The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, Marianne Cronin [top fiction books of all time txt] 📗

qualified mechanic, a PhD student, and three other graduates with degrees in History, Mathematics and English respectively.

To her surprise, the manager phoned her that afternoon and offered her a role on the deli counter. When she was at university, The Temp had imagined herself working as an artist in a gallery after graduation. At no point had she envisaged herself reporting to work in the middle of the night to help insomniacs decide which honey-glazed ham to buy. But she resolved to carry on, and arrived at work the following evening with her hair net on and her pride tucked away.

Several months later, when The Temp came home from the deli, her mother asked her to sit in the living room and fiddled anxiously with the sofa cushions, unable to make eye contact with her. In a small voice, The Temp’s mother told her that the father she had met just once in infancy had been found, and that he was in possession of the birth certificate which had gone missing some twenty-two years earlier. The Temp struggled to identify what emotion, if any, she felt upon hearing this news, and it was perhaps a good thing that she hadn’t identified what she felt, because if it had been happiness, it would have been even harder when her mother went on to say that her father was not in a good way, and that the doctors hadn’t given him long to live.

The Temp and her mother discussed at length that night what The Temp would do; whether she would visit or write, whether she would go alone or with her mother, whether she would ask for the birth certificate that had been replaced long ago, or allow him to keep it. She wondered whether she was angry at his abandonment or pleased at his return, whether she wanted to say goodbye or whether he even deserved a hello. Before their decision was made, however, another call came. The Temp’s father had died. The Temp had cried then. It was equivalent to hearing of the death of a stranger, and hearing of the death of an irretrievable part of herself, all at the same time. A great loss, and yet no loss at all.

The nurse on the phone added in a conciliatory tone that the family might take comfort in knowing that he managed to fulfil a dying wish. The Temp’s mother enquired what he had stolen, knowing his proclivity for taking things that didn’t belong to him. After a long pause, the nurse confirmed that he had stolen a bottle of wine from the hospital chapel. Though, the nurse added hastily, it was not the wine that killed him, and the hospital chaplain had posthumously forgiven his actions.

Though The Temp’s mother tried to end the conversation, the nurse on the line added that there was an item in the deceased man’s possession that he had intended to be passed on to his daughter, should she be found.

The next morning, The Temp drove to the hospital. It was surreal that a father she never knew had been in the very place she had once worked. The nurse had told her mother that he’d been in the area looking for them both when he fell ill. Making her way from the car park, everything she saw became significant – had he been through these doors? Had he come to this wing of the hospital? Had he walked across this floor? It was the closest The Temp had ever felt to her father. In life, they had met once. Her mother kept a battered copy of a photograph of The Temp with her father, she dressed in a stripy dungaree suit and holding herself up on the side of the sofa, having, her mother recalled, just learned to stand. Her father was sitting on the sofa looking down at her, his face half hidden in shadow.

The nurse she spoke to at the nurses’ desk knew nothing of her father, or the item he’d bequeathed her.

‘What was the name? Reckland?’

‘Eklund,’ The Temp said, ‘it’s Swedish.’

The nurse shook her head and went to get another nurse, who also didn’t recognize the name or the story. In the end, it was a porter with some wonky tattoos on his forearms who came to her aid.

‘Mr Eklund?’ he asked, coming to the desk to appraise The Temp.

‘Yes.’

‘Old guy? Grey hair?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Swedish? Stole some wine?’

‘Yes. I think so.’

‘You’re the daughter?’

‘Yes.’

‘Of course you are, you look just like him.’

The sentence hit The Temp as though she had just walked into an invisible wall.

The porter said, ‘I’m sorry for your loss, darlin’.’

She nodded, knowing that if she tried to speak now, she would cry.

The nurse behind the desk spoke up. ‘Do you know where the Recklund guy left this stuff for his daughter, Paul?’

‘Course I do,’ he said brightly, exiting the ward and leaving The Temp alone with the nurse.

The nurse was dipping a chocolate digestive biscuit into a cup of tea. Her mug was adorned with coloured cartoon cats who were cartwheeling. The Temp focused on the mug. Right now, she reminded herself, people are having normal days. Drinking tea, owning mugs with cats on them.

‘I don’t know what’s in it,’ the porter said, as he reappeared through the automatic doors and handed it to her. It was a stained blue duffel bag. It came with its own smell. Ammonia. Damp. Earth. The straps were orange, or they were on the sides of the bag. By the handle, the orange had worn to a brown.

The Temp was unable to find a word to appraise it.

‘Was you expecting anything?’ the porter asked. The Temp shook her head. The bag was lighter than she’d expected. ‘Have they given you the birth certificate?’ he asked.

The Temp shook her head again.

The porter went behind the desk.

‘Paul! What are you doing?’ the nurse said, as he started opening the top drawer of her desk and ruffling through papers. Half of her recently dipped