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by Penny Parkes


  For a mad moment, she was tempted to pick up the phone and call the hospital, check on Annabel, reassure herself that all was well. It really was none of her business, yet the thought persisted, until she was almost grateful when her phone rang in her hand.

  ‘Henry? Now that’s a lovely surprise. How are you?’ she said, genuinely pleased to hear from him. No matter what she’d told herself about the joy of texting, it was truly lovely to hear his voice, to hear Oscar chuckling and the seagulls’ evening crescendo in the background.

  ‘I’m alright. The Lyndells are being a pain since they got back, obviously. My grandparents much preferred having you as a neighbour, I can tell you.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t mind having you here either.’

  Anna swallowed her laughter, Henry’s studied nonchalance failing to convince. ‘It was a good week,’ she said.

  There was a slightly awkward pause. ‘I know we said we’d just text, but it was my grandpa who asked me to call actually. He wanted you to have a photo to remember us by – Hang on.’ There was a crackling, fumbling sound on the line. ‘I’m sending it over now and he said to tell you carpe diem, whatever that means. It’s not a carp in the picture obviously, but I guess you might know what he’s going on about?’

  A picture message pinged onto Anna’s phone and a crisp image of a peregrine falcon filled the screen, yellow talons outstretched, wings swept back, having clearly just plucked an iridescent fish from the waters of a fast-flowing river.

  ‘That’s stunning,’ Anna said. ‘Did he take it?’

  ‘Yup,’ said Henry. ‘He’s good with a camera, but better with a fishing rod. He was well narked that day, because all the trout took cover once the falcon had been.’

  Anna stared at the photo again and wondered at the accompanying message – seize the day? What exactly did Arthur think she should be seizing?

  Henry coughed and when he spoke again, he sounded even more uncomfortable. ‘Grandpa said you had some big decisions looming and this might help…’

  Anna thought back to their conversation on the beach that night, about travelling and exploring and writing. And his belief that all of those things were actually better – easier – when one had a base to return to. He’d gone so far as to suggest Dittisham might be the perfect solution. Certainly one that his grandson would appreciate.

  There were no flies on Arthur.

  ‘Will you thank him for me?’ Anna said, truly touched that she’d been remembered. Not just that, it seemed, but considered as well.

  Arthur, Kate, Emily – perhaps even Henry…

  How was it that they all seemed to know what she needed better than she herself did?

  How was it that none of them saw the inherent difficulties for Anna in their supposedly simple solutions?

  Yet still, this nascent bond with Henry felt like progress. A proper grown-up friendship. No deadline or exit strategy in mind. ‘How’s the beach this evening?’ she asked, closing her eyes and sitting back with a smile, able to visualise exactly where Henry was standing to make this call.

  A bang and crash from the floor above startled her from her reflections. Doors slamming, raised voices – and possibly even a scream of pain? Disbelief?

  She leapt to her feet, and shut Ulysses in the sitting room – that damn cat had got into the habit of making a bolt for the front door every time she opened it.

  ‘Jesus! I’m sorry, Henry – I have to go.’

  ‘Stay!’ she said to Norbert, as she ended the call but kept her phone still clasped tightly in her hand in case she needed to summon reinforcements. So long as it wasn’t the ‘snot-nosed little prick’ again…

  Opening the front door and stepping out into the stairwell, she was almost knocked off her feet by Callie barrelling down the stairs, her face tear-streaked and her anger vibrating in every jerking movement. ‘I hate you,’ she screamed up the stairs, only to hear the sound of snide laughter and the front door slamming on the floor above.

  Without a word, Anna ushered her inside.

  ‘Do I need to call somebody?’ Anna said helplessly after a moment, having settled Callie onto the sofa and unearthed a box of tissues to stem the flowing tears. Her entire body seemed to reverberate with each sob and it showed no sign of abating.

  She had zero experience with teenagers, short of having once been one herself, but even then, she’d felt like an old person in a youthful costume; her brain had a way of making her consider everything like a middle-aged woman. The voice in her head not so much hers, as a mash-up of Marjorie and Jackie and their experienced pearls of wisdom and ability to predict the outcomes before they even occurred. Like a game of chess, thinking several moves ahead, but instead of kings and queens, it was feelings and consequences.

  ‘Callie. Where’s your mum, love? She’d want to know you’re this upset, that Liam’s being this unreasonable?’

  Eyes filled with tears and with a yelp of slightly hysterical laughter, Callie looked straight at her. ‘She’s on the sofa upstairs watching Neighbours.’

  Anna felt blindsided. She’d assumed, well, she’d just assumed…

  Callie shrugged. ‘Nothing new. She just lets us slug it out, now. I think she’s bored by the whole debate.’ She reached into the bag that was slung across her body and pulled out a mangled copy of The Great Gatsby, torn completely into two pieces, and the hiccupping sobs began again.

  ‘It’s Eleanor’s,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s one of her special set. She said I could borrow it, but now I can never replace it.’ She nodded towards the bookshelf by the fireplace.

  Standing up, Anna walked over and saw what she meant. Along four shelves, in different colours but the same leathered livery, were Eleanor’s collection of classics, spanning everything from Moby Dick to Anna Karenina, with a little Hemingway in between. And there, on the second shelf, was a gap in the perfect serried row, like a rotten tooth in a model’s flawless smile.

  ‘Shit,’ she breathed. Not knowing Eleanor, not knowing how obsessive she might be, she had no way of knowing how badly this news would be received.

  At the end of the day it was a book, and surely Callie’s health and wellbeing were more important. But still…

  ‘Let’s make you a hot chocolate,’ Anna said, ‘and then work out what to do. You’d be amazed what I can find online when it comes to books.’

  Callie brightened instantly, whether at the promise of a hot chocolate or a possible solution, it wasn’t entirely clear.

  ‘Shit day all round really,’ Callie sniffed, climbing out of the sofa cushions. ‘Confirmation that my mum has truly terrible taste in men as if it were needed – the one upstairs is not only a control freak but also possibly a psycho-in-waiting.’ She held up the savaged book soulfully. ‘I mean, seriously, who does this to a book?’

  Callie slumped down on one of the kitchen chairs, her limbs seemingly too heavy to support actually standing. ‘And then that cheeky copper called you homeless. I suppose we’ve just got to be grateful it wasn’t us who were hit by a bus.’ She gave a twisted smile. ‘Although my mum’s face would have been a treat if she thought I’d been rushed off to hospital wearing boxer shorts rather than a ladylike “brief”.’

  Anna snorted, suddenly assailed by a vivid memory of Marjorie talking about the importance of always wearing clean underwear – just in case you were hit by a bus.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be a hoot if that old lady was rocking stockings and a basque under her tweed waiting-for-God outfit?’ Callie laughed.

  Anna shook her head. ‘Oh don’t, she was a lovely old lady.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ said Callie seriously. ‘You’re only saying that because you kind of have the same name; she could be the madam in a local brothel.’

  Anna’s face split into a grin, not because she could imagine anyone on the planet less likely to corral the local sex workers, but because she’d missed this back-and-forth banter with a fellow storymaker. It had been the glue that held their student house together, back in the d
ay, no tangent too obtuse to be ignored, no backstory too bland to be embroidered and elaborated on. And, of course, the number one rule: never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about her all afternoon,’ Anna said, surprising herself with the confession. ‘I even thought I might phone the hospital and see how she is.’

  ‘Do it,’ encouraged Callie. ‘At least that way you can relax in the knowledge that she’s okay, and that I was right about her dodgy corsetry.’ She picked up the landline and waved it towards Anna.

  ‘I don’t even know her surname,’ Anna protested, longing to call, yet still feeling as though she might be overinvested on the strength of a name.

  Yet within a few moments she found herself listening to ‘Greensleeves’ on speakerphone and waiting to be put through to A&E. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m calling about someone who was brought in by ambulance this morning. Annabel. I’m not sure of her surname.’

  ‘Can’t talk to anyone about a patient who isn’t a relative, I’m afraid,’ said the nurse on the phone.

  ‘Oh no, I don’t need details,’ Anna was quick to clarify. ‘And I know I’m not a relative, it’s just that I was with her, while she was waiting for the ambulance. I suppose I just wanted to know that she was okay? And not, erm…’ ‘Dead or anything’ seemed a little harsh, so Anna just allowed the sentence to dangle.

  The nurse’s tone softened immediately. ‘Of course you do. That’s very kind. Now look, let me have a check on the system and maybe I can put your mind at rest without breaking any confidentiality. I happen to know she was still talking about you when they brought her in. Bit confused she was – absolutely convinced she’d met her younger self in the gutter. Was asking to see her again, but I guess that was you. Bear with…’

  There was a flurry of typing and Anna held her breath. She hadn’t realised for a moment that’s what the old lady had been thinking the whole time she’d been staring at her face with such concentration and clasping her hand.

  The nurse came back on the line. ‘Now, well, the thing is, it actually turns out that she doesn’t have a next of kin, so I reckon it’s okay for you to know. She’s a few broken ribs and a lot of bruising. Ironically mainly from the fall. They think that her shoulder bag full of books actually took the worst of the impact from the bus’s wing mirror. Funny world, eh? But they’re going to keep her in for a few days, deal with the shock and manage the pain. She’ll be up on the wards already. Annabel Armistice. But you didn’t hear it from me. Now isn’t that a name of a generation?’

  A loud alarm sounded in the background. ‘Thank you so—’ managed Anna before the nurse was called away to a code.

  ‘Annabel Armistice,’ she said to Callie. ‘I’ll bet she was formidable.’

  ‘Probably still is – and we can find out for ourselves,’ Callie said, draining her hot chocolate and plucking the bunch of tulips from the vase on the kitchen table. ‘Let’s go and visit her. You heard the nurse; she’s got no relatives.’ Callie picked up her satchel and slung it across her body. ‘She’ll be glad of the company, and I can ask her questions for my history project. Win win.’

  Anna blinked hard, slightly thrown off balance by the resilience of youth and Callie’s enthusiasm. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I do hate the idea of her being all alone after such a horrible day.’

  * * *

  No next of kin.

  The phrase rattled around in Anna’s head all the way to the hospital: it was uncomfortably close to her own reality. Right up there with ‘no fixed abode’.

  Striding down the long, bleach-scented corridors, trailing in the wake of Callie’s boundless energy, she wondered what to say to someone who was lonely and frightened.

  She needn’t have worried.

  The moment they stepped into Bay C on the second floor they saw Annabel, her bed surrounded by visitors.

  ‘Oh,’ said Anna in surprise, attempting to retrace her steps, but she’d already been spotted.

  ‘I thought she didn’t have any family?’ Callie said loudly, intensifying Anna’s embarrassment.

  ‘Come and say hello,’ Annabel commanded, looking surprisingly spry. ‘These are my neighbours. Aren’t they wonderful to come and settle me in? I’ve been telling them all about you.’

  Chapter 32

  Bath, 2019

  Anna and Callie exchanged confused glances; the lonely elderly patient they’d come to visit appeared to be safe and secure in the bosom of her friends and neighbours.

  Even as Annabel introduced them all, Anna was struck by the variety of these friends – old and young, wealthy and struggling, yet with one thing in common – they all lived within three doors of Annabel’s small terraced house.

  ‘Aren’t I lucky to have such wonderful neighbours,’ Annabel sighed, as she tucked into a box of Terry’s All Gold.

  Anna simply nodded, even as Callie enthusiastically joined in with tales of Eleanor and Richard’s kindness and generosity.

  The simple concept of ‘neighbours’ hadn’t even made it onto Anna’s radar, if she were honest, let alone as something else to aspire to including in her life choices.

  Once more, her own elegantly efficient way of living seemed to pale by comparison; a little hollow and empty if she were to allow herself a brief moment’s brutal honesty.

  ‘Our Anna thought you were the ghost of Christmas past, you know?’ said one of the neighbours with a smile. ‘And I can see why she might have thought it – she was quite the looker in her day.’

  The compliment was subtle, yet strangely heartfelt, and Anna felt welcomed into the little group. ‘And I gather she’s a bookworm like me, as well.’

  ‘I’m right here, you know,’ Annabel said crossly. ‘You don’t have to talk about me when you can talk to me.’

  ‘Sorry, yes, of course. I was just about to say that I gather your library books took the brunt of the collision?’

  ‘Tell that to my ribs,’ said Annabel. ‘But yes – isn’t that lovely – the pen being mightier than the sword, and the bus it seems.’ She smiled. ‘The power of a good book is not to be underestimated.’

  Callie leaned across and tugged open the canvas bag, eyes widening when she saw the chunky, glitzy hardbacks – Shirley Conran, Jilly Cooper and Judith Krantz.

  ‘I’m old, not dead,’ Annabel said, before Callie could express the shock that was written all over her face. ‘And it’s nice to get your jollies from a lovely book, rather than a needy bloke with high blood pressure and a crêpey bottom, when you get to my age.’

  The neighbours laughed, unfazed. ‘Annabel’s been saucing up our book club this year, haven’t you? No more The Kite Runner or Ducks, Newburyport; we’re getting an education in escapist fiction.’

  Callie frowned, looking to Anna for reassurance, but Anna simply shrugged.

  ‘Don’t knock a good romance ’til you’ve tried one, love,’ one of the neighbours chimed in with a cheeky grin.

  ‘Which one’s best then, Annabel? Where should we start?’ Anna asked, partly to play devil’s advocate and wind up Callie’s literary sensibilities, and partly because she was a little bit intrigued.

  ‘Lace,’ the book club chorused with throaty chuckles. ‘And then Riders, obviously.’

  Annabel sighed from her pyramid of pillows. ‘And if you haven’t had a filthy dream about Rupert Campbell-Black by the time you get to the last page, ask for your money back.’

  * * *

  Hours later, back at the flat, Anna paced the bookshelves that seemed to line every room, in search of some escapist reading as Annabel had prescribed. There was no shortage of Lawrence or Hardy, a fair few indecipherable tomes in Latin and Ancient Greek, but not a glitzy paperback in sight.

  It was a shame really.

  Anna had half wondered whether these books might be the answer to a happier life – for Annabel, at least, with her coterie of book-loving chums.

  Happiness.

  And not a literary analysis or Booker Prize i
n sight.

  She thought of her own putative works, the stories she began and abandoned, for fear of falling short of her literary heroes. Would it be so very wrong, she wondered, if her writing sounded like she did – tentative, questing, and, despite everything life had thrown at her, just a little bit naive?

  It was certainly something to think about.

  ‘Supper’s ready,’ Callie called from the kitchen – happy to have traded cooking detail for an evening without admonishment. The only caveat being that she go upstairs and tell her mum.

  Anna still shuddered at the cold, dismissive tone she’d overheard from the open front door.

  Mothers came in different shapes and sizes, a fact to which she could personally attest, yet surely the very basic tenet of the relationship had to stem from caring? If loving was, for some reason, beyond them, then the very minimum had to include a desire to do what was best – unselfishly, and with interest.

  Hearing the complete lack of interest in where Callie would be spending her evening, possibly even coloured by a little relief, had hit hard for Anna.

  She’d written the story of Callie in her mind already, where the boyfriend was the bad guy and Callie’s mother a conflicted dupe. Yet she’d been wrong.

  She could all too easily identify with the closed expression on Callie’s face when she walked back down the stairs. ‘Told you she wouldn’t give a shit.’

  Was there anything worse than maternal disappointment?

  Yes, they were just people. But they were your people.

  You couldn’t drive a car without a licence, but any fool could raise a child. Or attempt to.

  But that feeling of never being good enough, once that primary bond had failed? Well, it made you question everything and everyone. That sense of hollow worthlessness, that you had to prove yourself constantly just to earn respect or affection – it never went away.

 

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