by Anna Wharton
Chloe closes the book. She doesn’t really need to write everything down in her notes. For now, she sits back on her pillow, holding the material from her blouse between forefinger and thumb, and admiring every individual stitch. Every stitch that Maureen made, for no one else but her.
A few hours later, Chloe is sitting on her bed reading a magazine as she hears Patrick on the landing, then in the bathroom, the sound of the shower turning on and the boiler whirring into action. Afterwards, on his way downstairs, he gives her a knock when he passes by to let her know that dinner is ready. They have these routines now, the kind you find in normal homes. Or at least Chloe likes to think so.
Chloe waits until his footsteps have faded before she gets up from the bed and smooths the creases from her new blouse. She opens the bedroom door and the landing is cloudy with steam and mist from his body spray, a sweet musky scent lingering at the top of the stairwell. She stops there to admire her reflection once more in the glass window. She smooths out the white Peter Pan collar that Maureen so painstakingly sewed. Only that’s when her eyes fall on the photograph on the windowsill and a frozen feeling crawls the length of her spine. It is the same picture she has passed by a thousand times, and yet how could she not have noticed this one thing? She picks it up. In it, Angie is standing in her back garden, long grass licking the back of her knees; she’s laughing into the camera, her hair pulled into two bunches, and she’s holding the same baby doll – Chloe now recognizes – from the spare room that very afternoon. But it’s what Angie’s wearing that takes the breath from her. Chloe looks down at the material on her own blouse – at every mustard sunflower – and then back at the picture. Exactly the same. She feels for her collar, to the starch white shape of it. She is wearing an exact replica. Even the buttons are identical.
She drops the photograph and it clatters against the windowsill.
‘Chloe, love?’ Maureen calls. ‘Everything all right? Dinner’s on the table.’
With shaking hands, Chloe stands the photograph upright again. She hears Maureen’s footsteps heading down the hall.
‘Chloe? Is everything OK?’
‘Fine,’ Chloe calls back, ‘just coming.’
Maureen’s footsteps disappear back into the kitchen.
In her room she looks down at her top. She moves in front of the mirror, and stares at her reflection. It is the same. The exact same. She takes her hands and makes two bunches from her almost black hair. She holds them at the side of her head and they hang loosely from her palms.
‘Exactly the same,’ she whispers. Under the blouse, her heart is racing.
Chloe drops her hair and it returns to her shoulders. She pulls the top over her head and throws it onto her bed, exchanging it for the same jumper she has had on all day. Then, slowly, she descends the stairs for dinner.
It’s quiet around the table. Patrick wipes bread around his plate and tells Maureen some story about his sick friend at the seed factory. Maureen asks more questions about the type of cancer he has and they count on their fingers how many friends they’ve known who’ve had the same.
Chloe eats slowly, like she always does, but this time the food on her fork gets tinier as she prepares every bite.
‘You do like it, don’t you, Chloe?’ Maureen asks.
She nods, perhaps too enthusiastically, and Maureen’s attention falls back to her own dinner.
She eats slowly, watching them. Had she imagined now that flicker of disappointment on Maureen’s face when she came down for dinner wearing her jumper rather than her new blouse? Had she even remembered she’d asked Chloe to wear it tonight? She is waiting for Maureen to ask her about it, but the truth is, Chloe hasn’t prepared an answer. Something like betrayal is beating in her blood, though she doesn’t know why.
‘And what did you do today, Chloe?’ Patrick asks. ‘Did you see any of your friends?’
Chloe looks to Maureen, who purses her lips as she chews, as if to remind her not to say anything about the spare room.
‘I . . . er, no, just a quiet day, you know, tired from work.’
‘And what is it you do again?’ he says. He’s finished his meal, his knife and fork in a neat line on his plate, but he makes no move to leave the table. In fact, he pushes his chair back towards the wall and crosses his legs, trailing his hands in his lap.
Chloe looks to Maureen again, but this time she seems more relaxed, her expression encouraging this sudden interest in her.
‘Insurance,’ Chloe says. Isn’t that what she told them when she arrived? She’s panicking now, she can feel it in every pore of her skin. Her hands are clammy. She pushes them under the table.
‘Oh aye, which firm?’
Chloe tells him, quickly remembering the name of Phil’s company.
‘Oh, I have a mate who works there,’ he says. ‘Know him from school. John Bennett? Do you know him?’
Chloe shakes her head. Beneath the table, she presses her thumbnail into her palm. She’s disappointed when she doesn’t feel pain.
‘No,’ she says, looking up to the ceiling. ‘I don’t.’
Patrick waits a moment, then gets up from the table. He puts his plate in the sink. Chloe flinches a little when the knife and fork clatter to the bottom of it. What is it about his sudden interest in her that is making her so nervous?
‘I’m surprised you haven’t heard of him,’ Patrick says, ‘’cos as far as I’m aware, he’s still the managing director.’
Maureen looks up from her plate. Patrick stands behind her chair. Chloe twists her fingers together underneath the table, pinching the skin until it hurts. The kitchen burns with silence. There’s a beat. Another.
‘Oh, that John, yes, of course I know him . . . well, I don’t know him because I’m just, you know, in admin, but yes . . .’ she nods.
Too fast?
She turns to look up to Patrick, nodding. ‘Yes, I know John, of course, by reputation.’ It’s a thin line between making it seem convincing and overacting.
Patrick picks up his newspaper and walks out of the kitchen. Chloe turns back to Maureen and, as she does, she’s sure she sees her shoulders relax.
THIRTY-TWO
Chloe sits beside Nan in the communal room at Park House. Between them are two cups of tea. Chloe’s is empty and steam has long since finished curling out of Nan’s. Chloe had reminded her several times that it was there, but it sits in the mug, the milk separating from the tea on the surface. An island breaks off and drifts away.
‘Miserable day out,’ Nan says.
She’s said this at least a dozen times.
Chloe reaches over for her hand and squeezes it. She’s all out of replies. She looks around the room, where each floral-patterned chair is filled with a grey-haired resident.
‘All old folk here,’ Nan mutters, cocking her head over at a group nearby.
A man and a woman sit on opposite sides of the room. Both of them staring outside at the trees and the park, the windows blurry with rainfall. Chloe hasn’t seen them here before.
‘Are they new here, Nan?’
‘Hmm?’
‘That man there and the lady sitting opposite him, I haven’t seen them before.’
‘Haven’t seen them where?’
‘Here, Nan.’
‘Where are we?’
‘Park House, Nan.’
‘What about it?’
‘That man and that lady?’
‘Who?’
‘Those two, there . . .’
‘What about them?’
Chloe sighs. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
She stands up and picks up both mugs to put them back in the kitchen. One of the care assistants is washing up. Chloe throws the two mugs into the bowl.
It gets dark early that afternoon, the sun never having quite managed to cut through the thickest cloud that day. Chloe gets up from her chair just before three. Hollie is back from Lanzarote and they’re meeting for coffee.
‘I’ll come again soon, Nan,’ s
he says, kissing her goodbye.
She is about to leave Park House when Miriam calls her back.
‘Chloe, did anyone give you the message from Claire Sanders?’
She tenses inside her coat.
‘No?’
‘She’s been trying to reach you, apparently she’s left lots of messages – she wondered if you’d changed your number, but it’s the same one we have here, isn’t it?’ She peers her head into the office and runs her finger down a chart on the wall. Chloe had seen it once, a wall with every next of kin’s emergency contact number. Her name fitting neatly among all the others.
‘Ends in 248?’
‘Yes, that’s it, I haven’t changed my number,’ Chloe says, pulling her phone from her pocket, ‘but there’s not a great signal where I’ve been working, so maybe that’s why her calls haven’t been getting through?’
Miriam nods. ‘How’s it all going?’
Chloe shuffles her feet on the coarse matting in front of the door. She had been almost out of there when Miriam had called her back.
‘Didn’t you say that you had to go away for work?’ Miriam says. ‘I haven’t seen you around as often.’
‘Oh that, yes, it’s going well.’
‘Good,’ Miriam says. ‘I know your grandmother is really proud of you, well . . . during her more lucid moments. How did she seem to you today?’
The automatic doors open and close as Chloe shifts on the carpet in front of them, stuck between Park House and the outside world.
‘Yes, she seems good. I mean, forgetful but . . .’
‘Yes, well, you know that inside she knows you still. They say that even though people with dementia might not recognize you or remember your name, they still remember the love they feel for you and still feel the love you have for them.’
Chloe nods. The doors close behind her.
‘Grace has been wandering again, she likes the bottom of the garden for some reason. I don’t know what attracts her to the copse but the builders are moving into that area now so we’re going to need to cordon it off somehow. Perhaps it’s the lake she wants to get to. The staff walk out with them sometimes, but it’s not the same as being able to go for a walk whenever you like, is it?’
Chloe shakes her head. She’s going to be late for Hollie.
‘You should take her sometime, she’d like that,’ Miriam says. ‘You don’t have to always be stuck in here with all these old folk.’
‘Oh yes, I will, I’ve just got to get off now.’ She points to the doors which open on cue.
‘Of course, I didn’t mean now. Anyway, it’ll be dark soon. I’ll let you go, but see you soon, OK? Remember that your grandmother remembers you in here.’ She pats her chest and Chloe feels the urge to roll her eyes because it’s such a cliché, but of course she doesn’t.
‘And don’t forget to give Claire a call. I think it’s something to do with selling the house; she needs your signature on something.’
Chloe nods and walks out of Park House towards the bus stop. She takes her phone out of her pocket as she sits down on the bus, scrolling through dozens of missed calls, the voicemails stacking up. She deletes one after another and instantly feels better to see them disappear from her inbox.
The bus weaves its way through the streets back into the city. Chloe glances from the top deck down into living room windows illuminated one by one in varying shades of indoor afternoon glow. In some, children, still fresh from school, sit cross-legged on sofas and floors in their uniforms, the blue light of the television flickering across their faces. There would have been a time when Chloe resented them this, being the other side of the glass to her. But now she has Maureen’s living room, and she knows that if someone peered into her back room – the brown swirl of the carpet, the teak sideboard, Chloe and Maureen sitting beside each other on the sofa – it would look just as natural as these.
The bus slows to let passengers on. Chloe looks down the side of the window, at the tops of heads – the odd child trailing home late in their school blazer. Her phone buzzes inside her pocket. Hollie.
Where are you? We did say four, didn’t we? xxx
Chloe taps out a reply, tells her she’s on her way. She’s concentrating, staring at her phone, so much so that she doesn’t notice the woman who sits down in the seat opposite, though intuitively she moves her legs to make way for her shopping bags. It’s only when the woman says her name that she looks up.
‘Chloe?’
If Chloe’s face looked blank for a second, she only wished she’d kept it that way. Because when she looks up, the recognition is immediately apparent. The mask slips. She feels it.
The old woman’s hand flies to her mouth.
‘I thought it was you.’
Chloe thinks fast, but it’s far too late to strip the recognition from her face. It’s much easier the other way round, to paint an expression on. Chloe knows that face opposite hers, of course she does. She would never forget the way her pink lipstick bleeds into the fine lines around her mouth, she can still remember all the gold rings adorning her fingers – the fascination she once faked in the stories behind every single one of them. The old woman’s face crinkles with confusion. Chloe almost sees her brain scrambling to make sense of the situation.
‘Chloe?’ she asks again.
And this time she has more time to answer, even to put on an accent.
‘Sorry?’
The wrinkles between the woman’s eyes fold further into her face as her brow furrows, and then she says it, just as Chloe knew she would.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, you just reminded me . . .’
But before she can finish her sentence, Chloe has rung the bell and the driver is slowing down. She runs down the stairs. Gets off the bus. She stands still at the bus stop. Her heart hammering against the inside of her coat.
It’s only when the bus pulls away and she sees it indicate left at the end of the road that her breath escapes her.
She looks around, not recognising this residential street where she has been dropped off. She has no choice but to wait for the next bus, so she takes her phone from her pocket and, with shaking hands, texts Hollie to let her know she’s going to be even later.
If truth be told, Hollie is the last person Chloe wants to see. And yet, she is the only person. As her best friend – as her only friend – Chloe knows she can see from her face something is wrong even as she approaches the table in the cafe. She is the one person who knows Chloe, really knows her, so well that she can’t fake it.
Hollie pushes her chair back and stands up as Chloe approaches.
‘What’s happened?’ Hollie asks.
It’s not that Chloe isn’t grateful for the concern written across her friend’s face, but she knows what’s coming next. What always comes next.
‘Is it Nan?’
Chloe shakes her head.
‘Well then, what? Chloe, you’re shaking.’
‘Just give me a second to sit down,’ Chloe says.
The cafe is not long from closing, and around them staff wipe down the last plastic tablecloths and stack chairs on top of empty tables. Her friend has seen her like this before, of course she has – she’s perhaps the only one – but Chloe needs to think, she needs to recompose herself. She can do this, she knows she can.
‘Shall I order you a drink?’ Hollie says, reaching for her arm across the table.
Chloe nods.
Hollie walks over to the counter and Chloe’s head falls into her hands. She looks up a moment later, gazing outside of the cafe and its steamy windows, at people bustling by. She’s looking again for that face in the crowd. She tells herself the woman has gone, that she’s on a bus heading in the exact opposite direction from where they are now. She even knows where she is heading, which street, which house, she can even remember the colour of her curtains. But she needs to be absolutely sure, she can’t relax. She’s hot. She takes her coat off, then pulls it back up over her shoulders.
Hollie retu
rns to the table with a milky tea. She can already smell the sugars her friend has put into it for her.
‘Thought you might need something sweet,’ Hollie says. ‘They say it’s good for shock.’
‘Thanks.’ Chloe picks up the cup and takes a sip. It’s too hot, scalding her tongue, but she still drinks it.
Hollie doesn’t say anything, not at first. Instead she lets her friend recompose herself. But Chloe knows it’s coming, the interrogation.
‘Who was it?’ Hollie asks quietly and quickly.
Chloe’s eyes flicker up to meet hers and quickly duck away again.
‘It was nothing,’ she says, ‘nobody.’
‘Well, it obviously was—’
‘Can you just leave it, Hollie?’
Hollie sighs.
She reaches out for Chloe’s hand; they’re still shaking and she doesn’t want her friend to realize. She flinches away.
‘You can’t go on like this, Chloe, you know that, don’t you?’
Chloe says nothing.
‘All these people . . . they’re in the past now.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Chloe says quickly but quietly.
‘Chloe, you can’t carry on living like this.’
‘Look, it’s fine. It was nothing today. It was just . . . it was just . . . someone I thought I—’
Hollie lowers her voice: ‘Was it anyone I knew?’
Chloe shakes her head quickly.
‘Chloe, I know you don’t mean to . . .’