The Lonely Fajita

by Abigail Mann

  ‘Hi. I’ve had a bunch of missed calls from this num—’

  ‘Elissa Evans?’ a clipped voice says over the background noise of phones ringing, squeaky trolleys, and the odd incomprehensible shout.

  ‘Yep, speaking,’ I say, plugging my other ear with a finger.

  ‘Mrs Annie De Loutherberg has given us your name as next of kin, is that correct?’

  ‘Annie? Is she okay? Has something happened?’

  ‘Are you happy to act as next of kin?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, yes, of course. Is she okay? What’s happened?’

  ‘Annie’s had a fall. A pedestrian found her. We’ve brought her into the Royal Free.’

  Chapter 20

  As I run from Hampstead station, Alina from ElderCare calls and I’m 99 per cent sure she’s going to kick me out because I’m irresponsible and can’t be trusted to adequately look after an old lady. I bailed on dinner with Annie and now she’s fallen over, in the dark, on her way to the shop. But Alina doesn’t mention it. Instead, she runs off a list of things to put in an overnight bag for Annie in hospital.

  Even though my stomach is so far up my throat I think I might gag, it’s like there’s a sturdy hand on my back shoving me around the house with an emotionless pragmatism I’ve only ever seen in mums who pick screaming toddlers up from the floor like they’re a bag of potatoes. I go into the kitchen and open the pantry door, unhook a floppy carpet bag, and wrap a slice of Victoria sponge in cling film to pack in a Tupperware alongside a stack of Yorkshire tea. She won’t drink the NHS stuff, I know it.

  I lean against the fridge and close my eyes for a second to take a couple of deep breaths. Even though Alina said, ‘Don’t worry, love, she’s not the first of ours to bugger a hip this week’, I’m not feeling any less guilty. I don’t know what I’ll say when I see Annie, other than apologise over and over again. I give myself a little slap on the cheeks, change out of the flimsy bralette I’d had the poor judgement to wear, and hover on the precipice of Annie’s bedroom. I haven’t been in before. I place the half-packed bag on her feather-down duvet. The bed sheets are crisp and tucked into precise hospital corners, like Nanny used to do. When I stayed over as a kid, she’d tuck the sheet across my chest so tight I couldn’t roll over.

  I pack Annie’s pyjamas, dressing gown, slippers, flannel (a coral colour very popular with the over-seventies), a spongy shower puff, and a crossword book. What else? Medication? I can’t remember if Annie takes any. I squat down next to her bedside table. It’s where I keep my contraceptives, even though it’s pointless taking them because a) I don’t have a boyfriend any more and b) I’d have to be comfortable bonking someone within ten feet of a pensioner, regardless of the partition wall. The good thing is my pill gives me the libido of a Benedictine monk, so the chances of option b occurring are fairly slim.

  It feels a bit … taboo, looking in someone else’s drawers. But I’m not going through them, I just need to grab prescription boxes, and maybe a bit of night cream, then I’m out. The drawer gets stuck on the larger of two jewellery boxes, so I squeeze a finger round to wiggle it free again. The box shifts to one side and the force of the drawer’s release tips me backwards onto my heels, the contents strewn in my lap.

  I pick up the larger box, but as soon as I touch the lid, it springs open to reveal dozens of letters stacked and squashed inside. On the corner of each envelope I notice tiny inked numbers. I turn over one, then another. I’ve seen this before. Back when I made the Once-and-Never-To-Be-Repeated crumble. The looped writing is identical; bloated vowels and neat, angled letters. A quick flick through tells me they’d been arranged by date and go back to … 1960.

  On every envelope, in ink that has bled into the paper, is Annie’s name, but just like before, no address, or stamp. I flick through, glancing at scrawled handwriting as a letter slips out onto the bed, but by the time I’ve reached 1965, five minutes have elapsed. I glance at the loudly ticking carriage clock on Annie’s bedside table and swear, tearing an envelope in my haste to slot them back in the box. I hope I haven’t ripped the note inside. I carefully slide my finger under the flap, but it’s so worn and the paper so creased, it flops open like tissue paper.

  The letter, an A4 sheet with browning ink on both sides, looks passably undamaged, apart from a small hole in the middle of the page where it’s been opened and refolded – countless times from the looks of it. As I’m about to inch it back into the torn envelope, I see that it’s signed off with the initial ‘H’, and another single kiss. Are these love letters? Christ, Annie’s lucky. The only thing I’ve got to commemorate the big romances of my life (Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean aside) is an MSN chat from 2004 when Jacob in the year above said I was fit and then asked to see my boobs on a webcam.

  I should be at the hospital by now. I’ll sort out the letter explosion when I get back. I scoop them into a rough pile with both my arms and swing Annie’s bag over my shoulder, doing a mental checklist of anything I might have missed before closing the door behind me, the powder-soft sensation of cheap, worn paper on my fingertips.

  ***

  Falling over on a gritty playground is such a staple feature of being a kid, but when you’re old, it’s not just your ego that gets bruised. You hear about it in snatched, sombre conversations: ‘Did you hear Sue’s mum had a fall?’ Maggie’s gran (not the scary one) went into hospital after a fall and didn’t come out again. Not Annie, though. It can’t happen to Annie. She’s a bit wobbly and can’t hold more than half a cup of tea without her hands shaking, but she isn’t old enough to, you know, die from falling over.

  I text Maggie on the bus:

  On my way to the hospital. Annie’s had a fall. Don’t know what this means. Think it’s bad? Terrified it’s my fault?? Isn’t it my job to make sure things like this don’t happen???

  I unzip my coat and rub a patch of condensation from the window to see if we’re close. I haven’t been to a hospital in London before, but I’ve heard stories. Not great ones, either.

  I get off the bus and cross a narrow car park to the main entrance, which is all concrete on the outside and shiny, wash-down walls on the inside. A receptionist points me in the direction of the geriatric ward and as soon as I start walking away, I forget which ‘-ology’ department I was meant to turn left at. Eventually, an auxiliary takes pity on me studying the hospital map and escorts me to the third floor, leaving me at a curved reception desk. It’s a place of contrasts: a bunch of daffodils on a Formica table top below a poster for norovirus; a nurse gossiping with a phone tucked into his chest whilst an elderly man ambles down the corridor, shouting incoherently at a calm Malaysian nurse. All the chairs around me could be pissed or bled on without worrying about stains. It’s all plastic and pleather.

  ‘Um, hi,’ I say to the nurse behind the desk. ‘I’m here to see a patient. She was brought in earlier. Annie? Annie De Loutherberg?’

  ‘One second,’ he replies, almost before I’ve finished speaking. I stand there for another couple of minutes, unconvinced that his frantic typing on the computer is anything to do with what I’ve just asked. I wait a little longer and glance at the clock behind him.

  ‘Is she here? The lady downstairs told me this is where she would be?’ He slowly drags his eyes to meet mine and flicks me another smile.

  ‘That’s what I’m looking up,’ he says in a monotone. Crikey. I don’t dare move, in case he sees it as a deliberate act of provocation. ‘Two-one-three,’ he says, moving to pick up the phone, which rings again.

  ‘Is that the room? Which direction? Sorry, I know I’m asking lots of questions,’ I add, even though I’m not sure exactly what part of hospital etiquette I’m getting wrong here.

  ‘Two-one-three. It’s behind you?’ he says, swivelling back round on his chair to wipe a name off a whiteboard attached to the back wall. Sure enough, a door behind me opens onto a small ward, with half a dozen beds inside. At the end, looking out of the window with her hands interlocked in her
lap, is Annie. I walk into the room and stop at the end of her bed. I can’t help it. My face scrunches up before I can even say hello and I cover my eyes. I feel guilty and embarrassed and ashamed and now I’m worrying if my breath smells like the vodka screwball I drank two hours ago.

  ‘What’s this, love? Come on, come here. What’re you about?’ I blink up at the ceiling and wipe my eyes on the sleeve of my jumper. Annie holds a hand above the bed sheets, so I reach out and take it, sitting on the edge of a high-backed chair.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Annie. About tonight. I should have remembered I was doing dinner. I forgot and there’s no good reason for it. I should have been there. I shouldn’t have left you to go out in the dark. I was so distracted because of this stupid dating thing that everything else got knocked out of my head. Honestly, I’m so, so sorry.’ I can feel the thick bands of Annie’s chunky rings run across my hand as she coaxes me into silence. A fat tear rolls off my chin and onto my jumper. A bruise, deep mauve and angry, has spread from Annie’s cheekbone to her right eyebrow, seeping in bloodshot threads across her eye.

  ‘Stop with that. It’s not your fault. I don’t want you going around blaming yourself. It were soggy blossom, love. I went to cross the road and couldn’t see the bloody kerb for all the mulch that’s there. I went at them at the council for the same thing last year, and do they do anything? Pffff.’ She taps my hand and chuckles, but it turns into a wheeze that sounds like her lungs emptying. I push her pillows further down behind her back to prop her up. ‘Bloody gas they gave me in the ambulance. Dries your insides up, it does.’ She looks over me. ‘Your makeup looked nice before you cried it all off.’ Now it’s my turn to laugh, and with it the knot in my stomach loosens.

  ‘Yeah, well. It wasn’t horrendous, but I wouldn’t repeat the experience.’

  ‘Poor lad. I wouldn’t let him hear that review.’

  ‘No, but he might end up reading it by the time I’ve written about “the date experience” for our website. I’ll just have to lie. Try and put a positive spin on it. The good thing is he was so drunk to begin with he kept missing the golf ball, so I won. If you abandon a game halfway through, but you were in the lead, that counts as winning, doesn’t it?’

  ‘You left him high and dry?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think he was high, but he definitely wasn’t dry. I left as soon as I heard about you.’ My voice catches and I bite my lip to stop myself crying again.

  ‘Look, Elissa,’ Annie says, impatiently. ‘We’re doing all right, you and me. But I don’t need to be followed around with a crash mat.’ She catches me as my gaze flickers onto her bruise, and scowls. ‘Do you know what I would have done if you hadn’t been living with me for the past month? Getting me outside and printing recipes off the internet? I wouldn’t have left the house, love. I would have had a brew and maybe a digestive, if there were one. But I wouldn’t have eaten, not properly. And I might not have next morning, neither. I know that a bash on the hip and a bruised face is a bit of a pain, but I’d rather feel like I can do something as simple as get up and go to the shop when I want some dinner than sit at home clock-watching and feeling sorry for myself. Do I need to say it again, sausage?’ Annie squeezes my fingers when I don’t look up from my lap. ‘This weren’t your fault. I know I look like the devil’s arsehole, but I feel better than I have done in years. Up here.’ She taps her temple.

  ‘Language!’ a snooty voice barks from behind a paper curtain.

  ‘Oh, bore off,’ Annie mutters, winking at me.

  I lift the bits I’ve packed for Annie out of the bag, placing her face cream and flannel on the table. The teabags and cake are heavily side-eyed by the other oldies in the room.

  ‘When’ll you be out?’

  ‘Not sure. Not long, I expect. They’ll need the bed.’

  ‘Well, I’ll make sure I’m home when you’re released.’

  ‘Discharged, love.’

  ‘Yeah, that.’ I tuck the carpet bag under the bed, careful not to hook it over any handles, buttons, or levers that could unexpectedly catapult her out. I wonder whether to bring up the letters. If I say nothing but she notices something has changed, it’ll surely be worse. I’ll play it down.

  ‘Oh, I had to go in your room to pick up a couple of bits. I left in a hurry, but I’ll tidy up the drawers and put everything back in the right order.’

  ‘Put what in the right order, love?’ Annie asks, raising a wobbling cup of water to her mouth.

  ‘Oh, some envelopes and bits. The drawer was a bit sticky, so—’

  ‘You leave them for me, okay? I’ll sort it. It’s not a bother. You’ve been such a help, Elissa, just leave the room for when I’m back, all right?’ Her voice has a slight edge to it, so I don’t say anything else until the nurse comes in a few seconds later to steer me out for the night.

  Back at Evergreen, I stop at the porter’s gate to tell Nigel that it’ll just be me at number seven for the next couple of days. After suggesting the word ‘flapjack’ for a mobile Scrabble game he’s got going with his mum in Nigeria, I plod around the green to Annie’s front gate. Seeing lamplight through the kaleidoscopic stained glass in the late-night darkness makes me realise how much has happened since I left this morning. I step inside, pull the chain across the door, and lean against it. My head is thick and heavy with tiredness.

  As I go upstairs, I pause at the entrance to her bedroom.

  It’s worse than I remember. Paper is scattered all over the carpet and the pile I stacked on the duvet has toppled over, some letters open, having fallen out of envelopes grown loose and flimsy with age. If I lay them all out on the bed with the dates facing up and scoop those out from under the bed, I can put them in the right order again and Annie won’t have to know just how many I’ve seen. I glance over the pages to check that the handwritten date matches the front of the envelope, but when I see the phrase, ‘kiss the photograph you enclosed’ my heart jumps and I’m torn between a desperate urge to read more and to fold it up like I never touched it in the first place. I feel a bit dirty, like I’ve seen Annie’s underwear drawer.

  I know I’ve been sitting reading for an inappropriately long time at the point when my foot grows hypersensitive from being tucked under my bum. I rub the sole and wince as the feeling comes back, sharp and prickly. Some of the notes are quickly dashed off and journal-like. Others made me blush. Hands in hair, lost buttons, torn stockings. No, this is definitely too much now. It doesn’t seem to make sense when I think about the man Annie’s described as her husband – the austere, old-fashioned academic who barked at her for serving dinner too late, or didn’t come back to eat it at all.

  I run my finger over the deep folds of the letter. Hang on … I’m sure Annie’s husband was called Arthur. I open another of the letters, this one from 1976. Again, there at the bottom, is the initial ‘H’ followed by a singular kiss.

  I sit back against the bed and look around at the room: a single crime magazine on the bedside table, quilted jacket on a hook, mirror, lamp, and magnolia bedsheets. On the wall, a framed picture of a poppy-strewn field looks sun-bleached and overlooked. It could belong to anyone, really. The letters around my feet? They tell a different story. It’s a relic, that’s for sure, of a life that sings with experience. So, where did it go?

  Chapter 21

  Bismah and Rhea accost me as soon as I walk through the doors, taking my bag and yanking my coat off my shoulders as they fire questions at me about the date last night. Honestly, it’s like I’ve been asked out by the first in line to the Lichtenstein throne, not a banker from Berkshire who has a turbulent relationship with his father. I’m decidedly vague about the details, which seems to be enough to knock them off the scent of failure.

  Throughout the morning, I schedule a thread of tweets about the date that’ll go out tonight, as though it was happening live. We had discussed the option of posting in real time, but decided it might have been a bit odd to keep nipping off to update my social media. ‘Inauthen
tic’, Mitchell called it. Unlike what I’m doing now, which is fine. I’ve omitted any features that are specific to David, so what I’m essentially writing is a fantasy retelling of a golfing date with a charming but subdued entrepreneur, who demonstrated a zest for life and a ‘go-getter’ personality.

  My mind is half-focused on my tweets and half on the letters that I, admittedly, read a few more of last night. Dylan Thomas would struggle to come up with better affirmations of love than ‘H’ in his letters to Annie. ‘H’ can’t be Annie’s husband, the academic who, from what I can gather, patronised and belittled her into giving up a career in engineering. A phrase that I read last night flits round my head: ‘I go to bed exhausted, but my heart is conscious of you always.’ Surely this isn’t the Arthur who wouldn’t let her eat a bloody bourbon without making a snide comment? I stare at my screen, brow furrowed.

  #LovrLive I’m winning golf! Who knew my perfect sporting environment is neon bulbs, fake vegetation, and poorly mixed cocktails!

  If you think about it, why would Arthur be writing letters to Annie when they lived together? I mean, Annie has talked about his work at the university and the weeks he’d spend in archives up and down the country, but he doesn’t seem the type to describe her hair as ‘sunset woven strands’. I shouldn’t have memorised the phrases, but they’re stuck in my head like song lyrics I can’t shake.

  ‘So,’ says Rhea, perching on the edge of my desk. She has a ‘business’ dress on that’s so tight I can see her hip bones poking through the fabric. I can’t remember the last time I saw mine. Maybe I’ll give up pastries for Lent this year.

  Rhea folds her arms. ‘David messaged. Said you ditched him.’ She doesn’t give me any sign that she’s annoyed, embarrassed, or impressed by this information, so I just nod in confirmation. Rhea pinches the bridge of her nose and closes her eyes. I’ll go with ‘annoyed’, then. She lowers her voice to a hissy whisper: ‘Look, if this campaign is going to give us any traction, you can’t leave halfway through a date, Elissa!’ She glances over her shoulder in the direction of Mitchell’s office. ‘We’ve got to turn all this’—she waves her hands in my direction like an amateur magician—‘into content for our users. They need to see that you’re getting something out of it. Isn’t that what you said? And bailing halfway through doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.’