The Last Day I Saw Her

by Lucy Lawrie

  We had to walk very slowly, in step behind the tall sixth former who was singing the first verse solo of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’. In theory, this should have given me plenty of time to scan the faces in the rows of pews. But it was dark in the cathedral, and my candle flame swooshed and leapt in front of my eyes, leaving a burning afterglow that made it impossible to see into the shadows.

  Nine Lessons and Carols, but it seemed like a hundred or more. There was no last-minute collapse by Sarah Lyon-Darcy. The phrasing I’d practised so carefully, the knife-sharp diction – thee Holleee anD thee Iveeee – was surplus to requirements. I didn’t care. I longed only for the whole thing to be over so I could look for Hattie. And even after the minister had dismissed us, we had to stay in our places for an age, singing some Bach thing until the cathedral emptied.

  I thought I saw her then, a smaller figure in a group of upper-fifths, her white face bobbing in and out of view as they filed out of the pews and mingled with the people crowding the aisle.

  The moment Miss Spylaw nodded and put down her baton, I squeezed past the others and ran out, out, out: past the enormous Christmas tree in the vestibule, down the stone steps, onto the street.

  Groups of parents were standing around chatting to one another, waiting under golf umbrellas for their daughters to appear. Some families, already reunited, were scurrying off to their cars.

  The noise of the chatter against the rain and the traffic seemed to fill my head, and my vision lurched as I turned this way and that, trying to catch sight of her. Cars zoomed past, one after another after another, swooshing on the wet road, and a taxi pulled up at the pavement, rain glittering in its headlights.

  Courage flooded through me, warm and strong and shocking. I opened the taxi door and got in, feeling in my pocket for my last five-pound note.

  *

  Regent’s Crescent, so wide and impressive in the daytime, was gloomy in the dark and wet, only dimly illuminated by the pale globes of the Georgian street lamps.

  Most of the houses had Christmas trees in their windows, with multicoloured lights, and extravagant displays of tinsel and baubles. I felt a surge of envy: Granny’s lights had been broken since 1985 when I’d twisted them too enthusiastically back into their box, and our tinsel was threadbare and, frankly, embarrassing.

  At the Marlowes’ house, the chandelier in the drawing room was lit, bright against the high white walls and corniced ceiling, but there was no tree in evidence. Why would there be, when they were leaving before Christmas?

  My heart contracted for Hattie. She loved decorating the tree. Last year she’d spent a full ten minutes gazing at a blue-green glass bauble, and the way it captured the light, until Renee had come in and told us to get on with it.

  I rang the doorbell.

  No answer. I stepped back and looked up.

  There was a quick dark flash at the drawing room window before the curtains were pulled across.

  I waited. Rang the bell again.

  Perhaps it wasn’t working. Or maybe Renee was simply in one of her moods, and didn’t want Hattie to be distracted from her packing. Either way, repeated ringing seemed unlikely to get me anywhere.

  So I resolved to sneak into their back garden. It was a simple matter, I told myself, of finding the little close at the end of the terrace, with the steps that led to the private communal gardens behind the house – more like a private forest – and climbing over the garden wall. Hattie and I had spent hours exploring the area on long summer evenings, skittering along earthy paths gnarled with tree roots, jumping softly over walls like a couple of young cats. But doing it on my own on a black December night, with just the light from the back windows of the terrace, was a rather different proposition. By the time I dropped onto the flowerbed at the top of their garden I felt like the unfortunate man in ‘Rapunzel’, stealing cabbages, about to bring down some dreadful judgement upon myself.

  I crept right up to the patio by the basement kitchen window. The light was on, pooling on the large wooden table where dinner was set for two, with a bowl of salad at each place setting and a quiche on a board in the middle. Oh joy! Hattie would be coming down soon to eat her dinner, and I’d be able to signal to her to let me in.

  I knelt there for ages, the cold of the flagstones numbing my knees, waiting for her to come. But in the end, Renee came in alone, pushed the meal to one side, and sat, head in her hands.

  I lifted my hand, poised to tap on the window. I’d explain that the doorbell wasn’t working, and she’d call Hattie down. Or better still, I could persuade her she was wrong about moving away. It was ridiculous, for so many reasons, not least me. I was practically family. They couldn’t leave me behind. I could talk to Renee, woman to woman, and make her see. I began to rehearse the words in my mind.

  But my hand stayed where it was. That inch of space between my knuckles and the glass could have been a thousand miles. The long hand on the kitchen clock inched on towards the half hour.

  Eight thirty? Granny would be livid. I was building myself up to scale the wall again and go home when Renee stood up. She unhooked a coat from the back of the door and felt in the pocket for her keys.

  21

  Janey

  Pip shrank against me in horror as I tried to move him towards the fish counter. I’d been reading yet another article about making children eat. The notion of involving reluctant eaters in the preparation of food was now old news. This article said you had to go further and get them engaged with the sourcing of seasonal, local produce. It had recommended getting up early and going to visit a fish market at dawn, and afterwards make a wall display with photographs and recipes with hand-drawn pictures. I’d compromised with a visit to the fishmongers at Bruntsfield after nursery, and a recipe cut out of the Sainsbury’s magazine. We were going to try making our own fish fingers, as I’d explained to a sceptical Pip.

  ‘Let’s just have a look.’ I bent down towards the counter, holding Pip’s hand. ‘Ooh look at that big one.’ A monstrosity with enormous bulging eyes and a mouthful of piranha-like teeth gazed out dully from behind the glass. I was surprised to read the sign saying it was only a monkfish.

  Pip peered closer, a look of fascination coming over him sure enough.

  ‘Where fish fingers?’ Seemingly in reply, one of the lobsters lifted a nasty-looking pincer. Pip screamed, and clung to my hips, lifting his feet off the ground like a monkey trying to wrap itself round a tree trunk. I felt my jeans slipping down – I’d lost a bit of weight during the last few weeks.

  ‘Pip, it’s okay. Come on, let’s have another look.’ I scanned the counter for anything that didn’t have pincers or eyes. ‘There’s a nice piece of haddock there.’

  ‘Birds Eye! Birds Eye!’ wailed Pip.

  There was a loud sigh from an old lady behind us in the queue, which was now reaching out of the door. A smart yummy-mummy type glanced at her watch.

  With one hand on the back waistband of my jeans, and one trying to stop Pip falling off me, I whispered an apology to the fishmonger, in his white rubber apron, and waddled out of the shop.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ sobbed Pip as we struggled along the pavement towards the bus stop, him dragging off my arm now. My heart sank. Pip’s fussiness meant that eating out was impossible: even a sandwich at Starbucks was out of the question. Unless . . . the day wasn’t that cold, and there was a Tesco Metro across the street. We went in and I bought a loaf of white bread, a jar of strawberry jam, a packet of forty paper plates, and picked up a little plastic spoon that would have to serve as a knife.

  ‘Want to have a picnic at the playpark, Pippy?’

  I knew there was a playpark in a nearby side street, because it was opposite Miss Fortune’s flat.

  Pip sat beside me on the bench, swinging his legs as I prepared his sandwich, sighing with relief as he sank his little white teeth into the soft, spongy bread.

  I stared up at the tenement across the road, a four-storey wall of stone stretching the length
of the street, its windows like rows of eyes.

  Behind the net curtains, in Miss Fortune’s flat, someone was moving around.

  I felt a strange little tug in my chest area, and became aware of my pulse quickening slightly. The pull intensified as Pip finished his sandwich and put his sticky hand in mine, leading me towards the slide. By the time we left the playpark, clanging the red metal gate shut behind us, I’d made up my mind.

  ‘Ah’m jus’ wunn o’ the carers,’ announced the large woman with the plastic apron who opened the door. ‘Mabel. If yous’re lookin’ for Esme she’s in there.’ She gestured towards the living room.

  Esme? Miss Fortune wouldn’t have liked the informality of first names. And a carer?

  Pip had tensed as soon as we’d crossed the threshold – the musty smell, perhaps, or the oppressive atmosphere in the narrow hallway with its wine-coloured carpet and dark wood sideboard. Now he gripped my hand tightly with both of his as we proceeded into the living room. I looked straight ahead, avoiding glancing at the doors into the kitchen and bathroom.

  The thing that had been Miss Fortune sat slumped in an armchair, eyes fixed forwards and downwards, almost but not quite in the direction of the small television in the corner which was showing Cash in the Attic at nearly full volume.

  It was the same flower-patterned, wing-backed chair that she used to sit on, eyes closed, during our listening sessions. Then, she’d sat straight, chin lifted, as though she could actually smell the music curling through the air like smoke. Now, her head lolled to the side, and her arms trailed listlessly along the arms of the chair. Her right hand – the withered one – looked the same as always. Her left had seized into an arthritic claw.

  I stood in front of her, feeling like an awkward twelve-year-old again.

  ‘Hello, Miss Fortune. I’m Janey Johnston. Do you remember me? You used to teach me piano. And you taught my friend, Hattie Marlowe, too. It was back in the eighties.’

  As if she’d forget.

  ‘I was wondering if you knew anything about where the Marlowes had . . . Oh Pip, no!’

  He’d toddled over to the Steinway, and was pulling himself up onto the piano stool.

  Not there, not there.

  As I crossed the room it seemed to ripple, as though I was underwater.

  ‘No no, darling.’

  He wriggled off the stool and away from me, and tried to slide his fingers under the piano lid.

  I drew his fingers away and kissed them, lifted him, and turned back to Miss Fortune again.

  ‘Do you mind if I turn this off for a sec?’ I waited politely for a response that I knew wouldn’t come, then lifted the remote from the wheeled invalid table that stood by her chair, and silenced Cash in the Attic.

  ‘I just wondered if you had any idea where the Marlowes went, after they left. Or if you’d heard anything about them recently. I know you had connections at Ramplings.’

  Oh, it was hopeless. As if they’d have been exchanging Christmas cards all this time. It was utterly ridiculous. And in any case, there wasn’t even a flicker behind those eyes.

  From the primary school up the road, a bell rang, and the sounds of children shouting and laughing drifted over. Pip turned his head toward the bay window.

  ‘She has good days an’ bad days,’ said Mabel, waddling into the room with a disgusting-looking meal – shepherd’s pie, perhaps – in a foil tray.

  She placed the meal on the table and wheeled it round towards Miss Fortune’s knees.

  ‘There you go, luv,’ she wheezed, her face red with the effort of leaning down.

  ‘Does she ever, you know, communicate? At all?’

  ‘Some days she’s more compus mentus, like. It depends on her medications an’ that.’

  ‘I think we’ll get going,’ I said, setting Pip back down on his feet.

  ‘Right you are.’ Mabel didn’t seem fazed by the shortness of our visit.

  Just as we were leaving the room, I swung round and said, ‘Do you know how to use the record player? It’s just that she loves music.’

  I moved over to the bookshelf where all the records were. Pip followed, his finger looped into one of the belt hooks on my jeans.

  ‘This one,’ I said, holding it out. ‘She’d love this.’ Chopin.

  Mabel gave it a suspicious look and slapped it down on the arm of the sofa.

  ‘Aye, right then, I s’pose. I’m only meant to get her washed and fed, mind.’

  ‘Here, I’ll show you how.’ I switched on the power, placed the record on the turntable and carefully lowered the needle.

  The opening chords spilled out of the machine into the room: Nocturne in C-sharp minor, the posthumously published one. I’d forgotten, at some point over the years, that it was almost unbearable to listen to.

  Mabel gave a slow, disdainful sniff and crossed her arms over her bulging middle.

  ‘I’ll see you out then,’ she said.

  We’d reached the door to the hall when a voice rang out behind us.

  ‘Practise the Mazurka on page seven, my dear.’

  ‘Will do, my sweet,’ sang Mabel in a conciliatory tone, not bothering to turn round.

  But I stopped, overwhelmed suddenly with a sense that Hattie – my beloved Hattie – was in the room behind me, watching me leave.

  I went back in, and knelt down on the rug in front of Miss Fortune, watching carefully.

  ‘Miss Fortune?’ It came out as a whisper.

  ‘Mu-mmeeee,’ whined Pip, tugging at my coat.

  Her eyes shot wide open. I started, jerked back. But it wasn’t me she was looking at.

  She made a noise – halfway between a groan and a word.

  ‘What? Sorry, what was that? I didn’t quite catch . . .’

  The eyes stayed fixed on Pip, unblinking. All the hairs down my arms stood on end.

  ‘It’s Janey Johnston here, Miss Fortune. Do you remember me?’

  And then they closed, like shutters going down. Or a switch going off.

  ‘Come on, Mummy,’ demanded Pip.

  ‘Did you hear what she said?’ I asked Mabel.

  ‘It sounded like “Janey”. That was your name, wasn’t it, luv?’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘Ye’re not lookin’ too well. Ye’ve gone awfie white.’

  *

  As I sat with my arm round Pip, jolting homewards on the top deck of the bus, it occurred to me that I didn’t know what was worse: the notion that the Miss Fortune I’d known was still in there somewhere, trapped in a decaying body, or that there was nothing left of her at all, just a tangle of dying neurons firing in the dark.

  But there had been something – a change in her – after the Chopin had come on, ringing through the dead air of the room. I’d seen it as I crouched before her.

  Her left arm had lain on the arm of the chair as before, but her thumb and forefinger were held together, moving incrementally, keeping perfect 4/4 time.

  22

  Janey

  I don’t know what made me go to St Katherine’s. It was trespassing, really. But when I walked past the back gates, on the way home from dropping Pip at nursery, I saw a couple of mums trundling buggies along the path round the playing fields, no doubt heading back from dropping their older children off. So I thought I wouldn’t be noticed.

  I made for our ‘secret place’, moving quickly along the sidelines of the hockey pitch and up the bank of trees. The old school sign was still there, weathered and rotting at one end where the wood had split. I lifted it and heaved it over to the side. A few woodlice scurried away, and a millipede wriggled on its back. Hattie’s red cash box was still there in its hollow, with the key attached on a bit of string. Dominic Shapiro would have been shocked by such lax security. My fingers trembled as I wiggled the key in the lock.

  It was empty, of course. I lifted the box – so very cold from being in the earth for so long – and cradled it into my chest.

  *

  ‘What’s the matter wit
h her?’ said a thin little voice.

  I jerked upright. How long had I been sitting there on the ground?

  Two young girls, about eleven, stood before me. I wiped my wet face with the back of my hand – a muddy hand, as I realised too late.

  ‘Come on,’ said one of the girls, holding out a confident hand. ‘You don’t look very well. We’ll take you to the nurse.’

  They stood either side of me, one blonde and one redhead, each firmly holding an arm, and they marched me into the building, past the assembly hall, and the maths and English classrooms, into the medical room. I let myself be led, a child again, with a muddy face. I was beyond embarrassment.

  It couldn’t be, after all these years . . . Yes, it was Mrs Potts, sitting at her desk with her navy uniform, with white bands on the sleeves.

  ‘Oh my Lord!’ She stood up and came towards me. ‘It’s Janey Johnston, isn’t it? My goodness, girl. You haven’t changed one iota in . . . I don’t even want to think about how long!’

  It was a strange feeling to be recognised. To meet somebody who’d known me as a girl.

  ‘She’s not well, Mrs Potts,’ announced the blonde girl.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Just feeling a bit light-headed. I should be going . . .’

  ‘Stay for a wee minute first. I don’t want you keeling over in the corridor! Thank you, girls. Off you go.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I called after them, but they’d disappeared in a flurry of chatter and quick footsteps.

  ‘Come through here and sit down.’ Mrs Potts led me through to the side room with the cot. ‘I’ll get you a drink of water.’

  And when she’d come back with the white plastic cup: ‘What brings you here, Janey?’

  I looked round the little room. And suddenly, it was deluged in red: the sheets of the cot sopping with blood, splashes of it on the floor, frantic footprints smudged on the lino tiles.