Read Undertow for Free Online

circular table, the Yellow Pages and directory on a shelf at knee height. But it’s there, and on the shining surface sits my treasure. A phone. Not cordless. But not old either. I pick up the receiver, half expecting it to be dead. But it isn’t. Mum must have arranged it when she moved her benefits, changed the electricity and gas. Putting Luka down as well. Because even if she doesn’t need his body in her bed, she needs his name for credit. The dialling tone buzzes in my ear like a thousand bees. I’m about to key in Cass’s number when I notice the red light. Flicking on and off, on and off. Messages.
    At first I wonder if it’s Luka. If maybe Mum’s passed the number on after all. But when I press PLAY I realize my mistake. They’re not for Mum. They’re for her mother.
    There are two of them. The first, a woman, clear and clipped, reminding her about “Tuesday”, hoping she hasn’t forgotten, telling her to call back when she can. It could mean anything. A cup of tea. A bank raid. There are no other clues. No paper trail to reveal anything about her. The second is different. A man’s voice. Softer and tinged with West Country. And just one word. “Eleanor…” Then a click and dialling tone. But that word. It’s a question, I think. “Eleanor?” Why just one word? And why didn’t she erase the messages, I think, after she listened to them? Unless she left them for a reason. To remind herself. Or someone else.
    But then it hits me. A hard shot, and true, straight to the stomach. I’m so stupid. She never listened to them because she couldn’t. Because she was dead, crushed inside her car on a road miles from here. She never did call back about Tuesday. That man who said her name never heard her voice again. And I never heard it at all.
    And I’m about to press DELETE when I remember something. If there are incoming messages, there must be an outgoing one. I press the button and pray to a God I don’t believe in that it’s not a generic American prerecord. I pray it’s real.
    It is real. It is her voice. Eleanor’s. Cut-glass slicing through the cold air; I can almost see her breath. “I’m not able to answer the phone, but please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
    It says nothing. And everything. That she lived alone. That she was rich. Educated. Privately maybe, her voice a mix of BBC and royal. Then I’m struck by how weird this is. That she is talking to me from the grave. And I remember when Dion Clark died. This boy in our class at school who got hit by the Number 12 on Walworth Road. Cass kept a message from him on her mobile for weeks. She kept playing it again and again. Crying over it. Even though he’d only kissed her once then dumped her for Rae-Ann Jackson. Then her phone got nicked and he was gone and some other kid has a dead person on their voicemail now.
    I press PLAY again. “I’m not able to answer the phone, but please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.” And again. And again. This is her, I think. These are the only words I will ever hear her say. No telling me I’ve grown, no feigned shock at my outfits, no whispering she loves me. I press the button again. Addicted to the sound. To the sense of belonging and loss. I am so caught in it I miss the front door opening, the shaking of clothes, the kicking off of shoes. Before I have time to hide it, to press PAUSE , she’s right there behind me. Her face is pale, set. And in an instant I know what she’s going to do. But I still plead.
    “Don’t.”
    But she does. She clicks the buttons, all of them, again and again. Until the automatic American accent echoes along the hall, “Outgoing message deleted. All messages deleted.” Then she pulls the wire out of the wall socket.
    “We need some peace,” she explains. “We’re on holiday.”
    There it is again.
    “Besides…” She shrugs. “Who’s going to call us?”
    Luka, I think. Nonno. Anyone. But I