––––––––
‘Excellent. You’ve done really well.’
Rebecca winced at the words, even though she’d tried hard to keep any hint of a patronising tone out of her voice. Sometimes the words themselves were at fault, however you delivered them.
The old man blinked at her. The tip of his tongue snaked out to collect the last smear of pureed vegetables from his lips. Behind the watery film covering his eyes, she could read nothing. No recognition, no emotion.
But she told herself he appreciated her praise. It was one of the ways she got through the working day.
Rebecca collected up the dinner things - the half-empty plate, the plastic beaker of milk with its nipple-like spout - and put them on the tray. She wiped the old man’s mouth gently, again trying not to belittle him, not to give the impression that she was wiping a baby’s bottom. She removed the corner of the napkin from the collar of his cardigan where it was tucked, and deposited it too on the tray.
‘Be back in a moment with a cuppa. Okay?’
Damn. The perky cheeriness was there in her voice, as if she was humouring him. A lot of the nurses and nursing assistants did it. Even the doctors who visited the home assumed the same light-hearted approach. They meant well, as Rebecca did. But, in truth, it was difficult to know how to talk to somebody with dementia. Somebody who might not understand a word you were saying to them. But who might, deep down, respond adversely to your carefree tone, and be unable to say so.
She gave the old man’s hand a squeeze, maintaining eye contact, her expression friendly but genuine. And, for an instant, she felt a connection. Nothing tangible, nothing she could put into words. But there was a moment of contact there, between two human beings, rather than between a ninety-four-year-old man afflicted with advanced Alzheimer’s disease and his thirty-two-year-old carer.
Rebecca straightened. Through the window, the afternoon sun bathed the South Downs in mellow light. The view was spectacular, and very English, the Sussex countryside rolling away towards the distant sea in a patchwork of fields dappled with sheep and clusters of burnt-orange oak leaves which still decked the trees.
As nursing homes went, Rebecca doubted there were many better than this, or even as good.
In the corridor outside the old man’s room, Rebecca felt her phone vibrate in her pocket.
She put the brake on the dining trolley with her foot and fished out the phone.
Read the text message.
Lifted her head and stared down the corridor.
At the far end, Jasmine, one of her fellow nursing assistants, was helping another resident, a woman in her eighties stunted by arthritis, to pick her painful way towards her room. Jasmine looked up, smiled at Rebecca.
Rebecca remembered at the last instant to smile back.
She looked down at the phone in her hand again, half-convinced that the screen would be blank, or that the message would be some junk one asking her if she had been missold PPI in the last five years.
But the text was still there, terse and stark as a paper cut.
Four words, and a number.
Almost without thinking, Rebecca deleted the message.
She grasped the trolley once more and wheeled it towards the kitchen, where she deposited it just inside the doors. Then she made her way to the corridor which housed the offices.
*
‘A week.’
Rebecca’s boss was called Sheila Docherty. Her hair spilled untidily from beneath her matron’s cap. Her eyes were tired, her stout body reluctant to unwedge itself from behind her desk.
‘Yes. Probably no longer than that.’
Docherty’s gaze roved over Rebecca’s face, dropped to her hands. Rebecca held them clasped before her, as if to stop them from writhing.
‘Rebecca, you look awful,’ Docherty said. Despite her aloof, almost grim demeanour with her staff, Rebecca knew she was a sympathetic person at heart, and a shrewd one at that.
‘Not feeling great, Sheila, to be honest.’
Docherty dropped her pen on the desk and tilted her head. ‘What’s happened?’
‘My brother,’ said Rebecca. ‘He’s been in a car accident. Down in Devon. It’s... well, he’s had a head injury. He might not come round.’
It was the first lie.
Docherty’s expression softened immediately. ‘Oh, Rebecca. I’m so sorry -’
‘We’re not close,’ said Rebecca quickly. ‘But I’m his nearest relative. He’s single. Divorced. I have to go down there.’
‘Of course.’ Docherty spread her hands. ‘Forget what you said about a week. Take as long as you need.’
‘I know you’re short-staffed,’ Rebecca muttered. ‘I’ll try to get back -’
‘Forget it,’ Docherty said again. ‘Don’t even worry about it.’
‘Thanks, Sheila.’ Rebecca sucked her lips in between her teeth, as if to suppress a sob. ‘I’ll let you know what’s happening as soon as I know.’
The older woman stood up. ‘Do you need anything? Is there anyone who can go with you?’
‘No.’ Rebecca shook her head. The last thing she needed was company. ‘If I set off this evening, I can be there in a couple of hours. I’ll stay at his place. My brother’s. I’ll be fine.’
She’d never taken emergency leave before. She was a diligent, reliable worker, well liked by the residents of the nursing home and the staff alike. Docherty would probably have allowed her to take time off anyway, but Rebecca had invented the lie to speed things along.
Lying was what she was steeped in.
Docherty waved her hands, as if she’d allowed the gruffness to slip for long enough. ‘Go. Now. I’ll cover the rest of your shift.’
*
Rebecca reached the North Terminal of Gatwick Airport in fifty minutes. She left her VW Polo in the long-stay car park and made her way through the throng inside the concourse.
The first three words of the text message had said: Gatwick, Nth Terminal.
The next: Locker C26.
She could have no more avoided complying with the instruction inherent in the message than Pavlov’s dogs could have prevented themselves from salivating at the sound of his bell.
In the pocket of her jeans - which she’d changed into quickly in the car, tossing her nursing assistant’s uniform into the back seat - she felt the small hard shape of the key.
She’d kept the key with her, never more than a few feet away even when she was in bed or in the bath, for the last six years. Ever since her mother had given it to her, a couple of days before her death. A thin, superficial layer of Rebecca’s mind had told her she’d never have occasion to use it.
But, deeper, she’d known this day was as inevitable as sunrise.
She found the locker, an anonymous square block among a grid of identical ones, and inserted the key. Almost surprisingly, the door opened immediately.
Inside was a small canvas case. Rebecca drew it out, feeling something shifting within. She closed the locker and turned the key again. Then she walked towards the public toilets at the end of the passage and found an empty cubicle and bolted the door shut, before sitting on the lowered lid and unzipping the case.
Inside, she found a tiny flash drive, a mauve-coloured UK passport, a wad of euro bills – she estimated the total came to at least a couple of thousands’ worth – and a handwritten note, with a photo attached.
The passport was in her own name, Rebecca Deacon. All the other details were accurate, too: her date of birth, her home address. It was an eerie clone of her own passport.
The note read: You’re booked on one of the next three British Airways flights to Rome. Find out which one at the BA check-in desk. When you get there, find the man in the photograph. His name is John Purkiss, and this is the address where he’s staying.
A hotel listing followed, with a room number.
She read the rest of the note.
One phrase caught in her mind.
Do the necessary.
Rebecca studied the face in the photograph, absorbing the essentials, noting the benign expression, the dark hair, the direct look straight at the camera.
She tore both note and photo into tiny pieces, and flushed them down the toilet, several times, until every fragment was gone. She pocketed the flash drive.
Then made her way towards the check-in desks, her heart seeming to pump newly found blood through her vasculature, her entire body tingling as though she’d sloughed off her old dead skin and had been reborn.