‘Hey, Lola Nan.’ I kissed her withered cheek.
She gazed at me blankly. I expected her hand to tap thin air, but it didn’t. She sat very still, looking so terribly lost a bolt of guilt went through my stomach. That hurt, I can tell you. I gritted my teeth, and made the grimace into a sort of smile. She wouldn’t know the difference.
At least she had her own room. There were sepia pictures of Granda in an army uniform, and an old primary school picture of me and Allie, Allie solemn and dark, me scowling, my arms round my sister. Not the best picture we ever had taken but probably the age she best remembered us at. Mum thinks of things like that.
The place smelt of cabbage and pee and Dettol. It reminded me of the hospital, and I found it unsettling, but Lola Nan didn’t look unhappy. The floor was lino, streaky-patterned like blue bacon, and the bed was all white sheets and metal bars, except for the pink fluffy hot-water bottle we’d bought her last Christmas. There was a red alarm cord. Several, actually: one by the bed, one by the basin, one near the shiny PVC armchair. I wondered if she’d ever have her head together enough to pull any of them. I peered out of the window. Below me was a patch of grass and a flowerbed that had been emptied for the winter, bare and loamy. Between the gables of the roof you could see quite a lot of sky.
I sat down beside her, laid my hand on her chair arm. Smiling sideways at me, she rested her hand on mine, then began to pat it, rhythmically. I stared down at her hand bouncing off mine, not knowing why it made me so uneasy. Then I smiled back.
Her brow creased. ‘You’re Nick,’ she said, her eyes brightening.
‘Yes.’ I felt absurdly flattered and happy. ‘I’m Nick.’ And even if she never recognised me again, that was fine. Somewhere in that pinball-head was Lola Nan, and she knew me.
‘You said you’d visit me,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry, Lola Nan. I’ve been, um … I haven’t been well.’
‘Oh.’ She rocked a little in her armchair, patted my hand. Pat, pat. ‘Oh dear.’
We sat in silence for a while. It was fine.
She said, ‘What happened to that boy?’
‘Who, Lola Nan?’
‘Me, Lola Nan. That’s me. I’m here.’
‘No, no, no.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘The Boy. That boy who always talked to me. Fair hair. Tall. Lovely manners, so he had.’
There were spiders running up and down my vertebrae. I was watching her hand, the one that was patting mine. You know what? If my hand was invisible, it would look like she was patting a cushion of air. I curled my fingers round hers to hold them still.
‘He always talked to me,’ she said, nodding. ‘Lovely boy. Where’s he gone?’
I found my voice. ‘I don’t know, Lola Nan.’
‘Is he coming back?’ She tugged her fingers out of mine, began patting my hand again. Pat, pat. ‘I wish he’d come back.’ Pat, pat.
I hoped not. I pulled my hand away quite violently. ‘I have to go, Lola Nan.’
Her fingers hovered, then she clenched her knobbly fist and looked at me sadly. ‘He won’t come back, will he?’
‘No,’ I said after a small hesitation. ‘But I will. I’ll come back and visit. I promise.’
Her eyes sparked and she smiled at me.
I closed the door of her room as softly as I could and then I got out of there, fast as I could. I wasn’t much use at running yet but I tried. At least she was on the ground floor.
The big front door was too far away and I was in pain again. The sick-yellow carpet advanced and receded before my eyes; I needed to breathe air that wasn’t sodden with chemicals and cabbage and body fluids. Now. I fumbled at the fire door.
When I clanked the security bar down and shoved out into the street, sucking in great breaths of fresh air, the weather had turned. Autumn wasn’t autumn any more, I thought as I stared at the lacework of stripped trees against an ice-blue sky. I’d only been in Lola Nan’s overheated cell for half an hour, but winter had set in while my back was turned.
Oh fine. Yeah. It was winter.
And that would account for the frost in my spine.