to think – Natalie is so polite, you could hardly call what we had a fight – and then I am lying there with my eyes wide open; looking at what turns out to be the ceiling (duh!), wondering what terrible thought just woke me up.
    My sister is asleep across the room – she has a kind of glowing pebble night-light that changes colours, very slowly, and she is lying in this sea of stuff: books and broken Nintendos and inflatable Bratz cushions, and God knows what else is in the pile, except from somewhere deep inside the heap, her breathing. And it makes me think of the milk inside a coconut, and I also think of Natalie’s room that I was in once, and it was really tidy. That’s all. It was just really tidy.
    Natalie is an only child. She says it’s OK. She says she doesn’t know if her parents really, really love her or really, really couldn’t care less. She has nothing to compare it to. They never shout at her anyway, they just have ‘little conversations’ – which sounds like hell to me but she says it’s OK.
    Here are the four of us: I am the fat, jokey one with the flaking nail polish, though it is always interesting flaking polish, like mirror silver or navy blue – still, you can tell by the way the stuff jumps off me that I don’t really mean it. Natalie is more a Rouge Noir sort of girl. She might have her doubts, but that polish stays put.
    Natalie has the kind of looks you have to get used to – but once you do, it is as though you have personally