Life After Linda

It was just Dan and his father now and they needed time to adjust...

DAN went downstairs cautiously. His father was frying bread on the hob. It was two days since Dan's mum's funeral, and his dad, Leon, was entitled to his indulgences.

Dan nodded at his dad and reached for the cereal cupboard.

For the past few days, the two of them had shuffled about in the house that Dan had grown up in, colliding occasionally, all at sea without Linda to bind and complement them.

While Dan poured cereal into a bowl, Leon ate three slices of fried bread, then got busy washing up.

It seemed to Dan that his dad had cornered the market in displacement activity.

Last night, he had opted to "tidy" the drawer beside the sink, turfing out a jumbled heap of fluffcovered Allen keys and half-melted birthday candles, then putting everything back in the same drawer.

Later, Leon had washed up anything he could lay his unoccupied hands on even things they hadn't used and never would, such as a lemon squeezer and balloon whisk.

Now he turned from the sink towards Dan.

"Don't dry your hands on a tea towel," he grumbled.

"What am I supposed to use, then?" "This is a towel." He passed one to Dan. "That there is a tea towel. See?" "Thanks for the heads-up.

Do you want coffee when I make one?" "We're out of milk," his dad replied.

Dan sighed.

They were both exhausted from the effort of side-stepping each other and other various trip wires, like Leon's health, Dan's career and Dan's romantic life or lack of one.

The mechanics of grieving were exhausting, too.

All that stewed tea and small talk with people you vaguely knew or had half forgotten; all the essential admin

Dan crunched his cereal while Leon chucked used teabags in the composter and refilled bowls for cats John and Yoko, who came rushing into the kitchen, heartlessly immune to the loss of chief chin-tickler.