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By Root 530 0

to her, and if we spoke it could only ever be politely, nothing given or gambled on either side. She’s kept the children. But her mother looks after them while she works. Whatever it may have been like, or however her mother regarded it, Mrs. Stewart takes charge of the twins while Cass works. The thing one doesn’t know before is that the process doesn’t end with birth. It isn’t just that, to be reckoned with, explained, faced, brazened out. You’re left with a creature who had to be looked after and thought about, taken into consideration forevermore. It’s not one year. It’s eighteen, maybe. Eighteen years is quite a long time. I would be fifty-two then. All that time, totally responsible. There would not be any space for anything else – only that one being, and earning enough to keep you both, and hoping you could find someone who could look after the child while you worked.

Mother wouldn’t. That is certain. Even if she could bring herself to, which she couldn’t, she wouldn’t be able to. Physically, she’s not up to it.

It can’t be borne. I can’t see any way it could be.

It can’t be ended, either. I don’t know where to go.

I don’t exactly know when I bought this. Perhaps a week ago. I don’t recall details well, these days. I put it in the top part of my cupboard. I take it down now, the known brand of whisky, and then I see I haven’t a glass.

Mother is sleeping. I can tell from the way she is breathing. The bathroom glass is blue plastic. Her sleeping capsules are on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. Quietly, quietly, Rachel. There. Everything necessary is here, gathered together in my own room.

How many? As many as possible in order not to take any chances. She’s had a new lot only last week from Doctor Raven, so the bottle is nearly full. It isn’t necessary to count them.

I pour the brown fluid into the blue plastic tumbler, and juggle a little while with the blue and crimson capsules, rolling them in my hands. They are incredibly small. They take up practically no room at all. And then I find I’ve counted them, despite myself. There are fourteen.

Enough?

One is enough for a night, so surely these will be all right, with the other. I swallow some of the whisky. I thought I would hate it, straight, but I don’t. It is like swallowing flame which burns for a second only and then consoles. It’s all right. It’s going to be all right. There is nothing to be afraid of.

Actually, it is very simple. Anyone could get down a few capsules – this shouldn’t be difficult in the slightest. And this liquid – anyone can open their throat and drink, if they’ve decided to. Firewater. This makes me want to laugh. The Indians, or so we’re told, used to call it firewater. How accurate they were.

Half the glass has gone down. But no capsules. That remains to be done. All right. One at a time. One. That’s the first. Thirteen to go. Unlucky number, but after the next it will only be twelve. Come on, Rachel. Only a little way to go, and then everything will be all right.

Oh Christ.

Time must have stopped for a time. What have I done? And now I see that what I’ve done is that I’ve taken the bottle of my mother’s barbiturates and have emptied the crucial and precious capsules out of my window, zanily, on to Hector Jonas’s trimmed lawn beneath. The whisky is not gone. It is still here. Something prevents my pouring out good whisky. I’m my father’s child, no doubt. Niall Cameron would have dropped dead at anyone who poured out a bottle of whisky. Let us give respect unto the dead. I turn the cap on to the bottle and put it again among the other relics in the highest cupboard.

How can I have this lightness? It’s temporary, a reaction. It won’t last.

At that moment, when I stopped, my mind wasn’t empty or paralysed. I had one clear and simple thought.

They will all go on in some how, all of them, but I will be dead as stone and it will be too late then to change my mind.

But nothing is changed now. Everything is no more possible than it was. Only one thing has changed – I’m left with it, with circumstances, whatever they may be.