Two weeks later
Ella was sitting at the kitchen table when Claire came down from her shower. She was playing with one of Bernard’s old board games, which they’d fetched down from the loft while looking for familiar things he might like to have around him at the care home. Noting that she hadn’t quite got the hang of the rules, Claire reached to slide her counter back to the tip of a snake’s tail, much to her daughter’s dismay. ‘It’s up the ladders and down the snakes, sweetheart,’ she reminded her.
‘But Mummy, I won.’ Ella pointed to the number 99 square she’d landed on, her little forehead knitted into an uncomprehending frown.
‘But not fairly. It’s no fun playing if there’s no challenge,’ Claire pointed out, picking up her phone from the work surface and checking it. Still no reply from Luke to the text she’d sent him reminding him he was due to have Ella today. Now what should she do? There was no way she could take her to the care home with her. She didn’t want her upset when they had to say goodbye to her father.
‘Yes it is,’ Ella insisted. ‘I like sliding up the snakes.’
Claire couldn’t help but smile at her earnest expression. Sliding up snakes would be a bit of a challenge, she supposed. ‘Why don’t you go and help Grandad sort through his photographs?’ she suggested, nodding towards the lounge, where her dad was engrossed in a lifetime’s worth of distant recollections, miraculously preserved in the most intimate detail. His more recent memories, though, were falling from his mind like snowflakes in spring, melting away to be lost forever. How long would it be before she too was gone from his past? And what about Sophie? Did she exist in his memory?
‘Okay.’ Seeming to understand that Claire needed her support, Ella nodded good-naturedly and slid from her chair. Having a wise head on her shoulders, she seemed aware that her grandad was diminishing alongside her growing up. With her own sad memories of childhood, Claire had wished dearly that Ella might be untouched by such heartbreak. More than anything, she’d wanted to make sure her baby was surrounded by the security blanket of the family she herself had never had. With her mother dead, her father had been the only constant in her life. He was still here physically, a living, breathing entity, but this man, whose mind was being stolen, whose moods alternated between forgetfulness and frustration, childishness and anger, wasn’t the person she knew. It was as if his personality had been drained from him, leaving just a shrunken shell.
Would he recall details she was desperate to know about if she asked him? Trying to decide whether she should, Claire sighed and wandered across to the fridge to check what she had in for lunch – his last lunch here. She should probably ask him what he fancied, since he’d decided the chicken liver pâté she’d served him yesterday was fish paste and had promptly spat it out.
Hearing him chatting to Ella as she headed for the lounge, she paused at the open door, her breath catching as she took in what would appear to be a normal, happy family scene. Her father was sitting on the sofa, Ella tucked up close to his side, studying the photo album that was open on his lap.
‘Who’s that strange boy, Grandad?’ she asked, pointing at one of the photographs and then glancing expectantly up at him.
‘That’s no stranger.’ Bernard turned to eye her with surprise. ‘That’s me.’
Twirling a strand of hair around her finger, Ella looked at him thoughtfully and then back to the photo. ‘It’s not.’ She giggled, unconvinced. ‘You’ve got a lived-in face, Grandad.’
She was repeating something he’d told her. ‘Old faces are lived-in faces,’ he’d once said, when she had asked him about the deep grooves in his forehead. ‘Behind these lines is a lifetime of experience,’ he’d assured her. Claire gulped back a lump in her throat. What good did that experience do him now?
‘It is so,’ her father insisted. ‘Look, see the name underneath? What does that say?’
A furrow knitting her brow, Ella slowly enunciated the letters of the name written beneath the photo. ‘B… e… r…’
‘Bernard,’ her dad finished. ‘That’s right. Aged nineteen I was then. And that…’ he indicated the photograph, ‘was my first motorbike.’
His pride and joy. Claire felt her heart ache for him as she saw the nostalgic glint in his eye. It was still there in the garage: a BSA 250cc. She imagined it would be a collector’s item by now. Up until a year or so ago, he would tinker with it most weekends, before the merciless disease stripped away his ability to do anything that brought him any kind of contentment.
‘Do you still ride it, Grandad?’ Ella asked.
He frowned. ‘No, petal, not any more. Not for some years now.’
Claire hesitated; then, since he seemed to be having a period of clarity, she decided to broach the subject she was burning to ask him about. ‘Do you have any photographs of Sophie, Dad?’ she said, making sure to keep her tone casual.
Her dad’s gaze snapped to hers, a combination of alarm and bewilderment in his eyes. ‘Who?’ he asked.
Claire’s stomach knotted nervously. ‘Sophie,’ she said. ‘I just wondered…’
But he had looked away, his face clouding over. He reached for the remote control from the occasional table, flicked the TV on and settled back to watch it almost as if he hadn’t heard her.
Claire felt a prickle of apprehension run through her. But she’d noted his glazed expression and realised there was no point in pursuing it. He’d moved on, or back possibly. His mind was elsewhere.
‘I’ll just pop to the loo,’ she said, sighing inwardly. ‘And then I’ll get us some lunch. Ham salad all right, Dad?’
He glanced at her, puzzled. ‘Sorry?’
‘Ham salad, for lunch,’ she repeated.
‘Perfect.’ He smiled and turned back to the TV.
Claire tried to quash the doubt niggling away at her. For a second or two, she’d thought he’d recognised the name. In reality, she’d probably just confused him. Throwing something randomly into a conversation was bound to do that. Reprimanding herself for not approaching the subject more carefully, she determined not to mention it again until she’d gathered more information.
Leaving her dad to the house makeover programme he seemed engrossed in, she extended her hand to Ella. ‘Need the loo, sweetheart?’ she asked her.
He would never intentionally do anything to harm or upset Ella, she was sure of that, despite what Luke had said. The fact was, though, sometimes he didn’t know what he was doing. One minute he would be sitting, apparently content, watching TV. The next he would bawl at it. That frightened Ella, who couldn’t possibly understand. As did his hiding his slippers in cupboards or behind cushions in case someone stole them. It had been funny at first, until he’d accused Ella of doing the stealing.
Once upstairs, Claire took the opportunity to remind Ella that her grandad would be going to live in his nice new home today. Ella nodded slowly, and then went quiet. It was obvious she was thinking it through and would no doubt have questions.
They were heading back along the landing when she asked the inevitable one. ‘Why does Grandad have to go and live in another home, Mummy?’ Her summer-blue eyes were troubled, and Claire felt her heart dip.
‘Because he’ll be safer there, darling,’ she answered softly. ‘There are nurses there who will look after him. He’ll make loads of new friends, too. That will be nice for him, won’t it?’
‘But we’ll still be his friends, won’t we?’ was Ella’s next anxious question.
‘Of course. We’ll visit him lots.’ Claire squeezed her hand as they reached the hall.
Ella appeared to digest this. ‘Mummy,’ she said after a second, ‘will Daddy be coming back to live here?’
That floored Claire, coming as it did completely out of the blue. Before she was able to formulate an answer, Ella spoke again.
‘I think he’s lonely,’ she said sadly.
‘I… don’t know, sweetheart,’ Claire said. ‘We both need some time to have a think. We’re still friends, though, so we’ll see him whenever you want.’
Again Ella nodded, but this time she dropped her gaze, telling Claire she wasn’t wholly convinced.
God, Claire hated this, pretending to their child that her father hadn’t broken her heart. When she’d spoken to him on the phone about access arrangements, he’d promised he would be there for her. That he would see Ella on alternate weekends and help out during the week if she needed him to. He’d also said she could call on him if she needed to in an emergency, which this was. Disappointed, she checked her texts again, wondering whether to ring the care home and let them know they were delayed.
She was surprised to find her dad in the kitchen when she went in, busying himself with the preparation of the salad. Noting the sharp knife he was chopping vigorously away at the cucumber with, she approached him with caution. ‘Careful, Dad,’ she warned him. ‘We don’t want to be fishing fingers out of the salad.’
He paused and glanced at her questioningly. ‘We’re not having fish fingers, are we?’
She smiled sadly. ‘No, Dad. Ham, remember?’ Pointless question. He’d already gone back to his task.
‘Clear the board game up, sweetheart,’ she said to Ella, fetching the ham from the fridge. ‘Lunch is nearly ready.’
‘In a sec,’ said Ella, rattling the dice cup. ‘I just want to climb up the big ladder.’
‘Now, please.’ Claire gave her a no-nonsense look as she walked back across the kitchen.
And then stopped dead as Bernard said, ‘Do as your mother says, Sophie.’