‘Morning,’ I said, pulling out a chair across the table from him.
‘Morning.’ He pushed one of the cups towards me.
‘For me?’
He nodded and I raised my eyebrows. Hospitality. ‘Thanks.’
‘Thought you might need it,’ he said. ‘Early start and all that.’
I held the cup in both hands, enjoying its warmth. ‘Thanks,’ I said again. ‘So what’s the plan?’
‘Well, I’ve brought a couple of brochures to give you an idea of what’s out there.’
I steepled my hands together and pressed them against my lips. ‘Okay. How many are we viewing today?’
‘Just the one.’
‘Specifically?’ I reached for the brochures but John snatched them out from under my hand.
‘All in good time.’ He picked up one. ‘First the worst. We’re not viewing this one but I wanted to show it to you so you have something to compare before we head out. This is what we were looking at for Valya until she deteriorated so badly she needed a specialist place.’
The picture on the front of the brochure was of a house not dissimilar in size to the old Barnes house. It was taken at dusk and the lights were blazing.
‘It’s what they call a “private care residence”,’ said John.
‘It already sounds too much. She doesn’t need private care. She doesn’t need any care.’
‘I just wanted to show you the sort of thing she might end up in if we don’t get her somewhere good now; if we’re forced to make a snap decision in crisis mode.’
I looked at the table. As usual, John was envisaging the worst possible outcome; fire-fighting a situation that might never arise. But I knew from a lifetime of arguing with my brother that there was no point in even trying when he had this head on. John opened the brochure and pointed to a picture of a stuffy living room. True, it was spacious and nicely decorated, but I couldn’t see Mum in it. Not even when she really was old and doddery.
‘Look at the communal areas,’ said John. ‘It’s like a private home.’
‘A private home full of dribbling strangers.’
‘Please can you try to be constructive about this?’
‘She’s nowhere near anything like this.’ I waved my hand at the brochure. ‘I’m sure this home has its merits but Mum’s not at this stage. She’s not ill and she’s not infirm. She doesn’t need her meals cooked or her shopping done. There’s absolutely no point in looking at anything like this. You’re jumping the gun. At most – at the very most – all she needs is an emergency number she can call if she falls, or has some sort of problem.’ I shoved the brochure, shooting it across the table towards John. ‘There’s no way we can sanely ask her to consider anything like this. She’s in great shape. Seventy is the new fifty!’ I stopped abruptly, my rant suddenly out of steam.
‘Keep your hair on.’ John looked taken aback. ‘I said we weren’t seeing it.’
I lowered my voice. ‘Look. If we even bring up the idea, she’ll get paranoid we’re trying to push her into some sort of a home and she’ll stop calling us when she needs help. Then who picks up the pieces? What we need to do is help her keep her independence. It must be awful to think that the kids you spent your life bringing up just want to shove you into a home.’
I sat back, surprised at myself. I hadn’t realised I felt so strongly about this. I should have put my foot down before now. I’d thought our arrangement of monthly visits was working well, but John, I saw now, lived in fear of the middle-of-the-night call which he – being closer – would have to field. I realised now that these brochures – this visit today – weren’t so much about Mum and her needs, but about John wanting to minimise his responsibilities before they started mounting.
The question was: how did I feel? Was there even a small part of me that would feel more at ease if Mum was safely ensconced in a place like this? Goodness knows, life was stressful enough as it was. Or would putting Mum in a home eat away at my conscience, negating any benefit I’d get from knowing she was well taken care of? I imagined Mark and I in the future, taking a baby into a retirement home to see his or her grandmother, and shuddered. I’d always imagined our child to have a much more active grandmother, not a shell of a person sitting in a worn velour chair. But what was the alternative? I tried to slow my breathing; regain some objectivity.
‘Let’s be honest,’ John said quietly, ‘it’s not like she’s had much of a life to miss. We’d just be making her world slightly smaller, and so much safer.’
‘What do you mean “she hasn’t had much of a life”? She’s had a great life!’
‘Lex. Come on! She never went to university, or had any idea of a career. She never had any outside interests. She was always at home doing housework and running about after Pa. She had no life to call her own.’
‘How can you say that?’
‘I’m not saying she was unhappy – just that that was enough for her.’
‘You make her sound like such a doormat.’
‘She was a doormat!’
I looked at John in disbelief. ‘You really think that?’
He shrugged. ‘Yes. She was a complete sap when we were growing up. Pa pushed her around and she never stood up to him.’ His voice went quiet. ‘I hated her for that.’
A picture of John kneeling on the floor playing fiercely with his Meccano, his face pinched and white, came to mind, and I realised that, despite living in the same house with the same parents – despite being twins – our experiences of childhood were completely different. While I’d watched everything – observing in silence – he’d looked away.
I shook my head. ‘You are so wrong. She chose not to stand up to Pa in order to keep the peace. He was sometimes a complete git to her and she sucked it up for a quiet life. It was an active choice that she made. I could see her thinking about it sometimes. Like, she would be standing there, shaking with anger, and calculating what to do. I think she was actually really clever. She let him believe he pulled the strings but, really, she was managing him. She’s a brilliant psychologist.’
John shrugged. ‘Whatever.’
‘Do you remember how Pa never shouted when he was really angry? He’d go quiet – you know, really quiet, with that super-controlled voice? I was more scared of that than anything else. Remember? And Mum’d stand really still and fiddle with her necklace. I always remember her doing that and, if you looked, you could see her weighing up everything and we’d all be standing there holding our breath, waiting to see what was going to happen, and then she’d say very carefully, “Your father’s right,” or “You’re absolutely right, Ralph, forgive me,” and everything would be okay. Don’t you remember?’
‘A bit, I guess. I do remember her saying “Your father’s right.” It’s all she ever said. That and “Listen to your father.”’
‘You know it was her who made Pa take you out on those weekend trips?’
‘Uh-uh.’ John shook his head. ‘We did those because Pa wanted to.’ I saw hurt flash in John’s eyes and I looked down at the table.
‘Sorry.’ I waited a minute before speaking again. ‘She was just trying to give us a good childhood. She asked me recently if she was a good mum. I think it was really important to her to give us a stable home. After losing her own mum so young.’
‘I guess so.’
‘And then her dad died pretty young, too. But she turned it around: she went to India soon after that – met Pa there.’ I fell silent, trying to picture what it must have been like for Mum to find herself alone, then to pick herself up and travel, alone, to India. ‘I think it affected her more than we can know.’
‘Well – of course.’
‘I always felt she kept us a bit at arm’s length while we were growing up. Did you? Actually, don’t answer that: you were never that close to her. But I always wonder if it was because she lost her own parents – like she wanted us to be almost emotionally independent in case anything happened to her.’
John shook his head. ‘Talk about over-thinking.’
‘No, really. I think about this a lot. So, on the one hand, you’ve got her holding us at arm’s length so we’re not so terribly devastated if anything happens to her and, on the other hand, we’ve got her trying so hard to give us this stable home and perfect childhood but not quite getting it right.’ I shook my own head. ‘And, all the time, she was dealing with Pa and his moods. It can’t have been easy.’
John frowned, the brochure still in his hands. ‘I can’t believe you think about this stuff. Haven’t you got anything better to do? Like – um?’ He tapped the brochure with his index finger.
‘Do you realise that we’re all she’s got?’ I said. ‘Her parents are gone; her husband’s gone. She’s got no one.’
John held up the brochure. His face was closed. Subject over. ‘God, Lexi. Please. Let’s not get off the topic. So we both agree this one is too much. For now.’
‘Yes,’ I sighed. ‘But is the one we’re seeing any better? Wouldn’t it be better to look for some sort of halfway house that’ll let her keep her independence? Or can we just get a carer to look in on her every day in her current house? I feel we owe her that.’
John shook his head. ‘That’s money down the drain. Where’s your return on that? At least if she buys a property, we can sell it after … you know. Get some money back. Maybe even make a profit.’
‘It always comes back to money with you, doesn’t it?’
‘Makes the world go round.’
‘Yes, but … while she’s alive, shouldn’t she be able to use her own money?’
‘It’s all we have as our inheritance.’
I placed my hands palm down on the table and looked John in the eye. ‘Can you please not talk our inheritance? It’s really morbid.’
I felt sorry for him; as far as inheritances went, he hadn’t done well to date. Anastasia had persuaded him to spend a fair amount converting their downstairs room into a bedroom for Valya on the understanding that they’d one day recoup it from Valya’s life insurance. But the life insurance hadn’t been worth a lot and what there had been had gone entirely to Anastasia’s brother. The news, after Valya’s death, had come as a bitter blow. But still, I found his constant harping on about Mum’s money disturbing.
‘I don’t know what Mum’s planning to do with her money,’ I said. ‘It’s not something I lie awake thinking about.’ I heard myself say the words, but it was a lie. There was a part of me that, in the wee hours, hoped that Mum would at least leave us something. How could she not? With my drop in salary, Mark’s unemployment had eaten into what little savings we had and I didn’t even want to think about the possibility that we might have to go the private IVF route if I didn’t get pregnant soon. I was too old for NHS treatment. ‘You can’t have it both ways,’ I said. ‘Either we look after her ourselves and save her money, or we have to accept that it’s going to cost money for her to be looked after.’
John pushed a brochure towards me. ‘Anyway. That’s all by the by. This is the one we’re seeing today. I think you’ll like it.’
The picture on the cover was of an attractive residential development: Harbourside. I liked the look of it at once. Slowly, I leafed through the pages, taking in the fully serviced houses and apartments that could be bought; the gardens, the restaurants, the swimming pool, the residents’ diary of activities, the pictures of young-looking, active people not sitting about in chairs staring at television screens, but doing stuff. People who looked like Mum, carrying golf clubs, having dancing lessons, eating on the terraces. It helped that the property had been shot on a sunny day – it looked so nice I wanted to live there myself.
I looked up at John and saw he was smiling. ‘See? Nice, isn’t it? It’s for the over fifty-fives. She can’t possibly deny that she’s that. She could move in at once.’
‘Fine,’ I said, closing the brochure. ‘This one and this one only.’ Even so, a doubt crept into my mind. Mum was so fiercely independent. She always had been. Could I really see her taking dinner in the development’s restaurant, joining in the boules on the lawn?
‘There’s absolutely no harm in looking at it. So we know what’s out there. No one ever died of too much information.’ John gathered the brochures and stood up. ‘Right. Grab your coffee. Let’s go and look.’
December 1976
Barnes, London
Audrey’s senses are on full alert as she walks down the High Street. She’s checking not for potential muggers but for the gossipy wives and mothers of Barnes. Consequently she’s dressed in a beige raincoat and a headscarf, with not a single detail of her attire – not bag nor shoe – in any way memorable. Before she walks into the backstreet that houses the quiet coffee shop, Audrey takes one last glance at the High Street – she can’t be sure who might be passing by car but, on the pavement, there’s no one who knows her and it’s with a sense of relief that she slips out of view of the main thoroughfare.
Oh, my word, if Ralph finds out, she thinks, and she tuts out loud to herself as she walks. What are you doing: are you crazy? Audrey knows how possessive Ralph is. She’s very well aware she’s playing a dangerous game but it’s one she can’t resist. In the months since she started her art class, she and Mack have struck up a friendship of sorts. After class, she packs her things more slowly than the other students; goes to the toilet so she’ll be last to leave; does anything to ensure that she has a few moments alone with her teacher. And then, when everyone has gone, she and Mack talk, sitting on the desks, legs swinging, with the smell of paint hanging in the air. At first it’s mundane things that occupy them – her art, her technique; his background; how he came to teach – and then it’s deeper things: his failed marriage, her life in India. Mack, too, has lived abroad. He understands the longing in her soul for the heat, the colour, and the scent of foreign soil. Audrey lives for these chats; she feels herself unfurling like a flower in the spring sunshine when she’s with him. He is, it strikes her, the polar opposite of Ralph.
And, while nothing happens, her chats with Mack are laced with the frisson that there could be more. They dance around each other in a complex ballet, both aware of the possibilities that hang heavy between them, but Mack is a gentleman. He knows Audrey’s married. It was she, not he, who suggested this meeting in the coffee shop.
Approaching the café now, Audrey sees Mack through the window before she goes in, and heat rushes to her face. He’s dressed in the black polo neck sweater that she loves so much, his hair wild above it. A bell on the café door rings as she pushes through it. Mack looks up and, in that unguarded moment, she sees how pleased he is to see her. The realisation that he’s there for her if she wants him makes her breathless. Mack pushes his chair back and stands to greet her.
‘Mrs Templeton,’ he says, and he leans in to her and kisses her cheek so close to the corner of her mouth that his lips brush hers. It sends jolt of electricity through Audrey’s body and she senses that he feels it too. Audrey drags out the moment for as long as she can, leaning slightly in to him and inhaling the clean scent of his skin, imagining herself waking up next to this skin, these lips. After a rudely long moment they pull apart.
‘Mr MacDonald,’ she says. ‘What a lovely surprise.’
June 1976
Barnes, London
Audrey sits at her dressing table and examines her face in the mirror. There are a few light wrinkles and the ghost of a shadow under her eyes but, at thirty-three, she’s not looking older than any of her peers. Her skin is fair, almost translucent, and, while her lips are starting to lose the plumpness they had when she was in her twenties, their cupid’s bow is still well defined. A splatter of freckles runs across her nose and cheekbones, as if she’d run past a pebble-dashing machine, and her eyes, which have in the past tended to show something of the sadness she’s carried with her since the death of her parents, seem alive today. She runs a hand through her hair, examining the roots for greys, and is pleased to find not a single on
e diluting the auburn.
Quickly, she dusts some loose powder over her cheeks, adds mascara, a smudge of eyeliner and a flick of blusher. She sprays perfume at her throat then, with a sigh, she stands up and walks to the full-length mirror. Feeling nauseous now the day is here, Audrey steps out of her dress, out of her slip, her bra, and her panties, and looks at her naked body in the mirror. She has good muscle tone; her legs are shapely. She turns so she can’t see the V between her legs. That’s okay, she thinks. I’ll stand like that.
Audrey examines the backs of her thighs and her bottom, checking for obvious dimples. The art class is progressing well. Three students dropped out after the first term but the remaining seven appear to have some talent and today they’re taking their first life-drawing class. In front of the mirror, Audrey turns this way and that, experimenting with poses for the hundredth time that week. Mack said she can choose how she models. She drags over a stool. Would sitting be better? She’s nervous, but not so much of the art class as of being naked near Mack. Since that first meeting in the coffee shop, they’ve continued seeing each other outside the classroom: grabbing coffees, lunches, and taking in the occasional art exhibition if Ralph’s away. Audrey loves seeing art with Mack; loves watching the way he looks at the pieces. His knowledge seduces her. Unlike Ralph, he’s a renaissance man.
But nothing’s happened; they’re not lovers – not yet – although Audrey knows the descent into adultery is inevitable. She knows that, when the time comes, her acquiescence will be as natural as the changing of the seasons and she’s looking forward to it in the same way you might anticipate the start of summer: all warmth and golden light. But, for now, she’s savouring the delicious torture of wanting but not having. She knows deep inside herself that, somehow, today will be a watershed.
The Disappearance Page 9