TWENTY

‘Last Saturday, Eddie, you remember? You came back to Faraday Road, back to the house. And you saw Simmy. Simmy from next door. And you had a look round the shops. Is that what you did? Did you go anywhere else? Eddie?’

‘I’m cold.’

‘They’ve almost finished the loft conversion next door.’

Eddie nodded as though she understood.

‘Such a disruption for poor Dave and Simmy. And Gus. You remember Gus who wears a fisherman’s cap.’

‘I’m cold.’

‘Poor Simmy hasn’t got a mother. She died when Simmy was very young. Cancer, I expect. Dave won’t tell her what happened. I’ve no idea why.’

Eddie looked up with interest but it was only because the old man, sitting opposite, was fiddling with the zip on his trousers. ‘The new loft conversion, Eddie, all those vans and skips and scaffolders. And it’s going to stick out at the back and throw shade onto part of our garden. You remember Noel?’ Jane’s eyes filled with tears. Of sadness, or was it fear? ‘You liked Noel, he made you laugh.’

‘Is it time?’

‘Those balconies are dangerous. I dislike the things. No planning permission required, or if there is it’s minimal. And the builders make such a racket. Radio One – or it could be some local station, I suppose. Love, love, love, I loved her and she left. And I’m bereft.’ Jane laughed out loud, a nervous reaction since there was nothing amusing about love and loss. Earlier in the day she had bumped into Willa in floods of tears. Oh, Jane, I can’t bear it. He was so young. I mean, he wasn’t old. It’s so awful, such a shock.

‘Is it time?’ Eddie was struggling to fit her foot into one of her slippers. They were the kind that have no left or right foot but she looked as if she was checking which was which. And working herself up into a state.

‘You remember Arthur? No, I don’t think you knew him. Brian and Willa’s son. He’s fifteen, coming up to sixteen, and I’m giving him some extra tuition in English grammar.’

‘Gramma Moses.’ Eddie kicked away her slippers, and farted.

Where had she been that afternoon? Not shoplifting – she had nothing in her pockets – although she could have stolen food and eaten it. When Mrs Cardozo spotted her, she had been outside the pet shop, sniffing some bundles of hay. Then she stepped into the road. Where had she been before that?

Sometimes it was as though she was deliberately being obtuse. She had always had a streak of obstinacy and, despite the devastating effect of her illness, some of her personality remained intact. Now and again, when she was still living at home, she had remembered something from long ago with an accuracy Jane found incredible. We had a puncture and a boy with red hair changed the wheel and we gave him ten pounds. That was long-term memory. Short-term was a different matter, but short-term meant literally a few minutes ago. What about last weekend?

A woman Jane had never seen before had entered the room. Jane said hello and the woman, who had white hair, so thin her scalp showed through, nodded and smiled.

‘Eddie and I worked together, at a local comprehensive school.’

‘Yes, I know.’

Did she mean Eddie had told her? Perhaps the weekend at home had jogged her memory. The woman looked more “with it” than Eddie who was muttering something about cadmium yellow.

‘Yes, we looked at your paintings. In the loft. Your studio. You came back for the weekend and on the Saturday you went for a little walk and Mrs Cardozo from the café brought you home.’

A shrug of annoyance, like a child who has been told off.

The other woman stood up, smoothed her skirt, and sat down again.

‘Eddie used to teach art,’ Jane said.

‘Yes, I know.’

The Spruces encouraged creativity and there had been an incident when Eddie had been offered some crayons and a sheet of paper and had thrown them on the ground and stamped the crayons into the carpet. Jane had some sympathy with her although the member of staff, who had no knowledge she had been an artist, would have meant well.

One of the helpers – Jane had never seen her before – wheeled in a tray of tea things. Visitors were offered a cup of tea and a rich tea biscuit but Jane rarely accepted. There was something about the smell of the place that took away her already meagre appetite.

‘Hello.’ The helpers probably welcomed a brief, comprehensible conversation. ‘I’m a friend of Miss Knox, Eddie. We used to live together. My name’s Jane.’

‘Clara,’ the woman said. ‘I come yesterday.’

To work at The Spruces or from her native country? No, surely no one could obtain a job that quickly. Although you never knew. A builder from Latvia, who was working in Faraday Road had come to live with relatives, speaking no English, and now spoke fluently and worked from seven in the morning to nine o’clock at night.

Declining the offer of tea, Jane turned back to Eddie. ‘You remember Simmy who lives next door? They’re converting the loft in her house. The usual upheaval and noise and I wondered ... I thought you might have gone up there to have a look.’

‘Loft,’ Eddie said.

‘Yes, that’s right. Did you see Noel? You remember Noel. Dark hair and very bright blue eyes.’ Jane turned to the white-haired woman. ‘Eddie came home last weekend.’

‘Yes, I know.’

Mercifully, the sound on the television had been turned down low. Jane recognised an actor from Eastenders – the one who had been murdered the previous week. Eastenders was Jane’s guilty secret. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Half an hour of non-stop conflict and misery. Why guilty? Human beings loved stories. Dickens’ novels had been serialised in the newspaper. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft, black drizzle. It would have taken a whole episode of Bleak House to get beyond the London smog. Jane was attached to the book – she had studied it for A-level – and when she tried to sort out Eddie’s bank and building society accounts, following her admission to The Spruces, she had discovered nothing much had changed, with regard to the legal profession. Frustrated by delays and loss of paperwork, she had made a light-hearted remark about Jarndyce and Jarndyce. It had not gone down well.

‘Teatime, Eddie.’ No point asking any more questions. Her prompts about Saturday afternoon only irritated. She would have to be patient and hope Eddie inadvertently let slip where she had been.

Somewhere in the building, she could hear Matron’s booming voice complaining about a ladder. Eddie’s window, a wooden one, had been replaced by double-glazed PVC – but the builders were still hard at work – although, by the sound of it, not as hard as Matron would have liked.

‘Eddie?’ Jane decided to have one final try. ‘You remember how you came back to the house last weekend? Back to Faraday Road. And you saw Simmy and after that you walked down to the shops. Did you go anywhere else? They’re having the loft converted next door. In Dave and Gus’ house. And sometimes the front door is left open although not normally on Saturdays.’ She had said too much, made it too complicated. ‘Did you go up the loft in Dave and Simmy’s house?’

‘Loft,’ Eddie said.

‘Yes, that’s right. You might have wanted to see it. If you did, it doesn’t matter, but can you remember – was Noel there?’

‘Is it time?’

‘Time for what?’ Jane’s voice had been too sharp. ‘Noel, Eddie, you remember Noel.’

‘Go away.’

Jane felt hot with frustration. Was there a keyword that would make the cells in Eddie’s brain wake up? ‘I’ll have to go home in a minute, Eddie. I just wanted to make sure nothing was worrying you.’

‘Is it time?’

Matron’s head came round the door. ‘Ah, you’re still here, Miss Seymour. Good. I wondered if Edwina left her hairbrush at your house. Naturally, we found her a new one, but she rejected it, insisting it didn’t belong to her.’

‘I’ll check when I return home.’ Surely they could have ignored Eddie’s demands and the wretched brush would have been forgotten in a matter of days. Where was it? Had it been packed in her overnight bag? Had she taken it up to next door’s half-finished loft conversion?

‘If you would.’ Matron was smiling too much. She suspected something? How could she? And if she did, surely she would have come straight out with it. Jane took a grip on herself, accepting a rich tea biscuit and a cup of tepid tea.

‘As I think I told you before,’ she lied, ‘once she’d looked round the house, and greeted the cat, she had a sleep. No, first she had her lunch, then a sleep. She was tired. Not surprising really when she hadn’t been back to the house for some time.’ She was talking too fast, stumbling over her words. ‘The hairbrush. Don’t worry, I’m sure it will turn up.’

‘Oh, we’re not worried, Miss Seymour.’ Matron straightened a rug. ‘We just like to keep the residents as calm as possible, I’m sure you understand. When you brought her back on Saturday evening she did appear particularly agitated. Nothing happened to alarm her, did it?’

‘No, I told you. I made sure of that.’

‘Perhaps she picked up on how upset you were feeling. Do you suppose that was it? The new tablets doctor prescribed seem to be having the required effect.’

‘I gave her one, like you said.’ Had she, or had there been no chance? Matron had insisted it must not be taken until after lunch, and then Simmy had turned up. Or had she given it to Eddie before that? Did it matter? Would it have made any difference?

Matron’s tall, angular body was receding into the distance. As Jane watched, she turned, catching at a thick lock of hair that had blown across her face. She suspected something, Jane was sure of it, but what? Or did she simply want to underline how difficult Eddie had been since her one night at home? Your idea, Matron, arranged to suit the carpenter or whoever it was that repaired the bedroom window. And your choice of a weekend. No, probably the only weekend the window man could come. And the weekend Noel decided to check the balcony in his wretched loft conversion. And she let Eddie slip through her fingers because she was too busy being nice to Simmy.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all. Poor old Hamlet, someone else who didn’t know whether he was coming or going.