The next few weeks were pretty awful.  Dad and I worked through a dreary domestic routine: eat breakfast; clear away breakfast; find something to fill the hours before lunch; the BBC One O’Clock News – the Russians in Afghanistan, British Steel workers on strike. I got to hate the BBC News signature tune. It seemed to sum up all that was grey and repetitive in our lives.  Dad didn’t say very much, or read anymore.  He just watched the news and stared out the window into the cold. His grief was quite frightening.

Lynn’s baby arrived at the end of January – Robert, another grandson and nephew - and Steve had managed to be in the hospital loo at the moment of the birth. “Mum would’ve loved to have seen him,” said Lynn, from her white bed on the maternity ward, and I couldn't help remembering that Mum had never noticed her older grandchildren except to tick them off. Already, we were adjusting our memories.

“Life goes on,” said Dad, when we returned home.

We walked into the living room, and Dad slumped down into his usual place. Things had changed in this room, without anyone meaning to change them, her chair pushed back, just a little, from its usual place and things were getting left on it - yesterday’s paper and a flyer from someone who wanted to clean our windows.  It was two minutes past six and Dad hadn't switched on the News yet. I took off my coat and slung it over the settee.

“Marya, in the coat-cupboard, please!”

I picked it up and stepped back into the hall.  My mother’s tailored coats, with fake fur collars, stared back at me from their hangers in the coat-cupboard.  Dad had never been able to buy her the real thing.  I prized open the loop at the top of my duffel and hung it on its hook, shoving it behind everything else so the door would shut.

“Do you think,” he asked when I returned, “that it would be… disrespectful… to go back to work now?”

“No… no, of course not.”  I was surprised at being asked. “You go.”

“What will you do?”

“Well, school are supposed to have found me a job with the Council, aren't they?”

“I’ll still think of Mumia when I'm at work, you know.”

“Dad, whatever we do… whether we go to work or stick around here… we can't do anything more for her, can we?”  For something to do, I read the headline in the newspaper and then remembered that I had read the whole article this morning.  “I feel terribly guilty, though.”

He jerked his head around. “Guilty? You? Why?”

“Because I got very impatient with her. Sophie did too. I wasn’t very sympathetic.”

“She got very… difficult… especially towards the end. And you and Sophie were teenagers. Urcky and Lynn knew her when she was… well.”

“I’m an adult, Dad. I didn’t appreciate fully what was going on in her head and I should’ve done. On Christmas Day, when I was talking to her on the stairs, she talked to me about…” I couldn't bring myself to mention Auschwitz by name to my father.

“Did she?” He sat up in his chair.  “You must’ve found that very distressing.”

“Tata. She was in pain.”

“Yes.”

“You were so good to her.”

“Was I?”

“Yes, of course you were!” I moved the stuff on the seat and dropped into my mother’s chair.  My elbows rested on the broad armrests, and I picked at the worn braided trim of the faded chintz covers.  A second later, possessed of a sudden restlessness, I had to get up.  I walked to the window and back again. “If she had been… physically ill, in physical pain, we might have said… “She’s suffered enough”… “Blessed release.”… all the things people say. She wanted to die, Tata. She told me that on Christmas Day.”

“Yes, yes…and to me... over and over again.”

“She was in mental pain and she really had had enough of being on earth.”

Dad nodded. Dad nodded again and again. In fact, he jerked his chin up and down so many times that I just wanted him to stop. “I'm so glad someone understands,” he said, breaking down into convulsive sobs.

I wrapped my arms around him. His body shook so much I could hardly hold him. I had never seen my father cry before, never seen any man cry. I could hear a voice, from years ago, saying “Real men didn’t cry. My mother’s voice! I could hear her saying it and, worse still an angry rejoinder forming in my own mind.

“Death is not the end,” he repeated over and over again.

Still holding on to him, I reached behind his back for the tissue box and handed it to him. 

He let go of me to wipe his face and blew his nose several times. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Shall I make some tea?”

He forced a smile. “A very English solution. Yes. Please.” He followed me into the kitchen.

“Dad,” I said, as the kettle started to sing, “Sophie doesn’t know.”

“No. She doesn’t… but, if she won't leave us an address, we can’t contact her.” The tears welled up in his eyes again. “There’s only so much guilt I can take, Marya.”

“No, Tata, no guilt on you. She’s an adult too, remember. She’s twenty one.”

A few days later, we received another of her post cards, addressed to “Mr and Mrs Wieclawski”.  As usual, we were told she was “fine”. The picture on the front was of the Black Madonna of Jasna Gora.  I wondered if she were in Poland, but tiny writing on the back, read “Sisters of the Black Madonna of Jasna Gora, Av 2045, Chicago, USA.”

I suppose Sophie thought we would appreciate this card because, ever since I could remember, the darkened face of Our Lady of Jasna Gora had scowled at me from her holy picture at the top of our stairs.