by Polly James
“Where is she now?” I say, so croakily that Albert has to ask me to repeat the question twice, before he replies that she’s in hospital.
“The warden took her there in the minibus, once I got her back to Abandon Hope,” he adds.
I’ve no idea how Albert managed to get Pearl anywhere, given how rough the terrain is in that area. There’s no way you could drive a vehicle right down to the waterside, or not an ordinary one. Also, I can’t see an eighty-year-old man carrying out a fireman’s lift without dropping dead from the strain. I’m exhausted just from happy dancing, but Albert says the whole thing was a doddle.
“I used to be a logistics expert, don’t forget,” he says. “So it was easy, actually. I just rolled Pearl onto my coat, then dragged it by the sleeves while she laid there reclining like Lady Muck. A very bossy Lady Muck.”
A very bossy Lady Muck who was only at the lake because I’d asked her to go, so now I feel consumed with guilt, even more than I did when I hacked Dan’s No-kay Cupid account and then sat by while Eva deleted all his messages. I’ve probably brought all kinds of bad karma upon myself, so I need to start compensating for all the awful things I’ve done of late, before anything else happens to someone I love. Joel’s accident-prone at the best of times, and he’s travelling back from Dan’s in Birmingham later on today!
“I’m on my way to the hospital now,” I tell Albert.
I’m about to ring off, when he says,
“No hurry, Hannah. Take your time, and make sure you drive more carefully than you row.”
No hurry, when Pearl’s in a hospital, all by herself? I’d tell Albert exactly what I think of that inconsiderate comment if I had time, especially as it’s all too easy to imagine being old, unwell and alone myself since Dan walked out on me.
* * *
Karma’s going to add yet another thing to my list of misdemeanours now: falsely accusing Albert of being inconsiderate. I should have known he wasn’t the type, but I wasn’t thinking straight.
He’s sitting at Pearl’s bedside, keeping her company, when the nurse shows me into her cubicle in A&E. Even under the harsh lighting, she looks pretty good for someone with a broken ankle, which is probably because she hasn’t got a broken ankle. An X-ray’s just confirmed it’s intact, but badly sprained.
“You didn’t think I’d leave her alone, did you?” asks Albert, when I express astonishment at finding him there. “She’d have done a runner if I had, seeing as she didn’t want to come here in the first place. Said old people never get out of hospital alive, but she looks all right to me.”
He winks at Pearl and she blows him a kiss, which may be due to the fact that she banged her head on a log when she fell. One of the nurses explains that’s the reason she’ll have to stay in overnight.
“Just for observation,” she adds. “But we will need to sort out who’s going to take care of her after that. She can’t go home if there’s no one there to look after her, because she won’t be fully mobile for quite some time.”
“But there is someone there,” I say. “Pearl lives in a very fancy retirement home, which has a warden and on-site nursing staff. Otherwise, she’d be welcome to come home with me, of course.”
Never say things that you don’t mean. Karma really doesn’t like it, though it would help if it would chop your tongue off before you finish saying profoundly stupid sentences like the one above.
“I’ll stay with you, in that case, Hannah,” says Pearl, “because I can’t stand that bloody warden. She talks about old people as if they’re not there.”
She gives the nurse a baleful look, which is all the proof I need that she’s perfectly compos mentis, suspected head injury or not. I wish I could say the same for me.
* * *
It’s almost 10pm by the time I get home from the hospital and recall Eva’s text about Will. I read it again, but I’m so knackered I can’t be bothered to start Googling emojis, or sexting, or anything else I’ve never heard of. I can’t see the point, anyway, as I’m never going to have the privacy to date someone new once Pearl is here as well as Joel. Talking of Pearl, I suppose I’d better go and check I’ve got clean sheets for the spare bed for when I bring her home tomorrow. I’ll just rest my eyes for a moment or two before I do.
* * *
I have no idea how long I sleep for, but it’s long enough to dream I’m in the middle of a desert, all alone, with no idea in which direction civilisation lies. There’s a shimmering haze along the horizon, and when it finally starts to thin, I see Dan standing a short distance away, surrounded by scantily-clad women in impossible yoga poses. They’ve all got sucked-in cheekbones and pouty lips, too, just like the real Pamela Anderson. He seems unaware of me, but he’s smiling at them, while holding a laptop. Each time he taps one of the keys, another super-flexible beauty pops up and adds herself to the growing crowd of his admirers, while I become more and more consumed with jealousy.
When I wake up, sweaty and shaking, I decide enough is enough, which means deleting my No-kay Cupid account, as soon as possible. If I don’t, I’m always going to be tempted to check out Dan’s profile, and to stare at those weird gold flecks around the deep brown of his eyes, while imagining him looking at someone new the way he used to look at me. I know this for sure, because it’s the first thing I’ve done every morning since I discovered his picture on the site.
It’s also the first thing I do when I log on to No-kay Cupid to delete my account tonight – and that’s an even bigger mistake.
Chapter 21
I do try to exert self-discipline, I honestly do. I only look at Dan’s profile for a second before I force myself to click back onto mine, in order to work out how to go about deleting it. That’s when Dan’s photo pops up in one of those instant-message boxes, and almost gives me a heart attack. For one long and highly-traumatic moment, I think it’s a Skype box and that Dan can actually see me, so I duck so fast I almost knock myself out on the wooden arm of the couch. I lie flat-out, rubbing my head for a minute or so, before I realise my mistake.
Finally, I sit back up, and peer at the instant message Dan’s just sent.
Nice hat. I used to have one just like that.
Why, why, why am I such an idiot? This is how I end up responding to Dan’s comment about the hat:
It probably suited you better than it does me.
That’s it. That’s all I say before I hit enter.
I don’t know what is wrong with me. It took two hours to decide upon the content of that literary masterpiece, and yet, for some totally unknown reason – like my being certifiable – it still manages to omit the fact that my real name isn’t Pammy, or that Dan and I are married to each other. I just make it sound as if we’re both talking about the self-same hat, which of course we are. The men in white coats can’t be far away.
* * *
My stupid Pammy comment can’t have been as stupid as I thought it was, because Dan replied to me straight away, or rather, Dannyboythesaxman replied to Pammy.
What are you hiding under that hat? I’m intrigued.
Eva says that’s a polite way of asking whether I’m hideously disfigured, or over ninety, when I text her at midnight to tell her what I’ve been up to. She calls me back, because she’s lost her glasses and can’t read a word of what I’ve written.
“How’s Pearl?” she says, after I’ve finished telling her that I have somehow ended up talking online to my ex-husband, but as someone other than myself.
“Coming to stay with me when she’s released from hospital,” I say.
I try to sound as if I’m looking forward to it, but Eva isn’t fooled.
“Having Pearl and Joel living with you’s hardly going to make dating a lot of fun, is it?” she says, slurping at something that must be very alcoholic, judging by the hiccups it then brings on. “Being chaperoned by them, I mean. You’re probably better off having a virtual affair, even if it is with your own husband, you absolute muppet. I can’t believe you’ve g
ot yourself into such a mess.”
It’s all very well for Eva to laugh, but some of us just seem to attract chaos and calamity. We can’t all plan our lives with logistical expertise, no matter how much Pearl keeps praising Albert’s. She wouldn’t stop going on about him, once he left the ward to go and fetch her some toiletries and a nightgown. She’s getting quite boring on the subject now, especially for someone who couldn’t stand the man until he rescued her.
Anyway, I digress, which also demonstrates a lack of planning ability, I suppose. Back to Eva, agony aunt extraordinaire – by which I mean someone who’s nosy, but no help at all.
“I can’t keep on talking to Dan online, though, can I?” I say. “There’s nothing to be gained from it, and he’d go mad if he found out it was me.”
“I reckon you can get away with it for a bit longer,” Eva says, once she’s thought about it for a while. “That’s if you want to carry on, of course, though for God’s sake don’t ask Dan to tell you what went wrong with his marriage, if you do. Eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves.”
Eva’s always so certain about everything, isn’t she? And her advice always ends up being wrong. I take it when I compose my first reply to Danny, which says:
What am I hiding under my hat? That’s for me to know, and you to find out ;-)
Then I recall that Eva’s hardly an expert in the marriage stakes, so I do the opposite of what she told me to do when I draft my second reply.
What’s your situation, by the way? I know you say it’s complicated in your profile description – but that could mean absolutely anything.
I’m not sure which of the two messages is worse when I read them back to myself: the first one with its agonising attempt at flirting and that terrible, winky-faced emoticon; or the second, with its shameless nosiness. Whichever it is, I bet I’ll never hear from Dannyboy again.
Chapter 22
I don’t get to bed until gone 2am when I finally stop talking to Eva on the phone, but then I can’t sleep for fretting about what Dan’s going to say when he finds out that I am Pammy. I toss and turn for hours and eventually give up at about 5:30am and come downstairs, just in time to crash into Joel, who’s blundering about in the dark hallway while trying to locate the light switch. I assume he’s struggling with that simple task because he seems so drunk, and it soon becomes clear that he’s unlikely to make it safely upstairs by himself. He’s too big for me to help him, in case he overbalances and takes us both down, so I lead him to the sofa in the living room and tuck him up under a blanket there instead.
“Thanks, Mum,” he says, slurring his words. “Come and talk to me – let’s bond.”
Why is it that the only time adult sons ever want to talk to you is in the middle of the night when they’re roaring drunk? Joel’s been so uncommunicative recently, though, that I don’t like to turn down any opportunity to find out what’s going on with him, however crap his timing is.
“Hang on a sec,” I say, then I head to the kitchen and return carrying a glass of water, two paracetamol and a water-soluble Vitamin C tablet, which I drop into the glass and swirl until it ceases fizzing.
Joel’s eyes are now closed, but he fumbles the paracetamol capsules into his mouth after denying that he needs them. Then he slurps the liquid down and passes the glass back to me. He doesn’t even open his eyes to work out where I’m standing, or check that I’ve taken hold of the glass properly before letting go of it himself. Imagine feeling you can rely on someone else to that degree! It makes me feel a lot less grumpy about Pearl needing to come and stay with me – as well as bringing back that feeling of dread that I’ll end up facing illness alone when I’m as old as her.
“Why are you drinking so much at the moment, Joel?” I say, not really expecting an honest answer. “Are you okay?”
One of Joel’s eyes flickers open, then closes again.
“Yeah, I know I’m overdoing it,” he says. “I’m just a bit fed up, I guess, and there seems to be something on every night recently, so I suppose I’m bound to be drinking more.”
I can see the logic in that to a certain extent, but Joel never used to go out every single night when he was dating Izzy, or not straight from work and continuing through until the early hours, anyway. Even if he did have something planned for the evening, he’d almost always have dinner with me and Dan before he went out. Now he’s hardly ever at home.
“Well,” he says, when I mention it, “it’s not as if it’s a bundle of laughs being here these days, is it, Mum? It doesn’t feel like home at all with Dad not here, and you looking like a rabbit in the headlights most of the time. It’s even weirder when I go to Dad’s, especially now he’s in a different city. Nothing feels like it used to and it gets me down, so it’s better if I’m not around so much. Makes it easier to ignore how much things have changed.”
I’m lost for words, and I assume Joel is, too, until his hand reaches out for mine.
“I’ll always love you and Dad, Mum,” he says. “No matter what happens. This is just a bit tougher than I thought it would be, but I suppose we’ll all get over it. Eventually. It would help if you two were talking to each other, though.”
I don’t trust myself to reply, because I can’t tell him that Dan and I are talking to each other, but Dan doesn’t know we are. I squeeze Joel’s hand instead – so hard, it makes him yelp.
* * *
Joel can’t recall anything he said last night, when he finally wakes up, but the Vitamin C and paracetamol combo seems to have done the trick. His hangover isn’t too bad at all, so he offers to come with me when I go to the hospital to pick up Pearl.
When we get there, I’m expecting to see her lying in bed, still looking a bit frail and out of her depth, like she did when I left her yesterday, but there’s been a transformation overnight. She’s a hundred per cent back to her old self now: up, dressed, and ordering the nurses about.
“Don’t you go forgetting about that old lady in the corner bed again,” she says to one of them. “And don’t go thinking no one will notice what happens to her, once I’ve gone. I’m going to put in a complaint and make sure they don’t.”
The nurse doesn’t reply, though I’m pretty sure she must have heard. She merely sighs as she watches Joel test out the wheelchair intended for Pearl by doing wheelies around the ward. Pearl refuses to swap with him until I insist, and as soon as we exit the lift down from the ward and wheel her into the lobby, she demands to get out of the chair again. Joel and I hover on either side of her as she makes her way slowly towards the main exit on the elbow crutches that she’s been loaned. She’s rubbish at using them so far, apart from as an imperious pointing device, but not half as rubbish as I turn out to be when she sits down briefly and I give them a try.
I set off along a corridor and almost take a passing phlebotomist out, before a security guard orders me to give the crutches back to Pearl. Then he supervises us closely until we’re almost off the premises, while drawing my attention to a poster proclaiming A&E a “zero-tolerance zone”.
“That includes zero tolerance of anti-social behaviour, Miss,” he adds, which comes as a bit of a shock.
It’s been twenty-seven years since anyone called me “Miss”, and I can’t say I’m too keen on it.
“Ms,” I say, at which the guard gives a patronising nod, as if that’s exactly what he’d expect someone like me to say.
“Did you see that?” I say to Pearl, but she’s not listening.
She’s busy telling Joel that we’re to take her home to Abandon Hope, because she isn’t coming to stay with us after all.
“I can manage perfectly well by myself,” she says, “and it’ll be much less boring than staying with you two when you’re both out at work all day.”
“You must be mad,” I say, butting in. “You can’t be by yourself, not while you’re on crutches.”
I hand those back to Pearl, who immediately stands up and marches off, as if to prove she can.
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br /> We argue about it all the way to the car, but it’s only when Pearl’s settled in the front seat and I’ve started the engine that she finally tells me what’s going on.
“I won’t be on my own,” she says. “Albert came by first thing this morning to say he’s arranged for the nursing staff at Abandon Hope to help me get up and go to bed, and he’s going to keep me company for the rest of each day until I’m mobile again.”
I’m so stunned, I don’t say anything. I just drive, while Pearl tells us the nurses ignored the cries of a distressed woman with dementia for most of the night. Pearl ended up getting up and hopping across to the old lady’s bedside herself, remaining there until it got light.
“I’d be frightened to go back into hospital myself, after witnessing that,” she says. “If I didn’t have you and Joel to rely on, that is – oh, and Albert, of course.”
I wish I could say, “and Dan, of course”, when listing the people I could count on to look out for me.
* * *
When Joel and I get back from settling Pearl in at Abandon Hope, he throws himself onto the sofa for a “post-hangover nap”, so I open my laptop and log on to No-kay Cupid and nearly give myself yet another heart attack. Danny’s face pops up in a chat box straight away, so now I’m having to talk to him while my laptop’s half-closed in case Joel wakes up and spots his dad’s photo on the screen.
Danny doesn’t bother with my first message, the flirty one. He just answers the nosy second one instead.
I’m recently separated.
It feels horrible, reading that, but at least he’s being honest, so I reply in kind.
So am I. How are you finding it?
Silence. Total bloody silence. Danny takes so long to respond that I’m about to give up waiting and go and make something to eat instead, when he finally begins to type again.
Difficult.
There’s a short pause, and then the ping of another message.