by A. J. Elwood
I’ve looked already, haven’t I? The picture was waiting for me, its message plain. Yet I can’t help feeling there’s something more.
I go back into the room. It remains bare, there’s nothing else, and then I remember and kneel by the bed. Beneath it, where it has always been, is the little wooden box.
She left it there for me, I know that. She would never have forgotten it. Warmth rushes through me as I realise this is it: the one thing I was supposed to find.
I pull it towards me, the wood slightly warm under my fingers, like something alive. Whatever she concealed within, it isn’t heavy. For an instant I imagine opening the lid and finding nothing, just another empty space where she has been, the echo of mocking laughter. That can’t be the end of it all. It can’t.
The box is in my hands. I sit with my back to the bed and place it in my lap. I can’t afford to wait but I stare down at it, looking into the depths of the grain, beyond the gleaming surface. I already know the ruined egg will have gone, but when I remove the lid my eyes open wide.
The box is full of flowers, as it was the first time I looked into it, though I’m sure they have changed and this time there are no photographs hiding beneath. I can’t think how I hadn’t noticed the smell because it is strong and musky, half rotten, and I see that the petals are wilted and limp. Beneath the cloying decay, though, I detect another scent: that of summer, of sunshine, fresh breezes and lilies.
There aren’t any lilies, though. I recognise the bell-like flowers at once, supported by once straight stems. They would have been a rich purple, though the petals are faded now to a colour a little like meat.
She didn’t leave lily of the valley or roses or any such thing. The flowers she meant for me to find are foxgloves.
17
I must look like a normal person as I walk down the stairs to the residents’ lounge. I know this, because when I step around the corner at the bottom there is Mandy, an activity sign-up sheet in her hands, and she stops and looks at me. She betrays no surprise and her eyes hold no suspicion. She can’t see the turmoil of my thoughts.
‘Came to see her off, did you? Bit late.’ She smirks, pleased to have thought up a new way to be unkind.
I ignore her, make to go past, and change my mind. ‘You knew she was going, then?’ I keep my tone low and careful. I don’t think I’ve betrayed my feelings but she laughs and I feel myself redden.
‘What, didn’t you? Her best friend and all? Don’t tell me you didn’t know.’
Mrs Favell planned it, then. She had known all along she was leaving.
‘She went early this morning. She only packed last night – didn’t have much to take, as it happens.’
I reach out as Mandy moves to leave and grab her arm. She scowls at me, trying to shake me off, but I grip tighter. Does she see something in my face now? If she does, I don’t care. ‘Where did she go?’
She squirms. ‘All right! I didn’t know you were so upset about it. Who’d be upset about her leaving? You should be celebrating, love.’
She means to be patronising and I see the unease when I refuse to be intimidated. Never again. ‘Where?’ I demand.
‘Godsakes. She went with her daughter, with Harriet. You didn’t think she was staying here for good, did you? Not that one. It was only ever till the house was ready, and now it is. Didn’t even say thank you. Not to me and not to you either, I reckon. You want to watch who you get so friendly with.’
Does she mean I should have tried to be friends with her and the other girls instead? I don’t want their friendship, not now. I remember the way Mandy had rebuffed me, the way she’d sneered, the way she’d sent me to her.
‘This house – where is it?’
‘I don’t know, do I? If you wanted to keep in touch so badly you should have asked her for an address. Or maybe she didn’t want you to have it?’
Mandy walks away from me and this time I let her go. I hope to never see her again. The chances are good that I won’t.
I walk towards reception. Despite my hopes that she’ll have wandered off, Lise sits at the desk, tapping at a half-concealed mobile phone with her pink-painted nails. Her sidelong glance doesn’t invite conversation and I don’t provide any. I step past her, taking confident strides as if I know exactly where I’m going. I hold my keycard against the door that leads to the staff areas.
She swivels in her chair but I don’t stop to answer the halfhearted question in her eyes. She has no real authority. I don’t think she’s likely to protest and she doesn’t as I head towards the manager’s office, peering through its windows at the filing cabinets ranked against the back wall. That’s where I’ll find the information I need. There would have been forms to fill in, red tape to satisfy. Mrs Favell wouldn’t have wanted to raise questions by refusing to provide a forwarding address. She’d have known I’m not supposed to have access to the file.
It strikes me that the office might be locked. Patricia doesn’t often come in on weekends. Or would it be left open in case of emergencies? I’ve never had cause to find out. Possibly there’ll be some procedure and she’s given a key to someone else. Whichever is the case, the office is empty.
I try the handle and it doesn’t turn, then it gives and I stumble through the door. I’m inside, just like that. I’m also exposed behind all the glass, can’t hide what I’m doing, not in here. But Lise hasn’t followed and who else would have reason to come in? I have time.
I ignore the computers, darkly sleeping – I don’t have any passwords or login details, and I suppose even Sunnyside will have that much security – and turn to the filing cabinets. I grab the handle on the first and pull. It doesn’t move, doesn’t even rattle.
I hadn’t noticed the little keyholes set above each drawer, but I do now. I can almost feel the information within, so close and so out of reach. I try the rest of the drawers but not a single one will move.
The desk, then. Would Patricia really be so careful that she takes the keys away? I think back to her giving me the entry code for the front door, printing it out rather than making me memorise it. The way that doors are so often propped open here, convenience coming before security. There would be issues around patient confidentiality if she left a key lying around, but it’s not as if even Lise would allow any stranger to wander back here.
I try the top drawer of the desk, the shallowest, the kind that will have a little tray where all sorts of small items can be placed. It slides open at my touch and there is a key-ring, standing out from the biros and erasers and staplers. It’s well used, the little furry white poodle appended to it greyed with time.
There are several keys attached. I try the first in the leftmost filing cabinet, metal scratching against metal as my hands shake. It doesn’t take long; the second key I try fits. I pull the drawer open to reveal a series of suspension files with tabs marked AA– AL, AM–AZ, BA–BE and so on.
The letters must be for patient’s surnames. I glance into the first and see a file headed Mrs Abbott, someone I don’t know, dead, perhaps, or moved elsewhere, or maybe she too was taken home by family.
I must need the next drawer down. I fumble the keys again and they scratch like something trying to get in, which I suppose I am. This time it’s the very last key that turns and I drag the drawer open until it slams against its rail. I find the suspension file marked FA–FE, lift it from the cabinet, and the door opens and Patricia walks in.
My first thought is that I could have seen her. If I’d angled myself a little more towards the glass, I would have. Now I’m frozen in front of her stare. I open my mouth to offer some excuse for my presence – perhaps she doesn’t realise I’m not supposed to be in today? I could give her a half-truth, that I’m searching for Mrs Favell’s address to send something on to her. I think of the wooden box or the pictures, but it’s too late. She’s seen my expression. She knows anything I say will be a lie.
I feel five years old again, caught in the act of stealing my mother’s perfume.
The scent of lily of the valley is suddenly all around me, heady and overpowering.
‘Are you going to tell me what you’re doing, Rose?’ She shifts her gaze to the cabinet, where her silly bunch of keys with its ball of fluff hangs from the lock. She gestures towards the suspension file in my hands. ‘Whose is that?’
I find I am breathing normally. My heart doesn’t race. I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, what I need to do, and I feel calmer than I have in days.
I shift my grip on the file to open it without spilling the contents. I glance at the names within, then at her as if to say yes, I’ll do what you want, I’ll show you what you asked to see – buying time. Mrs Favell’s file is there and I pull it free, allowing the others to drop to the floor.
‘Rose?’ Her voice remains low but there’s an edge to it, the hint of a threat.
The file is in my hands. The answer is in my hands. I know it and at last my heart gives an arrhythmic stutter.
Patricia stands between me and the door. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to you, Rose,’ she says, ‘but I know you’re a good girl.’
A good girl? I’m a woman. I had a baby. Doesn’t that prove anything – didn’t it change everything?
She seems encouraged by my inability to speak. ‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but those files are confidential. What is it you’re looking for?’
I open my mouth, all the excuses I can think of floating somewhere out of reach, and anyway, I have no voice. Words have gone from me. They wouldn’t work on her anyway: she’d see through them at once.
She holds out her hand, palm upwards, and waits for me to put the file into it. To give up, to say sorry, perhaps to weep. I do none of those things.
She catches her breath. ‘If you don’t give it to me, Rose, if you don’t explain yourself, there’s nothing I can do. This is an invasion of the patients’ privacy and if you insist on intruding in this way, I can’t save you.’
I can’t save you. That’s not what she means, not really. She means she won’t try. She’ll fire me, and worse: she’ll call the police and accuse me of stealing. They’ll riffle through my things as they did with Theresa. None of it seems important now.
‘I’m waiting.’ She’s gone past the talk-down stage and into coercion, but she’s still just talking, I realise. She’s not going to block me. She can’t stop me from leaving, not unless I let her.
For an instant, I see the disappointment on Paul’s face when he hears I’ve lost my job. I suppose it should trouble me more. There won’t even be a reference. I might have a police record. I struggled to find this job and won’t get another, and no one is queuing up to hire Paul. We’ll have no money, no prospects, no happily ever after. And yet I can’t see an ‘after’. There is only now; there is only her.
I stand taller and clear my throat before saying, ‘You need to get out of my way.’
Now it’s me who sounds threatening and dismay spreads across her features. I have to use that to my advantage, before she gathers herself. I step forward and, as if pushed, she steps aside, away from the door. I remember Mrs Favell doing this to me: stepping forwards, making me back away. Perhaps I’ve learned something from her after all.
There’s anger in Patricia’s eyes but I don’t give her the chance to let it out. Still gripping the file, I brush past her. I expect her to grasp my arm or my shoulder but she doesn’t move, doesn’t shout or shriek or reach for the phone, not yet.
When I glance back through the glass I see her standing quite motionless, her expression flat. She watches me leave with narrowed eyes.
18
I don’t stop to read the file. I can’t. I have to get away from Sunnyside, though the contents pull at me from where I’ve thrown it on the passenger seat. I want to stamp on the accelerator but I force myself to be careful, keeping each move deliberate, one eye on the speedometer. I can’t be pulled over by the police only to have the alert go out for me while they’re running my number plate through whatever checks they have.
For a change there’s a long stretch of empty kerb outside our house and I pull up and yank on the handbrake. When the driver’s door flies open I nearly shriek but it’s Paul leaning over me, Alexander wrapped in a blanket in his arms. Paul doesn’t notice my shock. He doesn’t read in my eyes what I’ve done: thrown away my job; stolen confidential patient information; burned any future we had.
‘Where have you been?’ he snaps. ‘I thought you weren’t going to be long.’
Has it been that long? I blink. It felt like moments. I realise I’ve made him late for the pub, as if that’s what matters.
‘Here – take him.’ He thrusts Alexander at me before I’m fully out of the car. Then he softens. ‘Look, sorry to dash off. Marcus is at the Hart already, he’s bugging me for being late, and Alex just spit up everywhere. He’ll be hungry, all right? I’ll see you later.’
Alexander isn’t even dressed under the blanket. He smells sour. I don’t have time for this, to wash and dress him, to be his mother. I have to read the file, but Paul is walking away.
I watch him go. He doesn’t look back, doesn’t wave to me over his shoulder. He no doubt expects that he’ll come home in a few hours to find me there and we’ll curl up on the sofa, watch something crap on TV. Or maybe he’s not thinking that at all. He’s anticipating his first pint, rehearsing some joke he’s going to tell his brother. He’s already put me from his mind.
You know what’s different about you, Rose? What I love about you?
You believe.
And suddenly I know that the thing Paul said he loved about me was never the thing he loved at all, and I want to cry. There’s a weight in my gut, a cold stone.
I heft Alexander onto my shoulder, go around the car and retrieve my bag and the file from the passenger seat, shove the door closed with my hip. I can’t cry now. I don’t have time. I can’t think about any of this.
Paul left the front door ajar, knowing I’d have my hands full when I came in, knowing he planned to shove Alexander into my arms in the street. The tears brimming at my eyes give way to anger as I go inside. It was only a few minutes. It’s only the pub.
I place Alexander in his bassinet as he is, blanket and sour smell and all. He doesn’t bother to cry. He opens and closes his lips and I see the tips of his yellow teeth.
Paul has left his milk out ready on the kitchen counter. I touch the side of the bottle; it’s slightly warm. Perhaps he was about to feed the baby when he heard me pull up outside. As he said, Alexander will be hungry, but he still isn’t screaming. Soft sounds come from the bassinet: mouthy, sucking sounds.
I set down the file. I open my bag and stare at what else I brought from Sunnyside. After a moment I tip it out, shaking the contents onto the counter. Dead leaves, wilting stems, bell-shaped blooms. They are the exact colour of drying blood: the fairies’ own flower. Fairy glove. Folk’s glove. Folk’s love. I stand in front of them, entirely blank, an empty skin. I tell myself I don’t know why I brought them here, then I tell myself I do.
I turn my back on them and pick up the file. I need to find out where she is. I open it and start to read. As I do, finally, Alexander begins to cry.
There’s a cover sheet filled out neatly in black ink, the bottom corner initialled, though I can’t make out the letters. It has all the basic facts: name, height, weight, the name of her doctor. They think she was born in 1943. The details mean nothing to me. Did they really think she could be categorised like this – reduced? Everything about her put neatly in boxes, like anybody else? I scan down and see a section labelled Next of kin.
Harriet is there. She’s Harriet Gorman, Mrs. And there’s an address.
I flick through the rest of the papers. Mrs Favell’s Individual Care Plan, with her preferred routines and diet, I’ve seen before. There are plenty of other things I haven’t and don’t care about: eye tests, hearing tests, records of flu jabs, a slew of medical papers in tiny print. Flu jabs? Why would she need such
a thing? Sunnyside must have insisted on those. She would never admit such vulnerability.
I flick past the pages and find a sheet tucked behind the rest. This, I didn’t expect: it speaks of the greatest vulnerability of all. It’s a Power of Attorney, entitling someone else to manage her affairs should she become unable to do so – as if that would ever happen. Would that too have been suggested by the staff? And I see the person’s name, the one responsible for taking over her life, the words printed next to it, and I can’t take it in. It doesn’t make any sense.
There are no other address details. I leaf back to the next of kin. What had Mandy said? It was only ever till the house was ready. And her daughter had come to collect her. She had prepared a home for her: Charlotte and Harriet, together again.
I imagine them nestled in some ancient, low-ceilinged cottage, somewhere they’ve kept and passed down, one to the other and back again, when it came time to pretend their long life was finally at an end. Crumbling plaster that has been patched and patched again, the floors polished to a new gleam, the walls freshly painted, layer over layer.
I read the address again, see that the house is in Cottingley, and I know that I’ve found them.
19
I want to leave straight away but of course I can’t. There are things I have to do first, the most important of which is to feed Alexander. I wrap one arm around him and hold the bottle with the other. Willing him to drink won’t make it any quicker and so I rock him and watch the line of milk welling around his lips as the level goes down. He brushes at the bottle with tiny, dimpled fingers, as if longing for the day he can hold it himself.
My heart isn’t knocking against my chest any more. I can’t even feel it; there’s an empty space where it’s supposed to be.
After a time, the baby is done and I tilt him against me, his head resting against my shoulder, and I rub his back. His damp fingers clutch my shirt. At last he becomes still and I settle him into the bassinet. I couldn’t leave him hungry. I know he’ll sleep now.