JO HAD CBEEBIES on the telly and a fish pie in the oven by the time Lydia came home, Avril beside her. Both girls had shirts untucked, school jumper sleeves rolled up, coltish legs bare between skirt and socks. As always, they were taller than she expected, their long hair shoved into sloppy ponytails.
This past autumn, on the morning of the first day of school, Jo had suggested a brush. Lydia’s hair was so lovely when it was brushed smooth, falling in shiny coppery waves around her face and down her back. She’d given up any hope of the brush when she’d seen Lydia’s best friend at the door, come to pick her up for school. Avril’s hair was in a messy bun, and therefore Lydia’s would have to be, too. The two girls had dressed alike, talked alike, loved the same music and television shows, from the moment they’d met.
Lydia slammed the door and Avril sniffed the air and said, ‘It smells great in here, Mrs Merrifield.’
Jo looked up from the sink, where she was washing cherry tomatoes. ‘Fish pie. I made extra last week and froze it. You’re welcome to stay for tea, Avril.’
‘Can’t,’ said Lydia, heading out of the kitchen. ‘I just came in to get changed, then I’m going out.’
Avril gave Jo an apologetic smile. ‘We’re meeting some friends at Starbucks to revise. I hope that’s OK.’
‘No, I have to— Lydia!’ Lydia had started for her room, but she came back reluctantly. She leaned against the door frame, ready to be gone again.
‘I’ve got to go into London to see your grandmother,’ said Jo, wiping her hands on a tea towel. ‘I need you to give Oscar and Iris their tea. I should be back by nine or ten at the latest.’
‘I can’t,’ said Lydia. ‘I’ve got plans.’
‘I’m sorry, but this is more important.’
‘It’s schoolwork. We’ve got exams coming up.’ She recited it as if she were reading it off a sheet. ‘GCSEs can determine your entire future career, both academic and professional.’
‘I know, and that’s true – but Honor needs me, and it’s urgent.’
‘Why can’t Oscar and Iris come with you?’
‘I told you, I won’t get back till after their bedtime. I can’t drag them to London. Why don’t you stay here and revise? There’s plenty of fish pie, and Avril can stay here and have some, too.’
‘I arranged for us to meet Erin and Sophie at the café,’ Avril said. ‘They’re waiting for me there. Sorry, Mrs M.’
‘What about Richard?’ asked Lydia. ‘It’s about time he looked after his own kids for a change.’
‘Lydia!’
Avril looked down at her shoes, but Lydia stared right at Jo.
‘I’m not calling Richard,’ said Jo, hearing the edge in her voice. ‘There’s no time for him to get here anyway. I’m asking you, as a responsible near-adult, to look after your brother and sister for one evening while I go to see your grandmother, who needs me. And in fact, I’m not asking you – I’m telling you. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to stay at home.’
‘That is so unfair!’ Lydia turned around and stormed across the kitchen. Jo heard the door of her room slam, and sighed.
‘I’ve got to go. Sorry, Mrs M. I hope Lydia’s gran is OK.’ Avril slipped out.
Jo counted to ten, and went to Lydia’s bedroom. It was on the ground floor, across the short corridor near the front door that was always clogged with wellies and raincoats. She rapped on the door. There was no answer, so she said through the door, ‘I’m going to dish up tea before I go, but you’ll have to sit with them, even if you don’t want anything to eat yourself. And you’ll have to clear up afterwards. Don’t forget to brush their teeth.’
No reply. Jo tipped her head back and looked at the ceiling.
‘Honor has had a fall. She’s in hospital. I’m going to bring her some things from home.’
A stirring behind the door, but no answer.
‘She’s all right,’ added Jo. ‘In case you were wondering.’
She waited for several minutes, and then went to the kitchen to take the pie out of the cooker and spoon out two portions on plates to cool. Jo was about to call Lydia again when the girl came into the kitchen. She’d changed into low-slung tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt that skimmed her flat stomach. She scraped a chair against the floor and sat down at the table. Jo opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again and went to fetch her handbag and car keys.
She was still seething, still rehearsing what she should have said, the perfect words to make her teenage daughter collapse instantly into the correct contrition, when she walked through the glass doors into Homerton University Hospital reception. It wasn’t until she entered the ward that the antiseptic smell of the hospital filtered through her awareness, and Jo closed her eyes and thought, Stephen.
The telephone call, ten years ago. Ten years ago, this June. The words from a stranger. Strapping Lydia, aged six, in the back seat where she immediately fell asleep. The drive to the hospital with her hands shaking on the wheel, Jo afraid she was going to crash until the moment she turned off the ignition. Carrying her daughter into the hospital, long legs dangling, and holding her in the lift, on their way up to see Jo’s husband, Lydia’s father, where he lay in a bed with a machine breathing for him. The chemical smell of fear and the little girl, asleep and trusting in her arms.
The lift dinged and Jo opened her eyes. Her flat soft-soled boots made no sound on the polished tile floor. Outside, the light was fading, but inside the hospital it was bright midday. She pumped sanitizer on her hands and went through to the ward reception desk. ‘Hi, I’m here to see Honor Levinson?’ she said, and the nurse set off to show her the way.
The ward was full of old people in beds. Some were asleep, some watching television; one or two had relatives sitting in plastic chairs. One man was lying on his side rapidly texting into an iPhone. Honor was sleeping in a bed at the far end. Her head was wrapped in bandages.
‘My God,’ said Jo, ‘she really had a fall, didn’t she?’
‘She’s sleeping, bless her,’ said the nurse. ‘She’s only been awake for a little while since I’ve been on shift, when I took her obs. Best thing for her. The bandages make it look worse than it is – she only has a few stitches on the back of her head. I’ll see if I can get a doctor to speak with you.’
Left alone, Jo pulled a chair up to the side of Honor’s bed and looked at her. She had never seen her mother-in-law sleeping before. Awake and upright, Honor was slender and tall, but under the blanket she seemed nothing more than bones. Her skin was waxy, her cheeks sunken over her glorious cheekbones. Her mouth was half-open, showing fillings in her teeth. She had a line going into her right arm. Her breathing was soft but audible.
Jo couldn’t believe Honor had named her as next of kin. Honor would never want Jo, of all people, to see her this way.
She looked old. Her long silver hair was untidy. Not unlike Lydia’s style, thought Jo, and she reached over to neaten it, when a voice said, ‘Hello, I’m Dr Mukhtar.’
Jo straightened up almost guiltily and shook the doctor’s hand. He looked incredibly young, smooth-cheeked as if he hadn’t yet started shaving. Was that a sign of getting older, when the doctors looked like children?
‘I’m Honor’s daughter-in-law,’ she explained. ‘I came as soon as I heard she’d had a fall, as quickly as I could.’
‘Yes, a fall at home, down the stairs I think. Concussion and a head wound. The most serious injury was her hip.’
‘She broke her hip?’
‘Yes. She’s had surgery this afternoon to repair it; luckily, we were able to operate quickly. There’s some osteoporosis, which isn’t uncommon at her age, of course, but from all accounts it was quite a fall.’
‘She must have been terrified,’ Jo said.
‘Well, it says on her notes that Mrs Levinson was—’
‘Dr Levinson. She’s got a PhD; maybe two. She gets ever so cross if she’s called Mrs.’
‘Is that so,’ said the doctor politely. ‘Well, Dr Levinson was conscious when she was admitted – she rang 999 herself – but she was confused.’
‘I can’t imagine Honor confused.’
‘She was in a great deal of pain, and there was the concussion. We’ve been monitoring her carefully. At her age, a broken hip is no laughing matter. Does she live by herself?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, we’ll be keeping her in for several days whilst she recovers from the surgery, and she’ll need to talk with an Occupational Therapist to make some plan for her care when she gets out of hospital. She’ll have to have physiotherapy to restore as much mobility as possible, and she’s going to require a lot of help with day-to-day living.’
‘Of course. We’ll sort something out.’ Jo looked back down at Honor. Poor Honor, she thought, and was instantly surprised that she could ever think such a thing of her mother-in-law. She was certain that her mother-in-law had never thought such a thing of her.
Honor’s home was a tall, narrow brick house in Stoke Newington, raised from the pavement by a flight of stone stairs, which were slippery with the light falling rain. The key to the front door had been with the few belongings that had been taken with Honor into hospital. Jo let herself in and wiped her feet on the doormat, looking around.
It felt empty, inhabited by silence and the papery smell of books and dust. Jo turned on the light and saw the blood on the floor. It was a trail, crossing the hallway from the bottom of the stairs to the lounge. There was a larger patch of it near the stairs, where a laundry basket lay upside down.
‘Oh, Honor,’ Jo said. She stepped over it and went down to the kitchen to get a cloth. The teapot sat near the kettle; a tea towel was discarded on the table next to an open-spined book, but that was the only clutter – a huge contrast to the way Jo had left her own kitchen. She found paper towels and cleaning spray, rags under the sink and some carpet cleaner, and brought them upstairs.
Jo took a moment before she began cleaning, regarding the blood warily. Was it going to make her sick? She wasn’t good with bodily fluids, with vomit or wee or blood. She gagged changing Iris’s nappy sometimes, still. In the end she got down on her knees and sprayed the fluid on the stains. The scent of fake lemons covered up any smell that the blood might have had, and the stains on the floorboards came up easily enough with the spray. It was surprisingly bright red on the paper towels. It looked as though Honor had lost quite a bit of blood.
Jo’s stomach hitched and she put the back of her hand to her mouth, thinking of lemons. Round and yellow, sharp and dimpled and fresh. Lemons on trees, growing. She swallowed and bent back to her task.
The floor itself wasn’t all that clean. Dust and dirt came up with the blood; there were dust bunnies near the skirting boards. Jo worked her way across towards the stairs and nudged the laundry basket out of the way. There was something small and white crumpled underneath. Jo picked it up: a pair of knickers. She gazed up the staircase and saw another pair, and a vest, and some other things.
Honor Levinson would never leave her knickers in public view. The sight of these, lying where they’d fallen, was somehow more horrible than the sight of Honor’s blood.
Jo stood and quickly gathered the clothes together, putting them in the righted basket. She couldn’t tell if they were clean or dirty, and she wasn’t about to inspect them closely to find out. She’d take them home to wash them.
She had to stop again and put her hand to her mouth when she went into the lounge and turned on the light. It was like something out of a horror film. There was blood on the carpet here, and a large dark stain near the sagging chintz sofa. A table was overturned and the phone lay beside it. Jo righted the table, wiped blood from the phone, checked for messages. None.
Jo attacked the rug with carpet-cleaning spray and wet rags, and managed to get most of the blood out, but there was still a brown stain in the Persian weave. She double-checked the room to make sure she hadn’t missed any spots of blood, keeping her gaze trained carefully on the floor, knowing the danger in looking too carefully at the photographs on the wall. Once she was satisfied, she carried the cleaning stuff downstairs, her arms aching from the scrubbing, and threw all the rags and the paper towels in the bin. Then she washed her hands and arms with washing-up liquid and, sighing, put on the kettle for a cup of tea. She hadn’t had anything since the coffee in the café with the children this afternoon.
She’d never made so much as a cup of tea in this kitchen, in the many years she’d known Honor – she had never been allowed to – so she had to look around a bit to find the canister. She noticed, as she did, that the kitchen was tidy, but rather dirty. There were cup rings on the counter, breadcrumbs near the toaster. The cabinet doors had splashes of tea and a few fingerprints on them. The white top of the cooker was splattered with nearly-invisible grease.
This was not how she remembered Honor’s kitchen. The house, every inch of it, had always been scrupulously clean – books dusted, candlesticks polished, mirrors clear; so much so that Jo had always gone into a frenzy of cleaning of her own house before Honor’s visits. Stephen had thought she was being ridiculous. ‘My mother doesn’t care whether you dust underneath the refrigerator,’ he’d told her, but Jo was certain that she did. She knew Honor’s high standards. She knew she was wanting in Honor’s eyes.
In the end, Stephen had always taken a duster and joined in. Honor had taught him how to clean, after all, and he was good at it. He had a scientist’s methodical mind. He’d moved furniture, reorganized kitchen cabinets, reached on top of wardrobes. He’d given little Lydia her own toy broom, so she could help ‘when Granny came’.
Jo’s second husband, Richard, had thought it was funny. He laughed at her and went back to watching the football while she hoovered around him with Oscar and then, the next year, Iris strapped to her body in a baby sling. ‘She’s not even your mother-in-law any more – who cares what she thinks?’ he’d say. ‘You don’t work so hard to please my mum.’
That was because Richard’s mum, Frances, had a cleaner and never lifted a finger to wipe or polish, whereas Honor did everything, in between reading every book that had ever been written, writing articles, picking apart theories and arguments. Honor cleaned and polished that entire tall house filled with the furniture her parents had bought, listening to Tchaikovsky. And that was why Jo had refused when Richard had said he’d hire a cleaner, although Honor’s visits were few and far between. She wished she’d put up more of a fight against hiring an au pair.
When was the last time Jo had seen Honor? She’d sent a card at Mother’s Day … had it been Christmas?
Christmas. Or rather the week before Christmas, when Lydia’s school had finished for the holiday. When Jo had bundled Lydia and Oscar and Iris into the car and paid the congestion charge and driven into London so that she could spend two hours trying to keep her small children’s sticky hands off the books, explaining to Oscar that Granny Honor didn’t have a Christmas tree because she was Jewish, stumbling over the explanation as Honor sat, straight-backed, watching her as if waiting for her to make a mistake. They had gone as soon as they could leave, obligation honoured.
So: nearly four months ago. It wasn’t good enough. Honor was Lydia’s only living relative except for distant great-aunts on Jo’s side of the family. Jo should have made more of an effort.
Jo drank her tea quickly, scalding hot. The milk was near its use-by date; Jo poured it down the sink and threw a tub of coleslaw and a bag of salad in the bin. There were eggs and yoghurts and bananas with a few days left in them, and a small block of cheese, which she put in a plastic bag to take home along with the laundry. She gave the entire kitchen a quick wipe-down, unplugged the kettle and the toaster, emptied the bin and took the bag outside. Then she went upstairs to pack some things for Honor in the hospital.
This is me riding to the rescue, Jo thought. Not on a white horse or with superpowers. I remove stains and save bananas from certain death.
She moved quietly through the house like a ghost, past the towering bookshelves and the dark furniture, being careful not to notice that she wasn’t in any of the silver- and gold-framed photographs.