Lunch was a quiet affair, the dear Jills still ringing in Alberta's ears, Eustace Clarence's desk still scattered with crumpled sheets that she had not been able to bring herself to fold, sort and bundle up. Harold had hardly fared better; he had almost broken down at the sight of the shirt he had bought Eustace Clarence for his sixteenth birthday (you'll be wanting that when you start building connections! Connections? Why, so you can get ahead of your college friends, of course!). It was some surreal nightmare, seeing Harold so weak, so tired, to see tears running down his face, indiscriminately mixed with mucus.

Who would have thought? And they had considered themselves (at least Alberta had), such strong and reasonable individuals.

But there was nothing reasonable about death.

Perhaps there might be something poetic about it, if one was into that sort of thing. But then Death had claimed Victor, too, and she and Harold knew very little poetry save for T. S. Eliot and post-Responsibilities Yeats with which he had wooed her, oh so many years before. No, Victor might have seen poetry in Death, but he was gone, and now there was nothing.

Am I a sister anymore? Do I even count as a mother?

Oh, if only she could stop just wallowing in this stupor! Of course she was still a sister, of course she was still a mother, memories of Eustace Clarence tugging at her trousers and calling her Ahbta all too fresh in her mind!

(But they were absent, Victor and Eustace Clarence were both absent! How could she claim sisterhood or motherhood in the absence of a brother and a son? And how was it that their very presence could be so stifling, so overwhelming, when they weren't there?)

Oh, to escape these thoughts!

Wildly, she considered what she must look like to an outsider. What would she see? A woman with Alberta Scrubb's dark hair, tightly knotted in a bun at the nape of her neck. Her eyes? Why, dark, beady things hidden beneath grotesquely swollen lids.

But the splitting sensation could not be forced and called upon; she was sitting at the table. She was staring at her cold lunch, her eyes were grotesquely swollen, and she was Alberta Scrubb, could feel it in every pore and pulse.

Looking across to Harold, she saw the weariness in his eyes, the discernible droop of his shoulders.

"You should eat, Alberta," he said, gently, tapping his fork on his plate.

Her stomach churned at the thought.

"I'd rather not," she murmured, and Harold smiled tautly, his eyes glassy and unfocused.

I know.

She picked up her fork and forced herself to swallow the lettuce.

"Perhaps you could call on Susan," Harold suggested quietly, pushing his plate forwards and folding his napkin on the table. "I'll clear up today, Alberta."

I thought I was visiting Susan on Monday, she wanted to retort, but the words sounded petulant even in her ears.

Visit Susan.

I don't want to, she almost blurted out, but even as the thought formed, she was ashamed of herself. How can I be petulant when she is all that is left of Victor?

And there, there, how it burned, because Susan wasn't the least bit like Victor, wasn't the least bit her intellectual, overly joyful father. She didn't look like him, except for that little furrow of her eyebrows when she frowned; she shared none of his interests, none of his mannerisms (save that unique eyebrow furrow).

Susan wasn't even like Helen, which Alberta might have been able to stomach (perhaps). As much as she did not personally like Helen as a friend, Helen had, over the years, come to be part of Victor-and-Helen, even as she suspected people may have looked at her and Harold as Alberta-and-Harold; but the Susan of last night's dinner had lacked the cheerful flightiness of her mother, had lacked the effervescent grace and easy conversational skills. This Susan was a rod, cold and distant, and it burned Alberta to the core to think that she was all that was left.

I'm a little worried about Susan, to be honest, Bertha; she's drifting a little, and Helen and I haven't the faintest clue- well, I won't burden you with that!

But now, that burden was all that was left.

So she nodded wordlessly as she stood up and headed for the front door, pressing her hand lightly against Harold's shoulder as she walked past.

Susan is all that is left.


The thought repeated itself in her mind, like a broken record, till it formed a beat of its own. Susan is all that is left. Susan is all that is left.

Passing through the ceaseless streets, it was almost as though she was motionless, and the houses drifted by with each syllable of the chant. Eventually she found herself in Bloomsbury, and presently she stood before the red bricked house she knew so well. It was achingly familiar, she could almost see Victor standing on the front porch, Helen at his side; now sitting on the top step, aged ten, hobbling on crutches after a particularly violent rugby match.

A surprisingly crisp breeze curled its fingers insistently through her shirt, scraping against her skin, and she shivered as she thrust her hand out to ring the doorbell.

Almost immediately, she heard the footsteps, and the green wooden door crept open.

It is almost like staring in a mirror, Alberta thought, and resented Susan for looking like her and not her own father.

Susan opened her mouth slightly, then furrowed her brow (like Victor, just like Victor- and how her own breath caught at that!). Alberta could almost hear the questions, jumping about like an Aeschylian chorus, within her mind.

"Aunt Alberta," she said slowly, "I wasn't expecting to see you. Would you come in?"

Alberta followed her, grateful for the hook Susan had cast at her.

"I wasn't expecting to come," she admitted, and Susan gave a short, bark-like laugh.

"I was so rude at dinner that I deterred Mrs Alberta Scrubb from coming to call?" she said, bitterly, entering a dimly lit sitting room, and Alberta had to check a momentary, surging urge to slap her niece's face. But Susan was already sighing tiredly, and her face was so pale and tired, and Alberta could see the lines in her face that make-up had kept hidden the other day (yesterday, had it just been yesterday?), and the urge quickly faded.

"Would you want some Turkish delight?" Susan asked suddenly, brusquely, like an accusingly clean sheet on a windy day.

Alberta blinked. In front of her, almost an inch from her nose, was a silver box with a green ribbon. She could smell the offending confectionery, its almost sickeningly sweet sugar coat wafting like a wall to her nose. She twitched.

Glancing up, she saw that Susan had seen, and she wondered briefly whether she should apologise for her response. Then Susan gave an oddly tremulous smile, and some strange emotion quirked within her eyes.

"I- it's not very tasty is it?" she said, and her voice quivered. "I don't know how he could stand them."

Alberta wasn't entirely certain who 'he' was, but she suspected he was not one of the boys Susan had flirted with at a dance.

"If you don't like them then why keep them in the house?" she asked, bewildered, and Susan snapped the box shut, her face turning a disturbingly pallid shade of green.

The silence in the room swelled, invisible arms of resentment pushing and prodding at Alberta. She had never felt less welcome, less wanted, less important (and how strange it was to realise how significant that slight felt, how- ironically- demeaning).

It was only a fair question, she thought, but could not even muster a brusqueness within her mind; not when Susan looked so old, so tired, so (guilty) shattered.

"It was Edmund's," Susan murmured at length, her lips pale and barely moving. She looked like a sculpture, a stone figurine in a flickering grey room. Her eyes were fixed on the corner of the carpet rug. Alberta watched the tiny bump in her throat as it quivered, momentarily bulged, receded. "F- father bought it for him. A box for his birthday, each year; ever since Father returned."

"Oh."

Was there anything to say to that? Alberta shifted in her chair. It was such a Victor thing to do, to buy his son a box of sweets, even if Victor (to her knowledge) had never cared much for the sweets himself. Or perhaps that had been licorice?

(And what sort of sister was she if she could not remember that?)

She glanced at Susan, but Susan did not seem particularly inclined to speak, either.

She has not offered you a drink, a voice whispered in Alberta's mind, and she brushed it away. Why drink if she was not thirsty?

So they sat in silence, lengthening shadows peering further and further in through the paned glass, until the darkness nudged at Susan's feet. She rose at the same time as Alberta, glancing at the light switch then at her feet, before moving to the switch and tugging at the cord.

A warm, yellow glow filled the room, and the shadows lightened, grew shorter, receded from the room like frightened cats.

"The house is too big," said Susan, presently, barely a quaver in her voice. She gestured listlessly at the chaise lounge and sitting room chairs. "I'll likely have to sell it."

"No!"

The word ripped itself from Alberta's lips before she had even realised she meant it. She did, though, she knew, her chest heaving and her breath oddly ragged- she did mean it. This was Victor's house, and it was here that he had last picked her up and twirled her- when she had announced her engagement. She had resented it- and how that felt like the twist of a serrated knife to her gut- but the memory was there, and Victor had held her in this very room, laughed at her, and Susan should never have to sell it. She tried, briefly, to imagine selling their house in Hampstead, and she couldn't. Leave Hampstead, where Eustace Clarence had learned to walk and talk, where Harold had wooed her with T. S. Eliot and they had debated the merits of Kandinsky over Matisse?

Susan laughed humourlessly even as the thoughts swirled and multiplied in Alberta's mind.

"This house was for a family of six. I can't possibly sustain the costs of upkeep- especially not in Bloomsbury." A tiny crease flitted across her forehead, but it was gone so quickly, and Susan's forehead had resumed its creamy smooth complexion, that Alberta wondered she had not imagined the whole thing.

The cold, clinical tone! Did she have no feelings? Did she not realise that her family was gone? And she was trying to sell the house, talking of selling the place!- almost as if to erase their existence, almost as if-

- almost as if she had conducted a sweep of their rooms and bundled their letters together.

Something uneasy stirred like a spoon in Alberta's stomach.

"Perhaps Harold and I may be able to help," she offered, trying to block out the nasty gnawing sensation that she suspected was something akin to guilt. "We have-"

But Susan shook her head delicately, standing up and threading her way to the furthest window. In the shadows, from the side, Alberta felt almost as though she had split from her body and been hurtled twenty years to the past, and was staring through some strange, murky mirror.

"It is kind of you to offer," Susan murmured, her voice soft and piercingly collected, "but I'm afraid I couldn't-"

"Your father would want me to help," said Alberta in a low voice. "Back in the war, when you went to America with Victor and Helen, I took your brother and sister into my house because he asked me to help."

Susan turned to face her, then, a steely determination in her eyes.

"Help me, then," she said, and raised her chin. "Help me sell the house and move out. I can't stay here."


A/N: Soo I'm mostly writing this story for myself now, just to prove that I can actually finish it. It is evolving into something much more complex than the original A Mother's Musings and I am afraid it is, at times, running away from me but if I can at least write it, that's a success.

If, however, people are happy to review and critique this, then that would be so much nicer! The review button is there for a reason, just saying