It did not survive a jackhammering Diwa.
The leg gave first, letting out a sharp crack that Colin felt through his knees where they were braced on the seat cushion, and then the whole thing listed sideways and deposited the two of them onto the lino in a tangle of splintered wood and upholstery foam. Diwa, still inside him, said “Oh my God” in a voice that suggested the structural failure of the chair had alarmed him more than the fact that Colin was now spread out on the cold kitchen floor.
Colin rocked back against Diwa. “Finish what you started,” he said, and Diwa complied.
The chair went out with the bins on Sunday morning. Colin broke the frame down with a claw hammer, stuffed the cushion into a black bag, and had the whole lot in the communal skip before Diwa was out of the shower. The gap it left in the front room was noticeable, leaving faded rectangles on the carpet where the legs had sat for fifteen years. But Colin put the side table over the worst of it and got on with the lamb.
He was checking the potatoes when Diwa appeared in the kitchen doorway, freshly shaved, and staring at the front room.
“Colin.”
“Mm.”
“The chair’s gone.”
“I binned it. You were there when it broke, Diwa.”
“He’ll notice.” Diwa’s voice had gone tight. “You said yourself you’ve had it since your boys were small. He’ll notice it’s missing, and he’ll know what we did.”
Colin turned the potatoes over with a fork. “So you think my son will walk in, clock a missing armchair, and immediately conclude that it was destroyed because you had me on it.”
“Yes, Colin. That’s the only logical conclusion.”
“Not the fact that, as I’ve mentioned, it was thirty years old and held together with wood glue and stubbornness?”
Diwa opened his mouth, and the knock came before he could overthink things even further. Colin wiped his hands on the tea towel and went to the door.
Stephen stood on the landing in his good coat, Ryland a half-step behind him with a bottle of red in one hand and his car keys in the other. Stephen’s gaze moved past Colin’s shoulder and found Diwa hovering by the kitchen doorway.
“You all right, Diwa?”
Colin watched Diwa’s face cycle through three emotions in under a second before settling on something that resembled composure. “Yeah! Good, thanks. Really good. Come in.”
Ryland stepped forward, extended his free hand for a handshake that lasted precisely long enough to qualify as one, and thrust the wine at Diwa’s chest. Diwa caught it with both hands.
“It’s a Malbec,” Ryland said, already moving past him towards the kitchen. “Stephen selected it. The tannin structure should complement lamb.”
Stephen followed Ryland in, shrugging off his coat, and made it three steps into the front room before he stopped.
“Daddy.” His voice had gone flat. “What happened to the armchair?”
“Gave out under Diwa yesterday.” Colin hung Stephen’s coat on the hook by the door without looking round. “Couldn’t salvage it. Had to throw it out.”
Behind him, Diwa made a sound like a man choking on his own tongue.
Stephen stared at the side table sitting over the faded rectangle on the carpet, and his face took on the devastation of a son confronted with the destruction of a childhood landmark.“That wasourchair, Daddy. We’ve had that chair since Lysander and I wereseven.”
“I know, love. It was old.”
“It wasn’t just old, it was…I used to do my homework in that chair. Lysander fell asleep in it every single Christmas.” Stephen turned to Diwa, whose neck had gone the colour of a ripe tomato.
“I was just sitting on it,” Diwa said. “Just sitting.”
“Yeah. What else would you be doing on a chair?” Stephen sniped.
“Standing on it to reach a high shelf,” Ryland said. “Reading. Napping. Stretching, if the armrests are at the correct height for triceps dips. Folding laundry, though a wider flat surface would be more efficient—”
Stephen’s hand landed flat on Ryland’s chest, tapping twice, without looking at him, and Ryland quieted instantly.
