‘properties of tree resin in the UK’
Nine tabs lined up behind the first, raising their collective eyebrows at me, as if to say: still here, still waiting.
‘burial’
‘cremation’
‘long term impact of auto immune conditions on brain stem health.’
I closed my laptop with a gasp. Had the children seen something of my research? Children question mortality, of course they do, but I hated to think I might be the cause of this particularly morbid bedtime. I’d been working on my current project for around a year and was close to submitting my proposal, but finding the right people to deal with had been more difficult than I’d foreseen. My research wasn’t exactly mainstream and I needed to be sure not to attract the wrong kind of interest.
As sleep, and the wine, took hold, I sank into the tired old double bed that Colm and I had bought decades ago at a charity shop, complete with a mattress that was questionably wrapped in plastic, as if new.
Hogmanay and First Footing passed by in a blur. National and global news tugged at the part of me that I kept comfortably detached from reality; I pushed it away. My uncle is alive. Visitors came, drank, commented, left.
Inevitably, January opened before us and took us by the hand towards Spring: the real new year, actual hope.
Colm was working away and I knew that it was time to return to those tabs, to my research, my questions, and then, to my meeting with M.M. Mkintyre.