Remembering Rose (Mapleby Memories Book 1)

by Sheila Claydon

  I did the one thing I can always be guaranteed to do in an emergency; I panicked. “But Leah hasn’t woken up from her morning sleep yet, and when she does she’ll need feeding.” I could barely hear my protest above the pounding of my heart but I still knew I was being pathetic; I just didn’t know how to stop myself. Daniel did though. He took hold of both my hands and made me look at him.

  “It’s okay, Rachel. We are going to drop Leah off at Rebecca’s on the way to the hospital and she will look after her until we get back. All you need to do is pack a bag while I fold up the stroller and put it in the car.”

  I held onto his hands so tightly that I probably left nail marks. “But what about the shop? Millie finishes at three o’clock.”

  “All sorted. If I’m late back, then one of her friends will collect the children from school. Your father is going to help out as well.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” Robbie’s voice startled us because we had both forgotten he was there.

  “No, but thanks anyway,” Daniel shook his head. Taking that as a cue to leave Robbie put Great-Great-Uncle Archie’s letter in his pocket and made a hasty exit. I didn’t blame him. Up until now he had only seen cheerful, fun-loving Rachel, whereas Daniel was used to the tearful, panic-stricken wreck I turned into the moment there was a crisis.

  “Come on, the sooner we arrive at the hospital the better,” he gave me a swift hug before going outside to sort out the stroller.

  I knew he was right. Grandma, already confused by her dementia, would be totally lost in a big hospital ward, so if she was asking for me then I needed to get there as soon as possible. Keeping that thought in the forefront of my mind I stuffed nappies, a change of baby clothes and some jars of pureed food into Leah’s carry bag, added a tin of formula and some bottles, thankful that I had started to wean her off breast milk, and zipped it up. Then I grabbed my own bag, slipped my feet into the sneakers I kept beside the kitchen door, and headed out to the car.

  Daniel took Leah’s bag from me and put it in the trunk next to the stroller. He frowned when I walked round to the passenger seat though. “Haven’t you forgotten something?

  I gave him a blank look until it hit me. Leah! I’d forgotten Leah! I burst into tears and I was still crying when he carried her out of the house and strapped her into the baby seat. Once he was sure she was secure he climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled me close.

  “I’m sure you’re not the only mother who’s forgotten her baby for a few minutes, Rachel. You would have remembered her before we drove out of the gate.”

  “But what if I hadn’t?” I sobbed into his shoulder. “I don’t blame you for not loving me like you used to, not when I’m such a terrible wife and mother.”

  He drew back and looked at me, frowning again. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Everything. I’m talking about everything.” I couldn’t bring myself to say Millie’s name but it hung between us, or at least I thought it did, but Daniel refused to engage. Instead he pushed me gently back into the passenger seat and started the engine.

  “We’ll sort this out later. Right now you need to dry your eyes and make yourself presentable before we reach Rebecca’s house.”

  I knew what he was doing because I had heard that resigned tone of voice a lot when Leah was tiny and he’d had to cajole me into doing anything other than worry about her. There had even been one week when I refused to have a shower, so frightened was I that something would happen while I was away. I had only really started to get better when everyone had stopped fussing and Daniel had started to tell me what to do. Somehow that had put me back on track. I don’t know if Doctor Gove told him to do it or whether my irrational behavior drove him to it, but it had worked, and from then on I had been more or less fine.

  It worked now too, and by the time my sister lifted Leah from the car I was back to my normal self. I had even managed to tidy my hair and put on some lip gloss in the short time it took us to drive to her house. Although she looked worried, she smiled at me.

  “I don’t know what it is between you and Grandma but if anyone can help her, it’s you Rachel. Now off you go and don’t think about Leah. You know how much I enjoy looking after her, and the boys will love to see her when they come home from school.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  We were almost at the hospital when the thought struck me. “Why did Ma call you instead of me?”

  Daniel glanced at me. “She did call you, several times, but your cell phone went to voice mail. She texted you too.”

  I rummaged in my bag for my cell phone. It was set on silent. I had forgotten to turn the sound on when I woke up so had spent the entire morning cut off from the world. I had been laughing and flirting with Robbie and eating cream cakes while Grandma was suffering in hospital and Ma was trying to contact me. I went cold inside. What if it had been worse? What if something had happened to Daniel and nobody could get me? What if he had had a heart attack just like Rose’s father and nobody could find me to tell me about it until it was too late. For one panic-stricken moment I forgot about cars and ambulances and all the safety nets of modern life and imagined I lived like Rose.

  Daniel saw the expression on my face and shook his head. “It didn’t happen, Rachel. Whatever you are worrying about, it didn’t happen.”

  “No, but it might have done, and then I would have been almost as guilty as Rose,” I whispered, but he was too busy looking for a space to park the car to hear me.

  * * *

  Grandma was as pale as the pillow behind her head and Ma didn’t look much better. They smiled when Daniel and I walked up to the bed though, Ma with relief and Grandma with satisfaction.

  “Rose said you’d both come,” she told me, and then closed her eyes.

  I shrugged when Ma raised her eyebrows, and for once I wasn’t lying. I had no idea what Rose had told Grandma. I didn’t find out for ages either because she wasn’t talking. Ma looked at her inert figure in consternation.

  “She seems to have worn herself out calling for you.”

  I took hold of one of Grandma’s hands. It was warm and I felt a faint pressure as her fingers curled in mine. She wasn’t asleep, she was just biding her time. I settled down to wait.

  Ma stayed in the chair opposite and Daniel set off in search of coffee. When he returned with three cardboard cups of questionable liquid he suggested that Ma take a break once she had finished hers. “I passed the hospital canteen on my way back to the ward and lunch smells good,” he said.

  I saw my chance. “Why don’t you both go? You haven’t had a thing since early this morning Daniel, and Ma would probably appreciate the company. I’ll be fine here with Grandma until you get back.”

  They both looked doubtful, Daniel because he had seen how panicked I was earlier, and Ma because she was worried. “I wish we had never shown her a single photo, let alone tried to persuade her to remember the past. She’s done nothing but talk about Granny Rose ever since she saw that picture of her. On her worst days she even confuses her with you, Rachel, so who knows what she’ll say when she wakes up and sees you next to the bed.”

  I aimed for a suitably understanding expression as I nodded my agreement because I knew that if I didn’t Ma wouldn’t leave me on my own with Grandma. “It’s only because I look a bit like Rose,” I said, as I wondered how long it would be before Ma and Daniel totally trusted my sanity again. Then I remembered all the times I had seen Rose and spoken to her and I didn’t blame them because I wasn’t entirely sure how sane I was myself.

  “I suppose so,” Ma looked doubtful. She didn’t demur when Daniel asked her a second time though. Draining her coffee cup, she stood up and stretched. Then she picked up the large tote bag she carries with her everywhere and followed him out of the ward. Left to my own devices but aware that we didn’t have that much time, I squeezed Grandma’s hand.

  “You can open your eyes now because they’ve gone.”

  She peered at me
through two slits. I laughed. “Did Rose put you up to this?”

  “Rose wanted Daniel, too.”

  “You mean she wanted me to realize how much I need Daniel and this was the only way she could think to arrange it. I suppose she was the one who made me forget to switch on my cell phone this morning.” I was getting better at reading Rose’s mind by the minute. I was also beginning to have an inkling about what she was up to.

  Grandma nodded. “She made me promise.”

  I frowned. “Well, from now on you can tell her to leave you out of it. If she wants to talk to me she knows where I live.”

  But Grandma was too intent on relaying the rest of her message to listen. “Daniel is a good man.”

  “I know he is, and so was Arthur. Tell Rose I know she loved Arthur. Tell her I understand.”

  * * *

  We stayed long enough for the duty doctor to check Grandma out again and discharge her back to the nursing home. When Ma wondered why he wasn’t keeping her in overnight for observation, he shook his head and said that she would sleep better in her own bed. He assured us she had suffered no ill effects from her seizure at the same time that he confessed to being puzzled as to what exactly had been wrong with her. He then told Ma to ask the nursing home staff to keep a close eye on her, patted Grandma’s hand, and walked briskly down the ward to his next, far more deserving patient.

  Daniel helped Grandma into a wheelchair and pushed her down the long corridor to the hospital entrance while Ma and I followed on behind, Ma muttering about time wasted, and me keeping quiet.

  It wasn’t until after she was tucked up in bed in the nursing home that Daniel asked me what Grandma had said. I shrugged.

  “Not much. She just talked a bit about Rose and then closed her eyes again.”

  I could tell he didn’t believe me. He knew I had a secret but he wasn’t going to ask, the same as he wouldn’t ask me about my mid-morning coffee break with Robbie. It was one of the things I had always liked best about him, the respect he had for other people’s privacy. I wished I could be as understanding but I knew I couldn’t, especially as far as Millie Carter was concerned. Rose might have taught me not to play with fire but she hadn’t taught me tolerance or how to curb my temper. I had to do all that on my own.

  * * *

  We were back in the car together and on our way to Rebecca’s to pick up Leah when Daniel pulled into a quiet layby and killed the engine. I stared at him. “What are you doing?”

  “This,” he said, and slipped him arm around my shoulders, pulled me to him and, tilting my lips to his, kissed me very slowly and very thoroughly. When we finally drew apart my pulse was racing and when I saw the expression in his eyes my breath caught in my throat. For a moment I thought he might throw caution to the wind and make love to me right there, in full view of passing traffic. He didn’t though. Instead he grinned at me as he started the engine again.

  “That’s so you know how much I love you, but I think I’d better keep both hands occupied until we get home.”

  I laughed. Had Rose manipulated the day’s events just for this? If she had then I wasn’t complaining. How could I have been so stupid as to think there was anything going on between Daniel and Millie when he still wanted to kiss me like that? Besides, when would they have had the time or opportunity? I had more chance of an affair with Robbie what with Leah being asleep during the day and nobody else being around. I blocked out the fact that Millie would probably be living over the shop by the end of the week.

  * * *

  Rose didn’t get things all her own way though. Firstly, Rebecca insisted we stay for a meal, and while we were eating it, Ma arrived. She wasn’t in the best of moods thanks to spending most of the day at the hospital and the fact that Pa was too worn out from his stint at the shop to take her to their weekly quiz night.

  “Why don’t you go on your own?” Rebecca asked.

  “Because I’m shattered, too,” Ma snapped. Then she turned on me. “Was it my imagination or did Grandma pull some sort of stunt?”

  I feigned total innocence. “She’s ninety-four years old Ma. Long past pulling stunts.”

  “You don’t know my mother,” she muttered. “Dementia or not she’s up to something and I want to know what it is. What did she say to you Rachel, because she’s refusing to talk to me?”

  My hands were hidden in my lap so I crossed my fingers. “Nothing much, she just rambled on about Rose as usual.”

  Daniel saw my crossed fingers and cut across Ma’s next outburst. “She just keeps confusing Rose with Rachel.”

  “Well it’s got to stop. You need to visit her again and talk about what’s happening in the here and now instead of showing her all those pictures and pretending you know what she’s talking about.”

  Swallowing my indignation that it was Ma herself who had started the whole thing by digging out the box of photos in the first place, I nodded. “I’ll do my best but she might forget.”

  “Not if we both go she won’t. I’ll meet you there later on this week

  “I’ll come too if you like,” Rebecca offered. Then she laughed. “You have to give it to Grandma. She still knows how to keep us all dancing attendance even at ninety-four.”

  Ma wasn’t amused and I didn’t blame her because she was the one who the nurses called whenever anything went wrong. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll find a way to stop her thinking about Rose.”

  * * *

  “Don’t you want to know what she said?” I asked. I was sitting on Daniel’s lap and we were sharing a glass of wine. Leah was in bed asleep, the house was quiet, and we were tormenting ourselves by delaying returning to the passion we had shared in the car.

  “Only if you want to tell me,” he ran his hand along the length of my leg, raising goose bumps.

  “I don’t really…well it’s more I can’t because it’s not my secret, which is why I didn’t say anything to Ma.”

  “Then don’t say anything to me either because I can think of something I’d far rather do,” he put the glass of wine down and turned his attention to the front of my blouse.

  “And you don’t mind?”

  “I don’t mind, especially not now, not at this very minute.” My blouse undone he was liberating me from my less than attractive nursing bra when his cell phone rang. Ignoring it, he captured my breasts and within seconds I was moaning with a pent up desire that spilled over as one of his hands dipped lower, breaching the waistband of my jeans.

  “Later,” he murmured as I twisted towards him and grabbed his T-shirt. “This is for you.” And then he tipped me off his lap and onto the couch, removed the rest of my clothes and proved very conclusively that he meant what he said.

  The phone rang again and then again and we still ignored it, too intent on repairing all the hurt we had inflicted on one another in recent months to let the outside world in. It wasn’t until it rang for a fourth time that Daniel reached out and answered it, his voice languid with the aftermath of sex. While he listened, I walked my fingers across his chest and then curled them into the whorls of golden hair that gradually tapered to a V just where his belt would have been if he had still been wearing one. It was only when Daniel tensed and then swung his legs to the floor and sat up that I realized it was something serious. I tuned in to what he was saying.

  “I’ll come straight away. No, don’t touch anything thing until I get there.”

  I sat up too, the warm fuzziness that had enveloped me fading fast. “What is it?”

  “Someone’s put a brick through the shop window.”

  I stared at him. “Who on earth would do a thing like that?”

  “Kids probably. I don’t know. I’ll have to go and sort it out though, board it up or something. Millie’s called the police but it will be ages before they get here now the local police station has closed.”

  I wasn’t interested in the politics of local policing, however. As far as I was concerned Millie’s involvement was of far more importa
nce. “Was that her on the phone?”

  He nodded, halfway into his jeans. “I meant to say. She and the children are sleeping over the shop at the moment.”

  I remembered what Robbie had told me. “But the bathroom still needs fixing and the decorating isn’t finished.”

  “I see Robbie’s been keeping you up to date,” he said, pulling his T-shirt over his head.

  “Which is more than you have.” Despite what had just happened between us, I could feel my temper building. How dare Daniel move Millie into the shop without telling me?

  He shook his head as he bent to tie his shoelaces. “It’s not what you think, Rachel. The person who lives in the room above her in that god awful place she’s in at the moment let his bath overflow, and the water flooded her bedroom. I said she and the boys could sleep above the shop until it’s sorted. She still goes home first thing every morning and cooks all her meals there.”

  I should have felt sorry for Millie, but instead I just added her latest misfortune to the long list of things that I held against her. “You have no idea what I think,” I said. “No idea at all.”

  He picked up his keys and made for the door. As he opened it he turned to look at me. “That’s where you’re wrong. I do know what you’re thinking, quite a lot of the time, and right at this minute I don’t like it at all.”

  He didn’t slam the door or do anything else inflammatory but I still hurled a cushion across the room. Pathetic, I know. Something hard, something that I could have broken would have been so much more satisfying. Feeling beyond miserable I threw my discarded clothes into the wash basket and went into the bedroom to fetch my pajamas. Then I tiptoed into the nursery to check on Leah. Rose was waiting for me. She looked terrible and I had a horrible feeling that it was my fault. I hardened my heart.

  “Stop interfering,” I said. “And leave my grandmother out of it as well. She’s a very old lady, far too frail to play your games for you.”