by Susan Lewis
Clasping her hands round Kian’s face, Daisy said, “I told them it was for Ruby the ghost and now everyone wants to come and see her.”
His eyes started to dance. “And you said they could?” he prompted.
She nodded eagerly.
“They understand that she’s invisible?” he asked carefully.
“Yes, I told them that, but they still want to come.”
“And how many are there in your playgroup?”
Daisy started counting on her fingers, giving up around five. “About a hundred,” she declared.
As everyone laughed, Marsha said, “Provided it’s all right with Mummy and Daddy, Mrs. Janet is going to organize a little trip to the pub so everyone can hear about Ruby, and then, if the weather’s good, she’ll organize some games on the beach.”
Daisy’s eyes were shining with excitement at the mere prospect. “We have to invite everyone,” she hurriedly told her father, “because it wouldn’t be fair to leave anyone out, would it?”
“Absolutely not,” he agreed. “And if you speak nicely to Misty, I’m sure she’ll get the kitchen to rustle up a little feast for you and your hundred-odd friends.”
Daisy punched her hands in the air. “Yes,” she cheered, straightening her legs to slide to the floor, but just as she was about to hare off to the kitchen she spotted Amelia Quentin standing to one side, watching her.
Unusually for Daisy, she didn’t immediately introduce herself, but simply watched the older girl, seeming unsure what to say, while Jules wondered why so many well-off people dressed their children like paupers. Amelia was wearing dark socks, a long plain dress, scuffed shoes, and an ill-fitting cardigan.
“Not all ghosts are invisible,” Amelia informed Daisy.
Daisy glanced at her mother. “Ours is,” she said softly.
Amelia shrugged. “So how’s she going to wear the shoe?”
Apparently lost for an answer, Daisy said, “Her name’s Ruby and she’s lived here for more than a hundred years.”
“That shoe’s stupid,” Amelia snorted. “No one can wear that.”
“Amelia, that’s not kind,” Jules chided as Daisy’s eyes rounded with surprise.
Amelia apparently didn’t care whether it was kind or not.
“Amelia, come away,” her father called out.
“She’s OK,” Kian told him. “We’re just getting to know one another, aren’t we, Amelia?”
Amelia’s intense eyes went to his, narrowing with what appeared to be something like annoyance, or maybe suspicion.
“I’m Kian, Daisy’s dad,” he said with a smile, holding out a hand to shake.
Taking the hand, Amelia said, “Do you own this pub?”
Apparently surprised by the question, Kian glanced at Jules. “As a matter of fact, I do,” he replied.
“So you live here?” Amelia said to Daisy.
Daisy nodded. She was still, Jules noted, being unusually reticent for her. It was as though she was sensing something about the girl beyond her understanding. It was beyond Jules’s too.
Amelia was regarding Daisy carefully, her dark, unsettling eyes giving nothing away.
She really was the most unusual child, Jules was thinking. She seemed so much older than her years, so self-assured and unnervingly intense, as though she was seeing things that no one else could.
In the end, the girl said, “The shoe’s still stupid,” and turning on her heel, she marched back to her parents.
Aileen’s eyebrows arched. “Charming,” she muttered as a baffled Daisy reached for Kian’s hand.
Looking up at her father, Daisy said, “I was going to ask her if she wanted to play with us when Stephie and Dean come, but I don’t think she does.”
Going down to her height, Kian replied, “I expect she’s going home now, but it was very nice of you to think of it.”
Daisy looked over to where Amelia was standing beside her father, watching the girl who lived at the pub. “She’s funny,” Daisy whispered in Kian’s ear.
“I think she wishes she was you,” Kian whispered back, “because you’re going to be playing on the beach in a minute and having a lovely picnic that—”
Suddenly remembering what they’d been talking about before Amelia had joined them, Daisy gasped with excitement and ran to the kitchen shouting, “Misty! Misty! Please, can we have a great big feast? Daddy said it was all right.”
Hooking an arm round Jules’s shoulders, Kian glanced at his watch and pressed a kiss to her forehead as he said, “Gotta run. Seeing a man about a sailing school.”
“Seriously? Here, in the cove?” They’d been talking about it for a while, so apparently he was setting things in motion.
“You got it, here in the cove, but we’re meeting in town.”
“Could I catch a lift back with you?” Marsha quickly asked. “I’m helping out at the community center this evening. Unless you’re ready to leave,” she said to Aileen.
“You’re due at the animal shelter this evening,” Aileen reminded her, dropping into an armchair next to the hearth, “and I’ll wait here. With any luck, if I hang around long enough, someone might offer me a nice cup of tea.”
Moments after Kian and Marsha had left, Misty appeared with a tray of Tetley’s best and a scrumptious pile of scones. “Thought this might go down a treat,” she declared, setting it in front of Aileen, while watching the door close behind the departing Quentins. “I thought they were never going to leave,” she muttered under her breath.
“That dreadful child was so rude to our Daisy,” Aileen snorted indignantly. “I’d be surprised if she had any friends, carrying on like that.”
“Her mother mentioned that she was finding it difficult to make any,” Jules told them. “Personally, I think the problem in that family is the father.”
“Well, anyone can see he spoils the girl rotten,” Misty commented.
Jules didn’t disagree. “But it’s not in a normal, loving sort of way,” she said pensively. “Or not that I’m detecting, anyway. He definitely doesn’t come across as the affectionate type. I didn’t see him touch her once….In fact, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the poor girl is horribly neglected on an emotional level, and horribly lonely into the bargain.”
Aileen waved a hand. “If she is, it’s not our concern,” she declared dismissively. “We’ve got more than enough to worry about without adding them to our list. Has our Kian agreed to get behind our refuge project yet?”
“He has,” Jules confirmed. “So we can start negotiations for the old convalescent home on Hanfield Common just as soon as we like.”
“Count me in, anything I can do,” Misty told them, starting back to the kitchen.
Waiting until the door had closed behind Misty and Jules had finished pouring the tea, Aileen glanced around to make sure they were alone, then said, “I’m glad to have this opportunity for a little chat.”
Startled, since this sounded quite serious, Jules asked, “Is everything all right?”
Aileen frowned as she lifted her cup. After taking a sip of tea she said, “The honest answer is I don’t know, but I’m worried.”
Tensing as her imagination leapt into action, Jules said, “Are you unwell?”
“No, no, I’m fine, fit as a fiddle,” Aileen assured her. “No, it’s not me I’m worried about, it’s your mother.”
Jules’s heartbeat slowed.
“There’s this bloke who goes to our yoga class,” Aileen continued, staring off at nothing. “Lovely person, always polite, has a little laugh and joke with us…To tell the truth, I think he fancies Marsha, and no one could blame him for that, she’s an attractive woman. Anyway, I was talking about him yesterday, you know, teasing her a bit, the way you do, and it was the strangest thing, because she didn’t seem to know who I was on about.”
Jules frowned.
“It came to her in the end, or she said it did, and I probably wouldn’t have thought any more of it if there hadn’t been other instanc
es lately when she’s seemed a bit…well, I suppose you’d call it forgetful.”
Jules’s insides were starting to knot.
“I’m not the only one who’s noticed,” Aileen went on. “Em’s parents rang me a couple of weeks ago to say she’d run back into the house when Trish called over the fence from her garden. Of course she went round to find out what the problem was, but Marsha wouldn’t let her in.”
Dumbfounded, and feeling for the shock of Em’s mother, Jules asked, “What happened then?”
“I got in my car and drove over there. By the time I turned up they were all having a nice cup of tea on Marsha’s patio, laughing and chatting away as if there was never a cloud in the sky.”
“So did Mum explain why she’d behaved that way?”
“Not really, but that could be because no one asked her. We didn’t want to upset her, or make a big thing of it, so we just carried on as if everything in the garden was rosy, and it was by then. Trish told me on the phone later that Marsha had eventually opened the door with the chain on, and when she saw it was them she’d immediately let them in. It was like, Trish said, she was scared of something, or hadn’t recognized their voices, but then suddenly she did.” She regarded Jules carefully. “Have you noticed anything yourself?” she asked.
Jules didn’t want to admit that she had; in fact, she was on the point of denying it. But burying her head in the sand was going to help no one, least of all her mother. “She’s always been the nervy type,” she said, as though this well-known truth might explain the oddness of how her mother had seemed unwilling to answer the phone lately, or the way she repeated herself, or constantly lost things. “I know she’s forgetful at times, but we’re all guilty of that.”
“Tell me about it,” Aileen sighed, rolling her eyes, but her tone remained serious as she said, “I just think it might be worth her having a little check-up with Dr. Moore. I mean, we’re none of us getting any younger….”
“But she’s only fifty-eight,” Jules protested, as though her mother’s age were some kind of protection against the awful possibilities her imagination was dragging up.
Aileen took another sip of tea.
Finally realizing that Aileen was asking her to take the lead on this, Jules braced herself and said firmly, “OK, if you’re saying she should see a doctor, then I agree, but how am I going to persuade her if she doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with her?”
Aileen regarded her gravely, as though she’d expected the question. “I’ve been thinking,” she replied, “that it might be a good idea for you to start by having a little chat with Dr. Moore yourself. You can tell her what’s bothering us, and ask her advice on how to proceed from there.”
Accepting that was probably the best way forward, Jules swallowed hard as she looked into Aileen’s eyes. In her heart she knew what Aileen was thinking; it was what she was thinking too. But neither of them was prepared to speak the words aloud in case fate overheard and turned them into an unthinkable reality.
—
Now, all these years later, Jules was signing herself into the Greensleeves Care Home, where her mother was a permanent resident. Since there was no one in reception she went on through to the manager’s office, where she dropped her workload on his desk and decided to wait a few minutes in case he came back.
Her mind was filling again with that first time Daisy and Amelia had met, reliving the strangeness of it, while realizing that she hadn’t remembered it all, because she was recalling now how at some point Daisy’s eyes had sparkled as she’d said, “Is your name really Amelia? Like naughty Amelia Jane?” and Amelia had smiled in a sly sort of way as she’d replied, “Yes, exactly like that.”
Something else that was coming back to her was the memory of Stephie and Dean hurtling into the bar in their usual overexcited way and coming to a dead stop when they’d spotted Amelia. It was as though they too had realized, in the instinctive way children have, that there was something different about this girl.
She couldn’t remember how Amelia had reacted to their arrival, or if they’d spoken to one another, but she was sure now that when Daisy had gone racing off to the kitchen calling out to Misty, Stephie and Dean had followed.
Did any of it matter now?
She guessed not, and yet the memories were there, staging themselves sketchily, unreliably in her mind—feeling like an early warning that she’d failed to see. Even if she had seen it, she’d have had no idea what the warning was about.
Deciding to leave the manager a note to let him know she’d arrived, she went upstairs to the dementia wing, using the security code to release the door. The communal lounge was sunny and crowded with wing-back chairs, though not so many people. The TV was showing an old Gregory Peck film, and half a dozen or so gray- and white-haired women along with Norman, one of only four men in the unit, were being served afternoon tea.
“Jules!” Chona, the senior nurse, declared cheerily as she came out of her office. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Jules assured her, trying not to wince as one of the old ladies let out a piercing scream.
“Your mother was asleep when I went in just now,” Chona was telling her. “There were a few episodes of wakefulness during the early hours, which will account for her tiredness today.”
“Is she eating?”
“She managed most of her lunch, and if you want us to, we’ll try waking her up for tea.” Chona’s watchful eyes came inquisitively to hers. “How about you, Jules?” she asked softly. “Are you managing to eat and sleep?”
Jules forced a smile. Obviously news of Amelia Quentin’s release was spreading. “I’m fine,” she assured the nurse. As well-meaning as Chona was, and as much as she liked her, the last thing Jules wanted right now was to get into a discussion about her own state of mind. It was why she hadn’t returned her therapist’s calls this past week, and probably wouldn’t in the foreseeable future. “I should go and see if Mum’s awake,” she said.
Her mother’s room was at the end of a wide, pale green corridor with stuffed animals perched on the handrails that lined the walls, and all sorts of memorabilia pinned to various boards. The photograph on her mother’s door was of a seventy-year-old Marsha looking smart and alert (though she hadn’t been) in a navy pinstriped blouse and knee-length pleated skirt.
Marsha Symonds, her name tag read, and underneath, Marsha is from Kesterly-on-Sea. She likes animals, music, bedtime stories, Strictly Come Dancing, having her hair brushed, and daisies.
Seeing the last always made Jules’s heart ache to a point that could bring tears to her eyes.
Though Marsha had been at the home for over three years now, Jules still wasn’t finding it any easier to see her here, had probably never quite accepted that the stranger who looked like her mother but wasn’t was the woman who’d brought her up single-handedly, had loved her unconditionally, and would far rather have died early than end up like this.
She found her fast asleep with her mouth half open and her tiny, claw-like hands bunched together on her meager chest. The skin on her cheeks sagged in papery thinness. The healthy gloss of her silvery hair seemed an impossible accomplishment for such a fragile skull.
Going to sit on the bed beside her, Jules gently lifted one of her hands into her own and held it to her cheek.
Marsha didn’t stir, and in truth it was such a relief not to have to try to engage with her today that Jules’s eyes burned with a painful mix of sadness and guilt. All too often when she came in her mother would cower away in fear, saying sorry over and over as if she’d committed some sort of offense, or she’d shout at someone only she could see to go away and leave her alone.
“Please, Nurse, please, please, make him stop,” she’d cry, and Jules could only look on helplessly, having no way to comfort her or to convince her that what she was seeing wasn’t real.
Deciding to sit with her for a while, Jules moved to the armchair next to the bed and used the remote control to find a cl
assical-radio station on the TV, something soothingly spiritual that might help to untangle at least some of the chaos in her own mind.
As her eyes closed she almost smiled at the memory that drifted into focus. “What are you doing with that?” she’d asked her mother once when she’d found her prodding at the buttons on one of the remote controls.
“I’m voting on Strictly,” her mother had breathlessly replied. “I want her to win.”
The news had been on at the time, and the remote had actually been to operate the electric bed, but at least her mother had been able to utter sentences that made some sort of sense back then. It was rare for her to manage any now.
The diagnosis of early onset hadn’t happened overnight. The tests, appraisals, and endless consultations had seemed to go on forever before a psychiatrist had finally confirmed that Marsha had Alzheimer’s disease. Jules would never forget the look of horror that had come over her mother’s face, as though she hadn’t expected it, when she’d been living in dread of it since the tests had begun.
Yet, in spite of the tragedy of what was happening to her, over time she’d begun showing a courage and stoicism that Jules would never have believed her capable of, had she not seen it with her own eyes.
“You know my biggest fear?” she’d once confided to Jules. “It’s that I might reach a point where I won’t know you and Daisy anymore.”
Unable to bear the thought of it herself, Jules had embraced her hard. “That won’t happen,” she’d promised her, never dreaming that one day Marsha’s tormented oblivion would be a blessing.
Her memories of Daisy were intact.
—
“How’s Amelia?” Daisy asked Anton Quentin, surprising Jules that she remembered the name and the father, when more than a year had passed since she’d first met them.
“She’s very well, thank you,” Quentin had replied stiffly. After a moment he looked down at her. “Daisy, isn’t it?” he asked.
Daisy nodded. “Is she really like naughty Amelia Jane?” she whispered with a giggle.