Mike won the tussle of the care home and Nanna was placed in one near him called ‘Lifehaven’, where a vacancy had just come up. An ominous phrase, which I refrained from remarking on. There are some incredibly good care homes in Britain, but Nanna was not in one of them. Smack opposite HM Prison Nottingham, ‘Lifehaven’ was a modern brick building on a busy intersection, with narrow corridors and low ceilings. It was to this place that we crawled through traffic and hangovers after Granny Pat’s funeral.
I got an email from Susie. She wrote at the end ‘Any progress on the elephant in the room?’
That could have meant anything with our family. So much went on and so little was acknowledged that we basically grew up in an elephant enclosure. But in this case I knew what she meant.
From the very beginning I had wondered whether she had been serious. I hadn’t been completely serious. It was a joke to me, bumping her off. But now she was chasing me up on the project. Perhaps it wasn’t a joke to her. Though maybe it was a ploy to pull me towards her, and get some filial attention? It was true that over many years I had – out of suspicion – withdrawn to what I considered a safe distance, i.e. about a thousand miles.
I had in the past few months begun to understand her wish. I could now see a good argument for cutting from the script of life the last painful, bewildering and humiliating act in its entirety. I had to admit that killing yourself in a manner and at a time of your own choice, to escape gathering dementia and/or chronic agonising pain, made some sense. Who wanted a life lived in hot airless rooms with ever more infrequent and meaningless visits from strangers who insisted they were your family? Every sane middle-aged person has a fear of ending up slumped in a plastic wingback chair in a circle of other gaga geriatrics, while some failed actor tries to get them to sing Over the Rainbow.
As we waited to be admitted to ‘Lifehaven’, we had to sign a register, because of, I believe, fire-safety regulations, as if this paper book would somehow survive any conflagration. Or, with the building going up in flames, the chief fireman would lick his thumb and go slowly through the pages and say ‘hang on. Someone didn’t sign out last Thursday. That man there! Go back in and look for him.’
The fire door clicked open to reveal an anxious elderly woman in her coat with handbag and cigs looking like she was about to nip out for a fag. A large woman with short straight blond hair pulled her back. Apparently she stood there all day trying to slip out. Escape was on the minds of those on both sides of the road.
Keren Wilson’s research had not been totally ignored. The doors to the bedrooms that lined the corridor were brightly painted in primary colours and featured numbers and knockers to make them look like front doors of real homes. But that was about it. With sinking heart I entered the day room. It was an unpromising polygon with two concrete pillars in the middle and a view of the traffic through one window and a scruffy patch of grass through another. I looked around at the nodding heads and gaping mouths, feeling the torpor grip me.
A man in a collarless shirt and grey braces inched past me on a frame mumbling to himself. He wasn’t the kind of person you wanted to ask ‘How are you?’ to.
Nanna had been there three months, and I was not expecting her to recognise us. But she raised a tiny feeble hand and croaked ‘I’m over here!’ And as we came close she said ‘I’m so glad you came Amanda. I’m so happy to see you.’ She eyed me suspiciously. ‘Did he have to come with you?’ she asked.
While we made a clumsy half-sitting, half-standing group around her, Nanna started introducing us to the other patients. ‘That’s Arthur.’ An old man with wispy white hair and a huge nose stared at us from his wingback. ‘He’s gone fragile in his legs. His mind is perfect. Isn’t it Arthur?’
Arthur waved warmly.
‘He lived in a respite care home in Knutsford, didn’t you? He pays every week. That’s Marjorie. She checks the doors and tidies up. That’s Ilene. We don’t talk unless we have to. This is my Amanda, I told you about …’ she beamed from her sunken, toothless face. I noticed murmurs of recognition and approval from the patients, and a couple of the staff came through and said hello to us.
‘We know all about you, Amanda,’ said another visitor, ‘your granny is the life and soul of the day room. She’s always telling us about you. You have a shop, yes?’
I sat down, and watched, astonished.
I thought Nanna would be dying, but here she was holding Amanda’s hand, crying with happiness.
It wasn’t over at all.
Over the next few weeks Mike phoned in with progress reports. ‘She’s at last getting the social life she was denied by that husband. She’s been scared to come out of her house for 60 years and now she’s got the chance to make some friends and have some fun. It’s bloody brilliant. She’s lapping it up. She’s even got a boyfriend: Craig the handyman. He adores her. They’ve got her on protein shakes and she’s put on five pounds. She’s basically bald but I haven’t seen her this healthy for years and she acts like she’s Diana Dors.’
I remembered a few of the things I had said only months ago about it being best for all if Nanna were allowed to die. I hoped Mike and Amanda had forgotten them.
Nanna’s house had meanwhile been sold. They got 120 grand for it. One-hundred-and-twenty weeks, or three years, of care-home bills.
‘We can forget about getting any cash from the house, worst luck,’ Mike laughed. ‘At this rate she’s going to go on for years. It wouldn’t surprise me if she entered herself for the Manchester half marathon.’