by Jane Holland
But that’s not the worst.
The worst thing about Mum’s dementia is how she’s forgotten about Dad. Not that he existed. She remembers that.
But she’s forgotten that he died five years ago.
And that my brother died with him.
That particular lapse in memory makes for some uncomfortable conversations – when I can be bothered to contradict her cheery assurance that Dad is about to walk in the door any minute, that is…
‘Giorgios, how is she?’ I ask quietly when we walk into the hall together to collect his jacket. He walks with a limp since some undisclosed accident a year ago, his build hefty, on the verge of corpulent, but his round face always cheerful. ‘Did she eat anything at lunch?’
‘A little soup.’
‘Did you offer her the shepherd’s pie like I asked?’
‘She wouldn’t even look at it. Or the vegetables you left.’ He pulls a face, his Greek accent very pronounced. ‘I’m sorry, I did try. But your mother has no appetite today. She is well though, I think.’
‘Okay, thank you.’
‘I’ll see you on Monday as usual.’ He opens the front door.
Giorgios only comes to sit with Mum one or two days a week. And very rarely looks after her in the evenings, unless I have a special class or event. Which almost never happens.
I stop him. ‘Actually, Giorgios, hang on a tick.’
He looks back, surprised. ‘Miss Kinley?’
‘I have a… meeting to go to on Friday night. I agreed to it without thinking. Is there any chance…?’
‘You want me to come over?’
‘Would you?’ I grimace, feeling awkward. ‘I don’t like to leave Mum on her own for too long, and the meeting… It could run late.’
‘Sure, sure.’ Giorgios gives me a charming smile. ‘Only, late evenings… It will be double pay.’
‘Of course.’ I smile too, opening the front door for him. ‘Should I pay you through the agency as usual?’
‘Not for evenings.’ He gives me a cheeky wink. ‘Cash in hand, yes?’
‘Got it.’
I watch him climb into his battered Ford Focus and raise a hand as he revs towards the gate, his tyres spitting gravel. Dad would have had a fit; he obsessed about his redesign of this driveway, needing everything to be perfect, and used to curse whenever delivery vans went too fast, chucking tiny stones onto our lawn.
My father was a property developer, and my brother Ciaran worked alongside him in the office, despite his yearnings to be an artist instead. The two of them were always so excited when a big investment finally paid off, celebrating with riotous champagne parties.
Both men were larger than life, ambitious go-getters in the office as well as on the golf course and on the piste. Highly experienced skiers and climbers, father and son had spent at least two weeks of every year skiing or climbing in small groups with other intrepid, like-minded souls.
That thirst for adventure had been an extension of their need to make the ‘big bucks’ as Dad had enjoyed boasting, and I’d loved that about them. Admired it tremendously too.
Until the avalanche that claimed their lives, that is, along with seven others, and left me and Mum grieving and alone.
I’d been living in my own flat in central Guildford at the time they died, enjoying some independence at last. Clubbing at weekends, commuting into London for work, a rowdy circle of friends for sport or drinking or art and museum trips.
That’s how I met David for the first time, in fact. On the club scene, which I used to love so much.
But soon after my father and brother died, I made the difficult decision to move back in with Mum, to support her in her bereavement, and have lived here ever since.
While David was still alive, I used to go out all the time, even though my other friends had more or less dropped away. We went out as a couple for dinner and clubbing, or to the cinema, and even into central London a few times a month to catch a show.
But since David’s death, my life has become much narrower, mainly just shuttling between work and my mother’s care. There’s not been much room for anything else, to be fair.
Only Mum.
I click on the central heating, change out of my work clothes and into loose jeans and a blouse, and go back to my mother.
To my horror, I find her tottering about the living room with a vase of flowers she can barely lift.
‘What on earth?’ I take the heavy glass vase away from her before she drops it. ‘Mum, for goodness’ sake… Sit down, I can put this wherever you want it.’ I wait while she drops back into her armchair. ‘On the sideboard?’
‘What?’ She looks at me, confused.
‘You were moving these flowers,’ I say patiently. ‘Where do you want them?’
‘I don’t know.’
I take a breath, then return the vase to the table. Then I sit on the sofa and briefly check my phone before turning it off for the evening.
There’s a message from Mark.
You’re missing a great party here. Maybe we could grab lunch together next week. I’ve got a little proposal for you.
Oh Christ.
I have nothing to say to that. Not tonight, anyway. He can bloody well badger me on company time, not my own.
Wearily, I glance at the other message on my phone.
It’s from Stella, a woman I know from Monday yoga. Some of us go for coffee and cake occasionally after morning class, much to the disgust of Beth, our yogi, and Stella and I are usually the last to leave the café.
Stella’s older than me, nearly forty, but her dad suffers from dementia too, so I guess we have something in common.
Did you leave a blue cardigan at the studio? Beth found one after class. It’s in the back of my car.
I reply, Not mine, sorry, and then add a smiley face icon as an afterthought.
Recently, I moved to working a four-day week, Monday to Thursday. One or two of those days I commute into London. The rest I work from home for a publishing firm, mainly on their non-fiction lines: travel, business, true crime, self-help.
I’m a commissioning editor, for what that’s worth. It sounds good, but the publisher has cut back on staff in recent years, so these days I tend to do a little bit of everything. Commissioning, editing, marketing, promoting… I even read what comes in on the slush pile – and bring Mark his hourly black coffee when nobody else is in earshot.
The work can be chaotic at times. Unpredictable too. But that’s why I enjoy it. No one week is the same.
I hate my boss though. Mark, the company director, is a total misogynist who makes my skin creep. I can’t recall the number of times I’ve turned down the offer of a drink after work with him because I know it’s just a random come-on. So of course he hates me.
In fact, I’m increasingly sure he’d love nothing better than to see me booted out of the industry altogether.
His latest office favourite, Debs, recently promoted to managing editor, has always made it clear how much she dislikes me. When she came to us two years ago, she had almost zero experience in publishing, straight out of an internship with a second-rate literary agency, and I was tasked with the job of making sure she learned the ropes.
Perhaps I was too short with Debs, irked by her slowness in grasping basic software or her apparent inability to remember the names of our more important authors and the titles of their books. But she soon developed a dislike for me that has since grown into what can only be described as hatred. And when we both went for the same senior position, Debs got it, despite my longer tenure with the company and what I personally felt was a strong interview.
I still suspect she had help beating me. Mark has never been one to let a little thing like professional integrity get in the way of his plans. But I’ve never dared voice that suspicion out loud. He’s still my boss, after all…
I wonder what he wants to offer me.
‘Someone was in the garden today,’ Mum says vaguely.
I
throw my phone back into my bag and stretch out on the sofa, my feet aching after a long day in heels. I really ought to start wearing flats. But I’m so short, I still feel I need that extra height in the office.
‘Sorry?’ I force a smile. ‘You saw someone in the garden, did you? When was this?’
‘Lunchtime.’ She sounds very certain.
‘Okay.’
I rub my bare feet and consider the situation. I wonder if this random visitor could have been Ron, the man who comes to mow our lawns and occasionally lop our trees and shrubs to keep things neat.
There was no sign of any gardening work having been done, as I’d noted on arriving home. But maybe Ron just popped by to check what needed doing.
‘Was it the man who mows the lawn?’
‘No,’ she says, and tuts, as though annoyed by my stupidity.
‘Then who was it?’
Mum shrugs. ‘I don’t know.’
I frown, bemused by this. Someone was in our garden? I wonder why Giorgios didn’t mention it. But maybe it slipped his mind.
‘Man? Woman?’
‘I told you, I don’t know,’ Mum repeats, a little impatient now. ‘You can’t tell these days, can you? They all look the same to me.’
‘Well, never mind,’ I say briskly, and give her my broadest smile, pushing all other considerations out of my mind. If it had been important, I’m sure Giorgios would have mentioned it to me. ‘What would you like for your supper? I believe there’s a shepherd’s pie in the fridge.’
‘Oh!’ She claps her hands. ‘I love shepherd’s pie.’
I smile. ‘I know you do, Mum.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘What do you think?’ I ask, and perform a quick twirl for my mother.
I had intended to wear something colourful tonight – and perhaps a little more low-cut. My wardrobe is full of bold little numbers that I almost never have the nerve to wear. But, in the end, flicking through dresses and skirts that suited me when I was seeing David but now seem to belong to an earlier me, a previous edition of Kate Kinley, my hand stopped on a trusty little black dress.
The dress is a good ten years old now. But something about it hooks me. It’s safe, maybe. The easy choice. And, to my surprise, it still fits quite well. Perhaps a little snug over the hips, but I’m thirty-three now. What did I expect?
‘Hmm?’
Mum looks up from her lap tray with a distracted air. She’s sitting in her armchair as usual, a crossword puzzle book open in front of her. She has a pen but hasn’t lifted it. The puzzle is unstarted, though she’s been poring over it for nearly an hour.
‘My dress.’ I smile, suspecting she’s already forgotten what I told her five minutes before going off to change after my bath. ‘I’m going out tonight, remember?’
‘Going out?’ She blinks; there’s a note of outrage in her voice. ‘Where? Am I going out too?’
‘No, Mum.’ I pat her hand. ‘I told you, I’m going to have dinner with a friend tonight.’
‘But what about me?’
I give her a reassuring smile. ‘Giorgios is coming to sit with you.’
‘Giorgios,’ she repeats, staring into space.
I refuse to believe she can’t remember who I’m talking about.
‘That’s right. You like Giorgios.’
‘Do I?’
I frown, feeling guilty. ‘You know you do, Mum.’ I worry about how poorly she’s getting and how fast the disease seems to be progressing. ‘Honestly, Giorgios is one of your favourite people. That’s why I arranged for him to be your usual carer.’
‘I don’t need a carer,’ she insists gruffly.
‘Well, someone to talk to when I can’t be here,’ I say, as gently as I can. ‘You know how much you like to talk to people.’
Mum smiles then, self-indulgently. ‘I’m a chatterbox.’
‘And we love that about you.’ I surreptitiously check the time on the mantel clock. Giorgios must be running late; he agreed to be here for six thirty, but it’s nearly quarter to seven, and there’s no sign of him yet. ‘But it does mean you get super lonely when I have to pop out. And Giorgios likes to chat too. So, it’s a good fit.’
I hurry into the hall and take a peek out of the door. It was an uncertain day, weather-wise, and the afternoon is already drawing in, long shadows falling across the lawn. I’ll need a light jacket with my dress, though it’s not cold enough yet for one of my winter coats. My black one is hanging in the hall, so I can easily grab that on my way out.
The drive is still empty.
When I return to my mother, she has put on her reading glasses. She peers down at her crossword puzzle book, lifts the pen to write something, then puts it down again, her air perplexed.
‘Do you need help with that?’ I ask.
She looks up at me, then seems to notice the little black dress and my hair, which I’ve pinned up in a chignon. ‘You look nice.’
I beam. ‘Thank you.’
‘Why are you all dressed up? Are you going out?’
I take a deep breath and explain again about my dinner date. This time I forget to be cautious and mention that it’s a man I’m meeting.
She stiffens at once. ‘What’s this man’s name?’
‘Logan. He was a friend of David’s.’ I pause, uncertain. ‘You remember David.’
‘Of course I do. Lovely boy. Bit dreamy, maybe.’ She frowns at me, her look almost accusing. ‘Why does he never come round anymore? I suppose you scared him off. You’ll never manage to attract the really nice ones if you won’t make more of an effort to be friendly. Men don’t like women who ride roughshod over them.’ She halts, staring at me. ‘Whatever’s the matter now?’
Tears have sprung to my eyes, and I try in vain to blink them away. She’s forgotten about David’s death. Of course she has. Of all the things you’d probably want to forget, your daughter’s boyfriend committing suicide would be high on the list…
‘Nothing, Mum.’ My voice wavers as I fight off the tears. ‘Yes, I suppose I did scare him off. In a manner of speaking.’
‘Well, no point getting upset about it now. You’ll ruin your mascara if you cry. Better tidy yourself up.’
I reach for a tissue from the box on the coffee table and dab under my eyes, checking my reflection in the oval mirror above the mantelpiece.
Behind me, through the windows that overlook the lawn, I see a dark shape at the far end of the lawn, just slipping out of view behind the trees.
A man, I’m sure of it.
I spin round, shocked to my core. ‘Who the hell is that?’
‘Language,’ Mum says, tutting.
But to my surprise, the lawn is empty. There’s nobody there.
Uneasy now, I stare out, leaning as far as I can over the windowsill to look round the corner at the drive.
Still no sign of Giorgios’s car.
Mum said she’d seen someone lurking about in the garden earlier in the week. I’d dismissed it as another of her misunderstandings. She often misinterpreted things these days. It could have been anyone. Even a neighbour, come to retrieve a football. We do have a neighbour with young children who occasionally send a ball sailing over at that end of the garden. But neighbours tend to ring the bell first and ask for permission to collect lost objects, not just wander in unannounced.
‘I thought I saw someone out there on the lawn,’ I say.
‘Hmm?’ Mum takes off her glasses and slams the puzzle book shut. ‘I can’t do this. I can’t see the damn thing. Take it away from me, would you?’
She hasn’t been paying any attention, I realise.
I take the puzzle book away and give her the ball of knitting she sometimes plays with. She doesn’t properly knit anymore; she can’t follow the patterns. But she can still set stitches, and knit and purl for a while on a good day. Today, Mum just squeezes the ball of soft red wool rhythmically in one fist, like pumping a heart to keep it going, and stares across the room absentmindedly.
I pi
ck up my phone and ring Giorgios.
Nobody answers.
I leave a brief message on the carer’s voicemail, trying not to sound irritated that he’s late.
He might be stuck in traffic, after all. Or he might have had an accident. And it’s very good of him to come over to sit with Mum. Double pay, yes. But it’s a Friday night and I know he’s got a boyfriend tucked away somewhere, and would probably much rather be with him. Not minding an old lady, even if he does usually persuade her to watch something gory and unsuitable on the telly with him.
A few minutes later, the doorbell goes, and I heave a sigh of relief. Thank God he’s finally arrived.
But when I fling open the front door, it’s not Giorgios.
It’s Logan.
I ought to have realised when the bell went, of course. Giorgios knows the code to the key holder. The nurse doesn’t ring; he just knocks and strolls in with a cheery hello.
Logan is wearing smart trousers and a crisp white shirt under a black jacket. His hair looks damp as though he recently showered.
‘Hi,’ he says, and his eyes widen as he looks me up and down. ‘You look fantastic. Ready to go?’
I smile, suppressing a flutter of excitement at his compliment. Stupid, really. But it’s been so long since I’ve had a date, and I really wasn’t sure if my little black dress would hit the vibe. It seems it has.
‘Not quite,’ I admit.
‘Okay, there’s no hurry.’ He hesitates. ‘Should I wait in the car?’
‘God, no, you’d better come in. It’s my mum, you see. She suffers from dementia and I can’t leave her alone for too long. But the nurse who was due to sit with her hasn’t turned up yet.’ I grimace, catching a flicker of something unfathomable in his expression. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘There’s no need to apologise. We’ll have to wait, that’s all.’ About to come inside, Logan spots me eyeing the garden behind him and stops, raising his eyebrows. ‘Problem?’
