Prim! Her heart broke as again she pictured her slumped in the chair in the garden room. It was hard to feel anything, let alone gratitude for a life well lived. And she certainly didn’t feel strong or smart; in fact, she felt weak and stupid. How could she justify the fact that she had taken her time, sauntering home at her leisure and trying to catch the eye of some stupid boy while Prim . . . She again pictured her gran’s face, the subtle lilt to her spine and her hands dangling, fingers limp. Why had she not jumped in the car when a lift was offered? She would have been home in less than half the time and then there was the chance that Prim would not have had to face her final moments alone. It also might have given her the opportunity to tell her gran exactly what she meant to her. But instead she had been hovering outside a sports shop talking rubbish! Trying to make Flynn McNamara notice her. And it was this hard fact that sat at the back of her throat like a sharp stick. Daksha continued to cry quietly, and Victoria thought it odd how her own tears were strangely lacking.
Victoria wished she could cry, even screwing her eyes up in a crying pose to see if that might prompt tears. It was as if she knew how she was expected to mourn but was too stunned by the situation to let her emotions flow. This, and the fact that a small part of her ridiculously kept repeating that it didn’t seem real and therefore might not be true, there could have been a mistake . . . She was almost unable to think that she would never see her gran again. The facts, no matter what her eyes had witnessed, just would not gel.
The night for her was restless, her sleep fractured, until her eyes opened at dawn: her first day on a planet without Prim and one she did not want to face. The idea was no more palatable to her than it had been when she first considered it the previous day. There was a split second when she blinked at the sight of the morning sun and wondered if the whole thing had been a horrible dream, but no, the fact that she was in Daksha’s bed with a twist of sadness in her gut and a feeling like grit behind her lids was proof that her nightmare was real. Plucking her phone from the floor where it lay, she called Gerald, not sure of what to say or even how to begin, but knowing she had to make the call. She cursed as it went straight to answerphone, not knowing what she should say.
‘Gerald . . . it’s Victoria . . . can you . . . erm . . . I will try again.’ She sighed her relief, already dreading calling him later.
‘You want breakfast, darling?’ Mrs Joshi asked as she made her way down the stairs.
‘No, thank you.’
‘You need to eat.’ Mrs Joshi sighed, as if food might be the answer. Victoria disagreed. The hollow, gnawing feeling in her gut was, she knew, nothing that could be filled with breakfast.
‘Maybe a cup of tea.’
The relief on Mrs Joshi’s face was instantaneous. It was very different to mornings at Rosebank, where she woke to the sound of Prim pottering in the kitchen, moving to the background hum of Radio 4 and predictably putting teabags into the teapot before placing marmalade on the table and setting two plates opposite each other.
‘Good morning, sweetie!’
Never again. Never ever. It was unthinkable. She pictured coming down the stairs to a quiet house where no one had popped the lamps on and no one hummed as they spritzed the potted ferns on the windowsill.
To a casual observer it would have looked like any other day as she walked to the front door and inhaled the scent of roses that crowded the flowerbeds. She put her key in the keyhole and looked briefly at her friend.
‘It’s okay.’ Daksha encouraged from eyes that were a little puffy, swollen from having sobbed through the lonely, dark hours until day broke. It would be wrong to say that her friend’s distress irritated her, but she certainly swallowed the urge to remind Daksha that she had the support of a large and loving family around her and that it was she, Victoria, who had been left alone. She had managed to drink the cup of tea and, from across the breakfast table, Dr Joshi had told her in hushed tones, which she suspected he reserved for speaking to patients, that it was most likely a heart attack to which Prim had succumbed. She had nodded, thinking in that moment that it didn’t really matter why. What mattered was that it had happened at all. And despite overhearing Mrs Joshi’s words of support, Victoria felt the new and frightening chill of loneliness wrap itself around her bones.
Her thoughts flew to her mum and she tried to imagine how very different her life might have been if Prim had not been on hand to scoop her up, feed and clothe her in the role of both mother and grandmother – a neat trick that Prim had mastered. And one that had seen Victoria safely arrived at adulthood. Just. Not that the fact that she was now eighteen in any small way alleviated the utter terror she felt at being left by herself. She wasn’t ready. She was, in fact, as unprepared for the loss of her gran at eighteen as she had been at four, five, six . . . and in truth she doubted she ever would be prepared for it. The loss of her mother was sad, but the simple truth was that she had never known any different, having been in Prim’s care since she was mere weeks old. Her gran had always, always made her feel safe, but now? Victoria was alone, cut free, floating, and fearful of where she might land.
I need a bath, but first I think I’ll make Prim a really good, strong coffee and arrange the baklava on a pretty floral plate, one of Granny Cutter’s, and we can sit on the veranda and . . .
It was like a pick to her chest, the realisation that this was not going to happen today. Or any other day, for that matter. It was as if the news simply wouldn’t sink in. She felt a strange sensation in her knees, which were suddenly cold and wobbly, her stomach jittery, heart skipping. Daksha reached up and took the key from her friend and, turning it, she pushed the door open.
The two girls stepped inside, as they had done thousands of times before, but today it was a house in a different world, a lesser world, where Prim no longer existed.
The spindle-backed wooden chair that had sat in the corner of the hallway with a needlepoint cushion propped on it for as long as she could remember had been moved to the bottom of the stairs to make way for . . . what? A stretcher? A gurney? She didn’t want to know. Yet apart from the odd door that was usually closed left ajar, and the fact that the curtains in the dining room were still drawn, the house looked and smelled just the same as it always had. She didn’t know why, but she had expected both to be a little different. What was different, however, and markedly so, was the way Rosebank felt. Quiet and still, like a thing hollowed out, scooped free of all that gave it substance. Soulless, an eggshell, a husk, a river run dry. Prim had been the energy of the house, the noise and vivacity, and without her it felt blank, like nothing; no longer a home, just a house. Her house now.
‘Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?’
‘God, Daks, what is it with your family and tea?’
‘I don’t know.’ Her friend looked into the middle distance, as if reflecting on this very question. ‘I think maybe we use the offer and provision of tea as a filler, a way to plug the awkward gaps when we either don’t know what to say or are avoiding saying what we know we want to.’
‘Which is it right now?’
‘I think a combination of the two.’
‘Okay then, go make the tea!’ Victoria sighed, half in apology and half in exasperation. ‘I’ll be upstairs; I need to put something warmer on.’ She rubbed the tops of her arms. She was still wearing the vest laundered by Prim’s hand, the vest she was wearing when her gran had waved her off from the doorway of the garden room, only yesterday. Yesterday. It felt like a lifetime ago.
Pausing on the half landing, Victoria let her eyes wander over the photographs of her mother.
‘Are you two together now?’ She let this thought linger, as her eyes settled on her mum’s smiling face, feeling a ridiculous stab of misplaced jealousy, an almost visceral reaction at the possibility that this might be the case. Throughout her life, if Prim had ever reprimanded her, Victoria would take up her favoured spot here on the landing and tell her mum all about it.
�
� . . . and Gran said I had to read my book and I told her I only had to do three pages, but she made me do the whole chapter . . . I hate broccoli, Mummy, but she said I had to eat it, they look like little trees and who wants to eat a little tree?’ And later in life: ‘I like this boy. Flynn, his name is Flynn . . . how can I make him notice me? What would you do, Mum? How did you attract Marcus?’
‘You’ve abandoned me,’ she whispered. ‘You have both abandoned me.’ Addressing this to the photograph, thinking most unfairly of Prim, whose only crime had been to get old after dedicating her entire life to her granddaughter’s well-being.
Her aim had been to avoid Prim’s bedroom, two doors down from hers on the opposite side of the landing. The room in which her gran had slept every night of Victoria’s childhood, first with Grandpa, and then alone. Victoria had taken great comfort in her close proximity. It was one of six rooms on the square landing with a round, turreted bedroom in each corner, and her intention had been to walk straight past, but something told her that whilst it might be hard, leaving the task and letting her nerves simmer at the prospect might just be a darn sight harder.
She pushed the door, which opened with a creak. The small gold tassel on the key that sat in the lock swayed back and forth. The room smelled of her gran, or rather her scent – the lingering waft of Chanel No5 that had been her signature fragrance, and which Prim had applied liberally every time she walked past her dressing table; morning, noon and night.
‘Darling, I can honestly say I can’t smell it any more! My nose is completely blind to it!’
‘Trust me, Prim, I can smell it. And so can the Maitlands at the end of the lane!’
As the story went, her beau, Victoria’s grandpa – a dashing, upright, naval officer – had presented Miss Primrose Cutter with a beribboned bottle on his first trip home from sea after wooing her one summer. And that, as they say, had been that.
‘How did you and Grandpa actually meet?’ she had asked casually some years ago as they sat side by side in the drawing room.
‘It was an introduction via Great-Granny Cutter, if you can believe that!’
‘What, like an arranged marriage?’ She thought of Daksha’s parents, who had had just that.
‘Not quite, but he was home on leave and I was invited to the Rotherstones’ for tea – I now know at my mother’s suggestion. And, oh my goodness, darling! He was dashing and clever. He had the ability to turn any woman all of a dither, even Granny Cutter. It was just his way, so charming. Plus, his parents went to the same church and they all vaguely knew each other – you know, Christmas Eve drinks, cricket teas, that kind of thing . . .’
It had all sounded so simple and she had wondered at the time if Flynn McNamara’s parents went to church or played cricket. Not that it would have been much good if they had, as she did neither. She felt a tightening in her chest to think of that chat now, knowing there would be no more. A fact that was still unbelievable to her.
Prim’s bed was, as ever, neatly made, with fastidious attention having been paid to the arrangement of the vintage lace cushions that nestled in a pile against the grape-coloured, brocade-covered headboard. They might, to the untrained eye, look haphazardly placed, but they were in fact anything but. Victoria sat on her gran’s side of the bed and looked at the artful clutter on her nightstand: a silver cigarette case from back in the day, an onyx-based lamp whose gilded cherubs held up a velvet-fringed lampshade of olive green. A floral box of tissues, a tube of L’Occitane shea butter hand cream, a small leather-bound notebook for lists and suchlike, and a silver-framed photograph of Grandpa in his naval uniform.
She pictured Prim’s smile, an instinctive reaction to any mention of the love of her life, the man who had stood by her side for over five decades, until cancer felled him like a sapling. Victoria thought it cruel for a man who had stood proudly on the deck of a ship, doing his bit to keep the nation safe whilst serving with the Royal Navy, figuring her rather quiet, cigar-smoking, woody-scented grandpa deserved a more dramatic, heroic death – like in a swordfight or by falling from a sturdy steed – instead of breathing his last sitting on a plastic-coated chair in the communal lounge of Brecon Lodge hospice with the Countdown theme playing in the background. He did, after all, have medals. Victoria was nine when he died, too young to understand how his loss depleted her little family, and yet old enough to feel the pang of grief in her gut at the absence of him. But compared to the roaring grief she felt at losing Prim, it was but a flicker. She stared at her grandpa’s grainy face, recalling the way Prim spoke about the first time they met and how they had fallen in love . . .
‘Well, as clichéd as it sounds, once I had met George Rotherstone, after that afternoon tea and a couple of walks over the Downs, I knew there would not be another person as important or another feeling so all-encompassing. He was all I could see, he was like the sun blocking out everything and everyone else. And handsome’ – Prim had drawn breath sharply and spoken as if Victoria had asked – ‘he was so very handsome, especially in his uniform. A big, noble nose and eyes that twinkled no matter what the topic under discussion, suggesting mischief was never far away. But essentially, he liked me for me: all of me, warts and all, and that kind of universal acceptance was the greatest comfort. I stopped worrying about the future. I stopped worrying about most things, actually, because I knew that with George Rotherstone by my side everything would be just fine.’
Victoria realised in that second that she was now the sole custodian of the family history, the keeper of all these memories. A responsibility she felt ill prepared for, knowing she was lacking in both detail and accuracy. She lifted the picture to study the smiling, tanned face of the young officer, and yes, if she looked closely, there might have been a certain twinkle in his eye.
‘There you are. Can I come in?’ Daksha hovered reverentially in the doorway, clutching two Emma Bridgewater hellebore mugs full of tea.
Victoria nodded and returned the photograph to the nightstand.
‘This is such a beautiful room.’ Daksha walked forward and handed her a mug of tea.
She was glad her friend appreciated her gran’s taste and also how she spoke with a softened edge, aware of the fragility of her mood and the circumstances.
‘I was just looking at her things. I can’t begin to think she won’t come in here again. I can’t imagine that I won’t see her. My brain won’t let me understand it.’
‘It doesn’t seem real,’ Daksha concurred. ‘I keep expecting her to walk in.’
‘Me too.’ She looked at the door, as if expecting just that. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it, how you get up every morning and shower and get dressed and make your bed. Then one day you do it and it’s the last time ever, you just don’t know it. The last time you do everything. Yesterday, Prim ate her last slice of toast, it was the last time she watered her plants, the last time she sat in her favourite spot in the garden room.’
‘You were so lucky to have her, Vic.’
‘I know. I think I should feel more, but I just feel empty and cold, as if everything is tamped down in my gut and there’s this layer, a weight keeping it there and it muffles everything inside me, even sound.’
‘I’ll go and get your dressing gown.’ Daksha disappeared and returned with her old grey fleece dressing gown, which had seen better days, with its baggy, misshapen pockets and bald patches on the arms where they rested on the old pine kitchen table when she read.
‘Thank you.’ She slipped into it and pulled it tightly around her. It helped a little. Victoria sipped her tea; it was hot and perfect. ‘What was it you were thinking about saying to me when we arrived, but instead opted for the tea filler?’
Daksha sat on the small pink, button-backed boudoir chair and faced her friend. She took her time.
‘I wanted to say that Prim was fine when we left yesterday. She was happy, talkative and mischievous as ever. Chatting about Gerald and eating her pear. There was nothing you could have done and nothing you should h
ave done. But I know you, and I don’t want you to worry or beat yourself up over things you might have done differently.’
Victoria took a deep breath. ‘I was thinking that I should have been here with her. I could have held her hand or . . .’ She didn’t really know what she would have done. But the guilt sat like a fine dust on her shoulders nonetheless. ‘And I can’t remember if I made her the cup of Earl Grey she wanted or whether I left and she had to do it herself, and that’s bothering me.’
Daksha spoke firmly, calmly. ‘I don’t think she would have wanted to know that everything was her last. Knowing Prim, she would have wanted a happy day in the sunshine with you, and that’s exactly what she got. My mum said it was a blessing, really, to fall asleep in her chair and not to have suffered with an illness, like some.’
Victoria nodded again, not letting on that she had heard the whole exchange.
‘I did think one thing, though.’ Daksha bit the inside of her cheek as if unsure whether to share the thought or not.
‘What?’ Victoria sat up on the bed and leaned back against the pillows, resting her bare feet on the bedding.
‘I don’t know if I should say.’ Her friend looked at her lap.
‘Say it!’ She clucked her impatience, wanting to feel something, and anger seemed easiest to reach.
‘It’s just that Prim was such a classy lady, charming and cultured.’
‘Yes, she was.’ Victoria ran her fingers over the exquisite ivory counterpane.
‘And I bet she would be mortified over her last words.’
‘Her last words?’ Victoria wrinkled her brow.
‘Yes, I think Prim might have imagined a refined exit – you know the way she used to wave her hand or adjust her beads or pat her hair, I think she might have liked to have done something like that and said simply, “Adieu, darlings!”’
The Day She Came Back Page 4
