The lobby was a low-ceilinged, dreary room with bristle carpet, empty reception desk and three corridors that extended from it. The early light of dawn lit up the back of the room, turning the faded yellow covering into a wall of grey.
The smell of disinfectant permeated the building. To most of the visitors, that was all they could smell. But what lay beneath lingered in Sara’s nostrils, an aroma of decay. It soaked into the faded wallpaper and cheap floor.
Caleb and Sara stood in front of the desk, unsure of how to proceed.
‘Hello?’ shouted Sara into the nearest corridor.
Caleb moved behind the desk and began opening the drawers.
‘There’s got to be a list of occupants here,’ he said.
‘Sorry, who are you?’
A female nurse in her sixties with thick-lens glasses was approaching them from the nearest corridor, her brow furrowed and her lips compressed into a line.
‘We’re here to see Phoebe Duncan,’ said Sara.
When she caught up to them, Sara could just about smell a residual aroma of alcohol lingering below the coffee breath.
‘It’s too early for visitors,’ she said, folding her arms.
‘We have some urgent news for her,’ said Caleb, taking a step forwards. ‘It can’t wait.’ He spoke with natural gravitas, and Sara saw a shift take place in the nurse. Caleb had read her perfectly.
‘If she’s a resident, then you could try the main room.’
The nurse led them through bland corridors with anodyne prints on the walls until they reached a dining hall walled by sliding glass doors. Elderly residents sat in clusters at tables spread out across the room, eating in silence while a television blared out a rerun of a game show.
‘They’re up at dawn here. She’ll be at one of the tables,’ the nurse said.
Sara searched those sitting at the tables, looking for some glimmer of the woman she saw in the photograph. But they all looked like desiccated versions of people, shrunken in on themselves. The nurse left them without another word.
‘Phoebe Duncan?’ Sara said out loud.
A few faces looked back blankly.
‘Can I help you?’
A rail-thin nurse sat behind a station on a raised platform set against the back wall of the room.
‘We’re here to see Phoebe Duncan.’
The nurse gave them an encouraging smile. Clearly visitors here were rare.
‘Let me see. She’s not a current resident, or I would know. But let’s take a look. When was she admitted?’
She bent down and pulled out a thick lever-arch file.
Sara consulted her mother’s letter.
‘Around 2005.’
The nurse slapped shut the huge file she had opened.
‘OK, well, not that one then. It only goes back to 2008.’
She put her hands on her hips, looking around the disarray of the nurses’ station, which was stacked high with yellowing papers and files.
‘We’re still working on putting this all on computer, but let’s see, there might be something …’
She bent down again, patting the out-of-sight shelves, feeling for other records.
‘Here.’
She pulled out another thick stack, its cover worn and frayed at the edges. She let it fall open in the middle and then began flicking through the pages.
‘Duncan … Duncan … No, sorry. That year we only had Davies, Deacon, Dickenson, Dunbar and Dunleavy. No other Ds.’
‘Can I see that?’ asked Caleb. He gave her an affable smile.
The nurse nodded and turned the file around to face them. Names were marked down, one on each page, with dates of admission handwritten and doctors’ visits underneath.
Caleb pushed the file closer to Sara and held a finger over the centre, where the serrated stub of a page could barely be seen jutting out of the spine.
‘There seems to be a page missing,’ said Caleb to the nurse, holding the file up to her.
The nurse frowned, shaking her head, looking genuinely confused. ‘It might be a spoiled page. Or sometimes a resident is admitted and then the family changes their mind.’
Caleb looked at her sceptically. ‘Maybe, but why tear the page out?’
The nurse shrugged, not sure what else to say.
‘I’ll be right back,’ she said, ‘I just need to check on them.’
‘Salt and his crew were here,’ whispered Caleb, after she had gone. ‘They found her.’
Sara looked in despair across the dining room. Reading her mother’s words had worked some alchemy on her, like the mystery resurrection of a dead plant when it is watered. A sense of self was seeping back into her. She no longer felt blank, an outline etched in space, undetermined and open for interpretation. But she needed more. She trusted her mother, who had guided her this far. If she had been taken, if there were circumstances beyond her control, then the trail would now be cold. Sara’s only option would be to confront Salt and likely walk into a trap. There was no point staying here. Military intelligence had won this round, but she would not give up. She was going to find her mother.
‘Let’s go,’ she said to Caleb.
‘You could ask Stanley,’ shouted the nurse after them, just before they reached the door. ‘He’s been here since the nineties.’
Sara followed her pointed finger over to a man of about ninety sitting in a chair near the window. The overall sense of him was dishevelment. Tufts of thin grey hair stuck out in all directions, as if he had recently received an electric shock. Black frame glasses with one lens missing sat on his hawkish nose. Unlike the other residents, who sat facing their tables, he had turned his chair to the window, although his eyes were fixed to the ground. The nurse walked up to him and crouched close to his face.
‘Stanley.’
If he heard the nurse call his name, he didn’t show it. His gaze remained down, vacant eyes holding the middle distance.
‘He would have been here when your mother was here,’ said the nurse, breaking away. ‘But I’ve only heard him say a handful of actual words, and that was when I started.’
Sara approached Stanley and pulled up a chair to sit next to him. The odour of mothballs clung to the air in his immediate vicinity, mingled with a smell like dead leaves. Dandruff coated the shoulders of his cardigan, like a dusting from a walk in the snow.
‘Stanley, do you remember Phoebe Duncan?’ said Sara. ‘She was here. I’m her daughter. I’m looking for her, Stanley.’
She waited. There was no movement in his eyes. Shallow breath inhaled and exhaled, as if powered by a tiny bellows, pulling and pushing air over thin wet lips. It was as if the final sign-off from the mind had failed to reach the body, which continued stubbornly, dragging forward, following blind duty until it powered down itself.
Unwilling to give up, she moved in front of him and crouched down, her face breaking his line of vision. His eyes held her in his gaze now, empty brown puddles reflecting nothing back.
‘Stanley,’ Sara said, softer this time, with an urgency that propelled the word across the space between them.
Nothing.
She stood up, looking at the nurse, who raised her arms apologetically.
Sara was about to leave when she looked at Stanley one final time.
He was no longer staring at the ground.
His eyes were now fixed on her. Staring with intensity at a point just below her neck.
Sara took a step to the side and watched Stanley’s eyes track her movements. They were glued to her. Or, more specifically, to her locket.
‘Stanley?’ Sara said again. ‘Can you hear me?’
Her necklace was stirring something in him, but there was no way to find out what it was. Whatever was left of Stanley was entombed deep within him, impossible to reach.
Sara looked at him for a long moment and then realized what she needed to do.
She reached out and grasped Stanley’s frail fingers.