The Wayward Girls

by Amanda Mason

Lucy can’t possibly leave work, not even for a couple of days. ‘You know that’s not possible,’ she says. ‘I’ve got too much on. Just go back to the house, please, and I’ll see if I can visit sometime next week. Maybe Sunday. OK?’

  ‘No,’ says her mother, ‘I can’t find her.’ She’s slightly out of breath. ‘But I’m sure she’s here. Somewhere.’

  ‘Who? What are you doing?’

  ‘I’ll just go – I can …’ Cathy stops speaking. She seems to have come to a halt. She must have lowered her phone; when she next speaks her voice is distant, muffled, even though she appears to be calling out. ‘Wait – just – please wait,’ she says. It’s as if she’s has forgotten Lucy is on the line.

  Silence. Then Lucy hears her mother start to walk again.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Where are you?’ Cathy says. ‘What do you want?’

  There’s a curious muffled sound, followed by a dull thud. Then, nothing.

  ‘Mum. Can you hear me?’ Lucy checks her phone. The contact icon is still glowing gently on the dark screen, but there’s no response.

  ‘Mum.’ She doesn’t know what to do. ‘Cathy,’ she says, flinching as the only response is a loud burst of crackling, a thick buzzing that seems to fill her head.

  ‘Jesus. Mum?’

  She’s still looking at her phone as somehow the connection is finally broken.

  The house is set on a gentle slope with a sea view. It looks for all the world like an expensive hotel, a polite Victorian building, with polite Victorian gardens: the brickwork is neatly pointed and the woodwork is glossy and fresh. In the summer it’s charming; today an October mist is obscuring the coast, the line between the land and the sea hazy and ill-defined. Blue Jacket House, Cathy’s home. Cathy’s care home.

  Lucy pulls her suitcase behind her, bumping it up the steps. The entrance hall serves as the reception area and one of the care assistants – Megan? Melissa? – is sitting at a desk and, not for the first time today, Lucy feels uneasy. Maybe she should prepare herself to find Cathy altered in some way, diminished. She tries not to think about what could have happened this morning, about the panicked minutes as she tried to ring the home, to rouse someone, anyone, to go and find her mother. Cathy’s fine, she reminds herself as her heart lurches, replaying the final few moments of their conversation. She’s fine.

  The girl looks up as she walks in, and Lucy could swear that her smile is genuine.

  ‘Mrs Frankland, how lovely to see you.’

  Divorced and the only childless child, it has gradually fallen to Lucy to keep an eye on Cathy. And it makes sense, she knows that – the home is only a few hours away from London, and she can visit whenever she’s needed. Her mother is still independent and, given the circumstances, is generally in excellent health.

  ‘Where are you? What do you want?’

  She thinks that’s what Cathy said before she fell, before her phone disconnected.

  It’s not fair, the thought, the perennial complaint of childhood, surfaces suddenly, taking her by surprise, but she doesn’t pursue it. She straightens her back and smiles at the young woman.

  Leaving her case at the front desk, Lucy goes up to her mother’s room, the home still reassuringly familiar although it must be two months, three, since her last visit. She taps lightly on the door before she goes in, not really wanting to disturb Cathy, expecting to find the hushed atmosphere of a sickroom.

  ‘There you are,’ says the small figure sitting by the window, neatly dressed in black, her fine grey hair cropped close to her skull. ‘We thought you’d got lost.’ She’s playing Scrabble with a young girl dressed in pale blue nurse’s scrubs.

  ‘I had to organise things at work.’ Lucy crosses the room to kiss her mother’s cheek.

  ‘This is my daughter, Lucia,’ says Cathy to the girl, who is lifting the card table to one side, neat and competent and discreet, ‘and this is …’

  ‘Sarah,’ says the girl, holding out her hand. ‘Nice to meet you.’ She finishes tidying the game away and – to Lucy’s surprise – she puts Cathy’s laptop in its place. It had been a Christmas gift two years ago and, as far as Lucy knows, her mother barely uses it. ‘Would you like me to fetch you some tea, Mrs Corvino?’

  ‘Thank you, Sarah,’ says Cathy, settling back in her chair and looking at her daughter, inspecting her, ‘that would be lovely.’

  Cathy pours the tea herself, left-handed. Her right wrist is strapped up, the flesh-tone edge of the support bandages peeping out from underneath her sleeve. They’d thought it was broken at first. They’d suspected concussion.

  She adds milk, stirs it, then lifts the cup to her lips, blowing across it gently. Lucy is reminded for some reason of being a little girl, four or five years old; she’s in the kitchen, and Cathy is bending over the table and adding a swirl of milk to a bowl of tomato soup.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m …’ For a moment Cathy looks hesitant, as if the right words are eluding her, but then she recovers herself. ‘I’m fine.’ She glances down at her wrist. ‘Everyone made such a fuss,’ she says.

  It could have been worse, Lucy reminds herself again, much worse. ‘You sounded worried on the phone. Before you fell.’

  Cathy puts her cup and saucer on the table and looks out of the window. Her room is at the back of the house, giving her a view of the large and well-kept garden. There’s a bruise blooming over her right eye and a long scratch running down her cheek towards her chin. There had been a suggestion that she should stay in hospital, under observation, but Cathy had refused. ‘Well, I was worried,’ she says.

  A little over a year ago Cathy had been diagnosed with vascular dementia, but it had been caught relatively early and while there was no cure, no real possibility of halting her inevitable decline, she had still been well enough to choose which home she’d like to move to, and to make a plan for her own care.

  ‘And maybe …’ Lucy’s not sure how to go on. ‘A bit confused?’

  Moving in with any of her children hadn’t been an option; Cathy wasn’t a fool. Nor had she wanted to move across the country to be nearer any of them. She’d chosen a care home in the same seaside town she’d lived in for the past twenty years and she’d seemed to settle in perfectly well. She was still staring out of the window; the garden was empty.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Not confused, no.’

  ‘You said you saw someone.’

  ‘Yes. I thought I – are you going to stay?’ Cathy asks, picking up her tea again.

  ‘I can stay over tonight, if you like,’ says Lucy.

  ‘Good.’

  Lucy sips her tea and looks around the room. It’s different from the last time she was here, busier, more cluttered, and at the foot of the bed there’s a canvas bag, stuffed with pads and pencils and broken pastels. It’s worn and battered. It used to belong to her father.

  ‘I didn’t know you still had that. Have you been drawing? Can I see?’

  ‘A bit. Now and then. It keeps them away from me.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The trouble with a place like this is they can’t stand to see you sitting about. They think you’re brooding or, worse, drooling.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Lucy.

  ‘Crafting classes,’ says Cathy. ‘Music appreciation. But if I take that with me every time I want to go outside, they leave me alone.’

  ‘Right. I see.’ Lucy is tempted to suggest that her mother might enjoy crafting classes, whatever that might involve, but she thinks better of it. They sit in silence for a while, and through the open window – Cathy is still a believer in the power of fresh air – someone’s music drifts in. It’s an old song, vaguely familiar, something to do with Romeo and Juliet, one of the songs Dan used to play on his stereo. A few notes circle round and round each other, ‘Don’t fear the—’ The radio is switched off suddenly, a door is slammed shut.

  ‘I had a card from your sister,’ says Cathy. Always your sister, your bro
ther, as if it was Lucy’s fault these people existed at all.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘She’s still with him, you know.’ Her husband. ‘That …’ Cathy’s mouth hovers around the insult. ‘That’s why she never comes, you know. He won’t let her.’

  ‘It’s too far, Mum. You know it is. She’d come if she could.’

  ‘Yes. Well.’

  Her sister lives in San Francisco, she’s married, and her life is relayed to Lucy by intermittent emails and occasional phone calls. She has the impression this distance suits them both. ‘What did she say? In her card.’ They haven’t spoken for months, and now Lucy thinks about it she suspects she’s missed her nephew’s birthday. But Cathy doesn’t answer. She leans forward, frowning.

  ‘I tried to call you,’ she says, ‘but you never answer.’

  ‘You could leave a message,’ says Lucy. She’s checked her phone on the long journey north, and has discovered three missed calls from Cathy in the last week alone; she can’t imagine how that’s happened. ‘Even if it’s just to ask me to ring you back.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have to ask, Lucia.’

  Work. The gallery. It’s not much of an excuse, but it’s all she has.

  ‘I looked out of the window and there she was, so I went down,’ Cathy says, ‘but I couldn’t find her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I told you – there was a girl, she was outside, all on her own.’

  Alone in the dark. Lucy pushes the thought away. ‘Maybe it was one of the staff, Mum, one of the auxiliaries.’

  Cathy falls back in her chair, irritated. ‘The trouble is,’ she says, ‘that once people know you’re …’ She taps the side of her head in frustration. ‘They stop listening.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Oh, you wait.’

  Lucy looks across the lawn. It’s empty except for a scattering of orange and brown leaves, and the ornamental fountain, switched off now for the winter. ‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘I’m here now.’

  ‘Yes.’ Cathy seems to come to some sort of decision. She leans forward and picks up the laptop. ‘Yes …’ but before she can get any further there’s a knock at the door; it’s Sarah.

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ she says, ‘but Mrs Wyn Jones is free now, Mrs Frankland, if you’d like a word with her. She’s waiting at reception.’

  ‘Ah,’ says Cathy, her expression a combination of irritation and guilt, ‘Jean. You’d better go. And if the pair of you could manage to not discuss me as if I were a naughty child, I’d be very grateful.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ says Lucy. ‘Jean was very worried about you. So was I.’

  ‘I know, and I’m – I didn’t mean to – I saw – I thought I saw someone, but – there was no one there. I got outside and there was no one there. That’s all.’ Cathy opens the laptop. ‘You can go now,’ she says. ‘Tell her that. Just – tell her I made a mistake.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asks Lucy. ‘I mean – is there anything else?’

  Cathy looks up, holding her gaze for a long moment. ‘No,’ she says. ‘The rest will keep. Tell her I’m sorry; it won’t happen again.’

  Jean is waiting for her by the front desk. ‘Lucy, I’m so, so sorry, we have no idea how this happened,’ she says, pulling her into an embrace as if they are old friends. ‘But we’re working on finding out what went wrong.’

  Cathy had once told Lucy that she’d settled on Blue Jacket House because she liked the atmosphere, very positive, she’d insisted, very healing, and Lucy had often wondered if her mother was making fun of her, or, possibly, of Jean Wyn Jones, the owner and manager. Maybe she had meant it; her mother had been one of nature’s huggers too, once upon a time.

  ‘This isn’t good enough, you know.’ Lucy stands back; she’s had the time to think about this on the train, to come up with a strategy, but already she’s struggling to maintain some sort of distance. She likes Jean, warm and friendly Jean who runs Blue Jacket House single-handed. The residents like her and Lucy trusts her, too.

  Had trusted her.

  ‘Yes, of course, and we’re reviewing our procedures.’

  ‘She fell. If she hadn’t had her phone—’

  ‘Please.’ Jean takes hold of Lucy’s hands and squeezes them gently. ‘We’ll go into the dining room, if you don’t mind? It’s easier just to show you what we know so far.’

  ‘So. You’re aware we have emergency buttons in the rooms here?’ says Jean, leading the way through the empty tables, neatly arranged for dinner, and towards the French windows.

  ‘In case anyone is taken ill, yes.’

  ‘Yes. Well, just after five thirty in the morning, your mother pressed her button and when Carol Baxter, who was the supervisor on duty last night, got to her room, she’d gone. At first Carol thought she was in the bathroom, but when she couldn’t find her there, she had to search the rest of the house.’

  ‘On her own?’

  ‘No, she had a couple of our auxiliaries with her.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘At this point she thought that Cathy must be somewhere indoors, and to be honest, she wasn’t that concerned. Your mother is in good health, she’s mostly lucid, she’s not in need of meds. She thought Cathy had got tired of waiting for a response and decided to get whatever it was she needed, for herself.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I must stress that we don’t think she was outside for very long. She’d put her coat on. She was quite composed, really, quite rational.’

  ‘How did she get outside?’

  ‘Our residents aren’t prisoners, Lucy.’

  ‘But they are in your care.’

  ‘Yes.’ A fine blush begins to creep over the other woman’s face. ‘Well, when she looked in here Carol found both these doors open.’

  Lucy looks up at the French windows, fitted out she can now see as fire doors, easy enough to open from the inside, no key required.

  ‘The issue for us is why she didn’t trip the alarm when she went out and, believe me, we are currently having both the fire and burglar alarms thoroughly checked. I’ll also be interviewing everyone later today. Someone clearly made a mistake and that’s not acceptable.’ Jean looks so severe, Lucy almost feels sorry for the staff. ‘Carol found Cathy quickly enough, she was round towards the staff car park at the back, and got an ambulance and paramedics out here straightaway.’

  ‘It was Carol I spoke to?’ It had taken forever, waiting for someone to pick up the home’s landline.

  ‘Yes. She rang me and I arrived just as the ambulance did. I followed it to the hospital.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Cathy’s fine. A little tired, perhaps. She cut across the grass instead of sticking to the path, it was dark, the ground is uneven there and fairly steep, she says herself she was rushing. Cuts and bumps and bruises, a sprained wrist. But very much her old self.’

  She’d got off lightly and both women knew it.

  ‘Could I speak to Carol?’

  ‘She’s on nights,’ says Jean. ‘She’ll be at home, asleep.’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’ Lucy hadn’t thought of that. ‘How has Cathy – Mum – been generally?’

  ‘Fine. I’ve heard no concerns from staff.’

  ‘It’s just that, at one point, she seemed – she called me by my sister’s name.’

  ‘Ah.’ Jean takes a seat at one of the tables and Lucy sits opposite her. ‘Well, your mother does have some memory issues; we’ve known that for some time. Some occasional confusion is to be expected, especially if she’s under any kind of stress.’

  ‘I know. But it was odd. And she seemed quite convinced that there was someone in the garden.’

  Jean looks out of the window. ‘Yes. Carol told me,’ she says. ‘There wasn’t, by the way. Both sets of gates were closed; there’s no way anyone could get in. She’s not still worried about that, is she?’

  ‘No. She says not.’

  Tell her I made a mistake.

  ‘Well, I think Ca
thy woke from a very vivid dream and, as you said, she was confused for a while. It does happen, you know. To all of us.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lucy says. A fragment of this morning’s dream comes back to her: the farm, the house.

  Running along the path, before

  before

  ‘Yes. I suppose so,’ she says.

  ‘I’m so sorry that you had to come up at such short notice. I know you’re very busy.’

  Now it’s Lucy’s turn to blush; she sees Cathy three or four times a year, if that. ‘No, that’s – it’s fine. It’s good to see her.’

  ‘And I’m sure she’s happy to see you.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lucy says. She could pursue it, of course, be difficult about the situation, but it was Cathy herself who’d caused all this trouble, all this fuss. And there’s no real harm done, after all. Her wrist will heal. ‘I’m sorry, Jean. I’ll – have a word with her. I’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says Jean, clearly relieved, ‘for being so very understanding. And if you could speak to Cathy – well, I’d appreciate that. I’ll let you know about the alarm, and if we need to reassess any of our procedures.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And if you’ve any other questions, any concerns at all, you know where to find me.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Jean places a hand gently on Lucy’s shoulder. ‘I know this has been a bit – difficult, but try not to worry,’ she says.

  I tried to call but you never answer.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ Lucy says.

  She waits until Jean has left the room before she pulls her phone from her pocket. Dan answers on the first ring.

  ‘Loo?’

  ‘She’s all right.’

  There’s a silence as her brother composes himself. She’d told him not to worry, she’d told them all not to worry, sending each one a version of the same text, promising a phone call, keeping everyone in the loop. She loves her brother; she wishes she saw him more often.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yeah. She got herself into a bit of a state, that’s all. I think she woke up and was – confused, I suppose. She’s back from the hospital with her arm strapped up and whatever it was that set her off has been forgotten. She’s back to her normal self. More or less.’