CHAPTER 102 Full Service

  My mother was acting strangely. She had been for the last month or so, though not in any overt manner, no specific ways that stuck out, but in much more subtle ways that anybody who didn't know her as well as I do after eighteen years would ever notice. Other than bitching at me about little things, (growing up, learning the meaning of 'responsibility', getting a job, how I'm so impossible) it was as though something had been on her mind, distracting her and, while we didn't dislike each other, our relationship wasn't close enough for a mother-daughter talk about it. That early evening, however, her behaviour was even more irregular than it had been. It was in the way she carried herself, how she stood, moved and in her facial expressions. Most of all, it was in her attire.