‘But anyway, that’s everyone else,’ Gabriel was saying. ‘How are you?’
He looked so concerned I almost got a lump in my throat. My children wouldn’t think to ask. ‘You look a little stressed, if you don’t mind my saying,’ Gabriel was saying. ‘Is there anything wrong?’
‘My mother’s, um–’ I stopped. ‘Gone missing’ sounded rather dramatic about an adult in broad daylight, but what else did you say about a parent with questionable judgement who was now at large? ‘She’s staying with me,’ I explained, ‘and she went out early and hasn’t come back and–’ I paused again. ‘She’s been having a few memory problems,’ I said awkwardly, ‘and I’m just worried that …’ I swallowed hard.
Gabriel’s look of concern deepened. ‘Do you want to let the police know? Would you like me to call the hospital, just in case?’
‘In case of what, Mr Galahad?’ Malcolm’s voice boomed out behind me. ‘What calamity are you saving us all from now?’
Gabriel reddened but his voice was even. ‘Tess’s mum has wandered off somewhere and she might need help.’
‘Get Tess a coffee and a biscuit, then,’ said Malcolm, as if this were the obvious solution. ‘Or despatch one of your adoring females. Use the proper stuff. And make the calls.’ He turned and looked at me searchingly. Then put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Come and sit in my office. I’ll get Grace on it.’
The coffee was good and as I sat cradling the cup, eating my second shortbread finger, I felt emotional as I thought how lucky I was to be living in a small town. This wouldn’t happen in London – the local paper editor organising his staff to help me and setting a network in motion, making me feel so cared for and reassured.
Malcolm had asked for my mother’s full name and description and made a rapid-fire call to reception, instructing Grace to put the word around.
‘It’s like the bush telegraph down there,’ he told me. ‘The tom toms will beat out around the teashops and nail bars of Northstone and your mother will be returned!’ He laughed wryly. ‘If it were my mother, I’d be thanking my lucky stars and changing the locks.’
‘How old’s she?’ I asked, surprised. I hadn’t imagined Malcolm with parents.
‘Ninety bloody six. Spent all my inheritance on nursing home fees years ago and steadfastly refuses to die.’
‘And is she still – compos mentis?’ I asked, amused.
‘Runs the place with a rod of iron. God help those poor little girls if they’re late with her gin.’
‘How often do you see her?’ I was now fascinated. Malcolm was already bored.
‘First Saturday of every month. Duty visit at Christmas. Let’s talk about your mother instead.’ He took a mouthful from his own cup. ‘If we have to talk about relatives at all.’
Gabriel put his head around the door. ‘I’ve reported it to the police and given them your mobile number – told them she was vulnerable – and I’ve called the hospital. Nobody’s been brought in of that description.’
He looked at me kindly. ‘Try not to worry. I’m sure she’ll turn up. Perhaps she’s just shopping–’
‘Yes, thank you!’ Malcolm interrupted. ‘Now see what you can do about finding some news to fill my paper.’
‘There’s been two more break-ins up near the recreation ground.’
‘Good,’ said Malcolm encouragingly.
‘Both of them,’ Gabriel inserted a small pause during which Malcolm narrowed his eyes, ‘in houses belonging to DFLs.’
Malcolm raised his eyebrows. ‘And your point is?’
‘Well, that they’re still being targeted.’
‘Or,’ said Malcolm, with exaggerated patience, ‘it could just be that those who’ve moved here from the smoke are the ones with the flash cars outside, and the freshly painted front doors, and that says to Johnny Burglar – here’s a flat screen TV and a few laptops for the picking!’
‘Yes, but–’
‘And aren’t they semis up there?’
‘Yes, but I–’
‘Statistically, semis are twice as likely to be burgled as any other category of housing. Figures released last month.’ Malcolm paused too, clearly pleased with himself. ‘Though why they haven’t got alarms, Lord only knows.’
‘One of them did but the owners were away and the neighbours thought it was faulty.’ Gabriel spoke quickly, finally managing to get a sentence out.
‘Excellent! You can run me off a nice little piece on how there’s no community spirit anymore and we’re all afflicted by apathy. Burglary on the increase. A spate of them right here in Northstone and you could be next. Frighten the buggers.’ He looked at Gabriel over the top of his reading glasses and snorted. ‘Even you can manage that.’
‘You’re really not very nice to him,’ I said, when Gabriel had gone.
‘He’ll be glad of it one day,’ replied Malcolm tersely. He looked at his watch. ‘It’s nearly half-past eleven – if you want to hang on for an hour or so, I’ll buy you a restorative lunch.’
‘Oh God,’ I jumped up guiltily. ‘I had no idea. I’ve left Jinni at home holding the fort in case my mother turns back up.’ I put my coffee cup down and grabbed my jacket.
‘You’ve been so lovely,’ I said. ‘Thank you so much for all your help.’
As he stood up too, I leaned forward and kissed his cheek. He cleared his throat, looking both pleased and startled. ‘Think everything of it,’ he said gruffly.
I smiled. ‘I’ll email soon with a date for toad-in-the-hole.’
Malcolm visibly brightened. ‘Food of the Gods.’
‘Unless you’d prefer slow-cooked pork shoulder,’ I suggested, ‘or lamb hotpot. Or I do a mean beef cooked in Guinness?’
For a moment Malcolm appeared to be lost in reverie. Then he beamed at me, his voice newly animated. ‘Can you do steak and kidney pud?’
I thanked Grace profusely on the way out. She looked at me strangely. Maybe she wasn’t used to anyone showing appreciation – perhaps Malcolm barked at her in the same manner as he addressed Gabriel.
I felt a real affection for him as I thought about his kindness this morning. Underneath that crusty exterior there beat a soft heart. I felt guilty I hadn’t stopped to thank Gabriel once more but had simply waved and blown him a kiss as I’d rushed from the room.
My guilt increased as I raced home. For a moment or two there, chatting to Malcolm, I had forgotten my mother rudderless in deepest Northstone, possibly confused and unable to remember the way home. I calculated she’d now been gone for a minimum of three hours and probably a lot longer than that.
I sent Jinni a text as I stopped by the pub to catch my breath – telling her I’d be home in five minutes. My heart beat faster as I strode on, knowing Gerald would be arriving soon to collect my mother and I’d have to tell him I hadn’t got a clue where she was.
But Gerald was there already, sitting at my kitchen table, in his usual tweedy jacket and tie, drinking tea and appearing engrossed in Jinni’s account of insulating her extensive lofts. He stood up when I appeared gasping in the doorway, eyes questioning under his shock of silver hair. I shook my head as Gerald came forward to embrace me, nodding with his familiar air of stoicism.
‘Oh dear,’ he said.
‘Your boss phoned,’ put in Jinni. ‘I told him to give you a break cos there was a crisis.’
When we’d packed Jinni off to finish her attic manoeuvres – promising to call her when there was news – and I’d made Gerald more tea and a cheese and pickle sandwich, I sat down opposite him and looked into his solid, capable face and saw how weary he looked around the eyes. ‘How long have you known?’ I asked.
He gazed back, sadly. ‘I think it was a little while before she did,’ he said. ‘I knew something wasn’t right when she kept seeing things.’
It had begun with the dawn awakenings and squirrels on top of the wardrobe.
‘She’s always been a one for her dreams,’ he told me. ‘And I said: you’re imagining it, Flora.’ He sh
ook his head. ‘But then she kept saying odd things and she was forgetting all sorts. And you know your mum usually. Mind like a steel trap.’ He gave a little chuckle and then looked serious again. ‘Didn’t want to go to the doctor, didn’t want Mo to know–’ He shook his head again. ‘But Mo’s no fool either – she’d started helping with the housework by then.’
We looked at each other, both knowing the significance of my mother accepting any sort of assistance with the cleaning.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘She made us promise. And we were managing. So we were waiting for you to visit. I was trying to persuade her to talk to the doctor – in case there were tablets that could help – when she had that turn and went to hospital. Then they found it.’
Gerald gave a deep sigh. ‘Poor Flora.’
Fear gripped me. ‘I wonder how it’s going to–’
‘I’ve told her, we’ll just get on with it.’ Gerald interrupted me firmly. ‘I told her a long time ago I’d always look after her if she’d let me and I meant it.’
‘That’s so good of you.’ I got up and refilled the kettle, so he wouldn’t see me cry.
‘I told her I’d still marry her tomorrow.’
I flicked the switch, swallowed and sat down again. ‘What did she say?’
‘Told me not to be so soft.’
I laughed, then saw the pain in his eyes. I leant across the table and squeezed his arm. ‘She’s very lucky to have you,’ I said.
He shook his head, seeming unable to speak. ‘I never thought it would happen to her,’ he said eventually. ‘And I don’t know how she’s going to bear it.’
An hour ticked by. A policewoman called my mobile, wanting to know what my mother was wearing and sounding faintly disapproving when I said I didn’t know.
I’d done another search of the bedroom and could only establish that she didn’t have yesterday’s clothes on but I wasn’t sure what else she’d brought with her. It was quite a big case. I said I didn’t think she had any money with her and – since I’d found it in the bathroom – she wasn’t wearing a watch. The policewoman rang off.
Gabriel called to see if we’d found her and if there was anything he could do to help. And Malcolm sent an email to say he was looking forward to sampling my cooking, adding: ‘PS hope you got your missing person back.’
Gerald shifted restlessly at my kitchen table rustling the newspaper. ‘She’s not done this one before,’ he said, for the third time. ‘I think I’ll take another drive around.’
‘Don’t you get lost too,’ I told him. ‘We don’t want to send a search party for the search party.’
I was twitchy too. I snapped the lid of my laptop shut and went into the garden, breathing in the sharp air and crouching down to peer into the murky depths of my pond.
This was going to be one of my summer projects. Now it was clogged with leaves and slimy fronds of rotting lily. Any tadpoles from the single pile of spawn I’d spotted at the end of February were keeping themselves well-hidden. I scooped some leaves out with my hands – the water was freezing – and jumped as what looked like a large woodlouse straggled wetly across my palm.
‘Ugh!’ I threw the leaves and bug onto one of the weed-choked flower beds, and then jumped up as the unmistakable sound of the bell chimed faintly from beyond the open back door.
I ran inside, wiping my grimy fingers on my jeans, and shot through the kitchen and across the sitting room.
‘Hold on, I’m here,’ I cried, tugging the solid wooden door open, my heart beginning to pound as a split-second film reel of possibilities flitted across my imagination. Gerald back already? My mother calmly returned, wondering what all the fuss was about, a solemn uniformed duo, bracing themselves to break the bad news and then make tea. They always came in pairs when there’d been a fatality. I gasped as I registered there were indeed two figures on my doorstep.
‘OH!’
One was my daughter with a wheelie case, looking less than pleased at the delay in being admitted and the sight of my shocked face.
The other was shorter and squatter. Good God!
‘Hello, Tess, I hope this is okay,’ he said uncertainly, looking from me to Tilly.
‘Of course, it is.’ Tilly stepped into the house and fixed me with a defiantly bright smile.
‘You don’t mind Daddy coming to stay, do you?’
Chapter 21
‘What the hell are you doing?’ I hissed at Tilly in the kitchen, as she got cups from the cupboard and started putting biscuits on a plate.
‘I thought it would be nice for him to see Granny,’ my daughter said, not looking at me, ‘and I wanted to see her too.’
I glared at her. The last bit I believed – Tilly had always loved her grandmother. But Rob and his mother-in-law had regarded each other with tolerance at best – my mother viewing Rob as rather stolid and dull, and he finding her exhausting. I didn’t know what my daughter was playing at but my ex-husband, looking a bit rounder and redder but every bit as annoying, was about as welcome as head lice.
‘Well, she’s not here,’ I snarled. ‘I woke up this morning and she’d disappeared!’
Tilly turned her head now and frowned. ‘What?’
I let Gerald tell her. He’d returned to report no sightings, with the suggestion that we phoned Mo in case my mother had been in touch with her.
When Mo had repeated everything she’d said last time, I left Tilly listening wide-eyed to Gerald’s account of my mother forgetting the word for acrylics after the art appreciation cruise, and Rob sitting on the sofa reading my Guardian with a pained expression, went upstairs, shut myself in my bathroom and breathed deeply.
I wanted Rob out and my mother back. It was hard to analyse my mass of conflicting feelings – an unreasonable rage at her for wandering off, a huge dollop of guilt for sleeping through it, fear at where she might be now and an overwhelming sadness and pity – but they were whipped up together with outraged disbelief that my daughter would pitch up with her bloody father in tow, today of all days. For fuck’s sake! I felt nauseous from too much caffeine and eating only biscuits. Where the bloody hell was she?
I must have been flushing the loo when the doorbell rang the next time. I heard the voices from the landing, Tilly saying: ‘Oh, Granny, you’re not even dressed’ and ran downstairs to find my mother standing in the middle of the sitting room with her coat and what looked like a man’s jumper over her nightie.
She looked up and straight into my eyes. ‘Oh, Tess,’ she said, upset. ‘Don’t be cross with me.’
It was only as I hugged her that I saw who else was in the room, just inside the door, casually elegant in a green waxed jacket and boots, an embroidered purple scarf thrown loosely around her neck, looking very country woman about town.
‘She’s fine,’ Ingrid said calmly. ‘No harm done.’
‘I am so grateful,’ I told her, when my mother had gone to have a bath, and I was making yet more coffee and rather missing the subversive influence of Jinni, who would surely have pointed me in the direction of a large brandy instead. ‘And Mum is too. As well as very embarrassed.’
It had taken some time to piece the story together, but it appeared my mother had woken early, convinced she had to get a plane urgently and, still in a dreamlike state, had gone into the town and got on a bus and travelled some considerable distance through the countryside and into another town before she realised she didn’t know where she was.
So she’d got off the bus and gone to a café and bought a cup of tea – she’d ‘packed’ by putting bus pass, comb, lipstick and four pound coins into her pocket – and then got on another bus and off that and into another coffee shop where she’d sat reading their paper for a very long time, wondering what to do until the nice owner had asked her if she was okay.
My mother had not wanted to say she was lost and couldn’t recall my phone number, so had simply asked where the bus stop to Northstone was, and another customer had shown her where to
go and instructed the driver to tell her when she was there. ‘I think they thought I was mad but harmless,’ she said.
She’d eventually got back to the town, by which time she was hungry, so she went in a third tea place. When she undid her coat to see if there was any more money in the inside pocket they noticed she only had a nightie on. Someone asked her where she lived and she told them she was staying with me, who none of them had ever heard of, and couldn’t remember the address.
They gave her a coffee on the house and were about to call the police, but when Ingrid – who had heard in the delicatessen I had a mother who’d scarpered – met her friend Marion in the street and got wind of a stray old lady tucking into a free teacake in her nightwear, she got there just in time to say she knew where I lived and would take care of it.
‘Just lucky I happened along at the right time,’ Ingrid said now, taking the cup from me and adding a tiny dash of milk, ‘and had the car with me for a change.’
‘It was very kind,’ I said again. ‘I’ll thank the people in the coffee shop. Where did the jumper come from?’
‘It’s an old one I had in the boot,’ said Ingrid. ‘It belonged to David, I think.’ I was silent for a moment, reminded of the back of his head going away from me. But Ingrid went on. ‘She must have walked a long way, and got quite cold. But she strikes me as quite tough!’
I smiled. ‘She is.’
‘What precisely is her condition?’
I explained what I knew, and she nodded. ‘You need to find out exactly,’ she said, ‘and then look after yourself. It’s exhausting dealing with anything that affects mental health.’ Her voice dropped. ‘And it can be frightening too.’
I gazed at her and she looked steadily back.
‘Do you?’ I began awkwardly. ‘Do you have someone in your family?’
‘David’s father was quite unstable. It wasn’t easy when David was growing up. It’s what’s made him so successful now, though,’ she went on. ‘He became very driven. Work always comes first with David.’
‘Oh!’ I looked into my coffee cup and nodded at hers. ‘Do you want a brandy in there?’ I asked her.
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