Five(18)

“It’ll be all right,” Sonny says to Mrs. Worth, putting his big Bohemian scarf over her to keep her warm as she stiffens at the sound.

“My arm,” she forces out as Sonny bends to hear her.

Sonny looks up at the board. He sees the word delayed. He thinks, Mum, is that you?

It is 7:05. The train is hurtling down the track, on its way to meet our five. A passenger on board spills their tea, the cyclist pretends not to be in the way, a young woman standing by the carriage door feels a pain in her side that she keeps ignoring but shouldn’t.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you some help,” Sonny says to Mrs. Worth.

A passenger planning to exit at the next stop texts a friend waiting at a café near the station, Be there in ten mins.

Unfortunately, that’s not true. Because someone is about to die, and we really don’t have that kind of time.





Mrs. Worth


“Pleasure to finally meet you, I’ve heard so much about you,” Livvie says, putting out her hand to Mrs. Worth. She really puts out only half her hand, only the long slender fingers. The young woman’s hand is soft, her nails manicured to a high shine in powder pink. They are not working hands. Mrs. Worth notes her carriage, her precise eyebrows, the slightest hint of creases starting at the edge of her eyes from tanning, and estimates Livvie’s age to be about twenty-five, a year younger than Nicholas, Mrs. Worth’s son.

Mrs. Worth doesn’t take Livvie’s hand, only looks at it and says, “Oh, hello,” as she stands awkwardly in the flat entrance. She is unsettled by the French bulldog circling her ankles, but she tries to ignore it and says nothing.

“Horatio, come here, you si-wwy, leave our gwest aw-one, you siwwy pup,” Livvie says in a saccharine-sweet baby voice turning all her Ls to Ws. Then, with the dog in her arms, she turns to Mrs. Worth and says, “I hope you’re all right with dogs. He’s the sweetest little thing, he won’t bother you, I promise. Can I take your coat, Matilda?”

“No, I’ll keep it, thank you,” says Mrs. Worth, bristling at the sound of her given name coming out of Livvie’s mouth. Before Livvie can respond, Nicholas enters the hallway.

“Hello, son. I’ve met the dog,” Mrs. Worth says.

“Hello, Mum,” Nicholas replies, knowing that she is not referring to Horatio. Livvie must have called her Matilda. It will be a long evening.

Livvie doesn’t catch the comment because she is watching Nicholas wave at his mother, a single wave in one direction, like he is clearing a foggy windshield. He does not step forward to kiss her or embrace her the way she would her own mother. The way everyone else she knows would with their own mothers.

Mrs. Worth sees her son trying to catch Livvie’s eye, to warn her against doing something like calling his mother by her first name on their first meeting, but Livvie is making determined eye contact with Mrs. Worth because she read in Cosmopolitan that’s important for establishing trust with your significant other’s mother. Even if she’s weird. And creepy. And obviously hates your dog.

“So what happens now?” Mrs. Worth asks.

Nicholas gently pulls his mother’s coat off her shoulders and says, “Give me your coat, Mum, and just go straight ahead, have a seat on the sofa, we’ll be right there.”

Mrs. Worth reluctantly sheds her coat but keeps tight hold of her handbag and leaves as directed.

Nicholas turns to Livvie and says quietly, “Don’t worry, she takes some getting used to.”

“Would you stop?” Livvie says, clutching Horatio. “Mothers love me, you’ll see.”

But Nicholas knows that Livvie, his gorgeous, lovely Livvie, has never met a mother like his, and he knows that as soon as Livvie put out her beautiful hand and introduced her adorable dog, and his mother saw the pretty fingernails and noticed the glossy lip and heard the honeyed voice, she immediately found Livvie and Horatio ridiculous and vacuous and frivolous. Nicholas does too, but that’s exactly why he loves Livvie. Life with her is so light, like cotton candy or a peck on the cheek from your high school crush.

But love is not a word he uses for his mother. He cares for her deeply, he is indebted to her for her dedication to him, he is awed by the pioneering career she built as one of the first women in her field, forensic pathology, on her own as a single working mother at a time when such women were rare. He cannot believe she works just as hard now, at sixty-five, as she did when he was a boy. But love is not a word he has ever used to describe how he feels about her. Nor is it one he has ever heard her say to him.

His childhood with her was not unhappy, but it was not exactly the opposite. “Neutral” was probably the best way to describe it. Placid and neutral until she would accidentally leave horrific crime scene photos out on the kitchen table when she was working on a case, thinking he was at a friend’s house, mixing up the days of his after-school club and his playdates as she often would, her mind full of other, more pressing details about the unresolved deaths of strangers.

These moments of his childhood—the ones where autopsy photos of severed limbs and bloody murdered torsos haunted him in his sleep for months—he would describe as traumatic.

But to her credit, though it was not natural to her, she did sit at the end of his bed when he cried from a nightmare. She did allow him to sit on her lap and put his arms around her neck and cry into her bony shoulder.