Donovan let go of me when we entered the living room. John’s shopping bag banged against my hip as I stepped clear of him.
John was already seated in his favourite armchair, his bony hands clutching the armrests, staring fixedly ahead. He seemed only vaguely aware of our presence and he showed no signs of interest when Donovan crossed the room and drew the heavy curtains, the brass curtain rings clinking sharply, everything becoming dim and indistinct until he clicked on a floor lamp.
A strange second of dislocation.
In some ways, it was like travelling back to how our place had looked two years ago. There was a lot of dark-brown furniture and a wall-to-wall carpet. A threadbare three-piece suite and full-length fabric curtains. A boxy television in the corner and a low coffee table scattered with a newspaper, dirty cups, John’s magnifying glass.
I twisted the handles of the plastic bag around my fingers, feeling increasingly uneasy.
‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘I’ve done everything you asked me to do. Let’s go.’
But Donovan didn’t respond. He was too preoccupied carrying out a fast survey of the room, running his eyes and fingertips over the fireplace and a glass display cabinet, craning his neck to peer behind a chair, tilting a low bookcase away from the skirting board as if he was a spy searching for hidden listening devices or a miniature camera.
I didn’t know what he was looking for, or why, and I was almost certain I didn’t want to know.
‘What’s in the bag?’ he asked me, without looking my way.
I ignored him, which prompted him to puff air from his cheeks, as if I was exhausting his patience.
‘Sam takes the District Line, right? Those trains can come in pretty fast. You do understand I can call my contact back any time I like?’
‘Is that supposed to scare me?’
‘It does scare you. It should scare you. So just tell me what’s in the bag.’
I delayed a moment longer, then raised it and looked down.
The bag was moderately heavy. I parted the handles and peered inside.
Not that I needed to because I already knew what I’d find.
‘Well?’
Donovan had progressed to tugging the curtains away from the wall and scanning the skirting board beneath the bay window.
‘Cat food,’ I told him. ‘Two tins.’
He absorbed that for a second, then allowed the curtains to flap closed and crossed towards John, crouching in front of him, peering into his face.
‘Where’s your cat, John?’ He waved a gloved hand in front of John’s glazed eyes. ‘Where is your cat?’
‘Barnaby?’ John’s voice trembled. ‘Oh, he’ll be back before long. Barnaby is always hungry.’
Donovan turned, snatching up the television remote and switching on the TV.
The volume was loud. An early-evening quiz show. The hosts and the contestants were too happy and smug for the moment, the colours too vibrant.
‘This way,’ Donovan told me, tossing the remote aside. ‘Bring that bag with you.’
He swept out into the hallway without waiting for my response, and after glancing at John one last time, I followed him, watching as he stepped into the former dining room that was now John’s bedroom, finding a light switch on the wall.
I edged inside after him, watching as he went through a similar routine to the one he’d carried out in the front room. First, he ducked down behind the old hospital bed Sam had sourced for John, with its painted and scratched metal railings, and the primitive electrical control panel that allowed him to raise and lower the bed. Then he closed the curtains, nearly upsetting the tray table with a framed photograph and some of John’s meds on it as he completed his sweep of the room, again paying close attention to the skirting boards and the area behind the door while ignoring the framed picture of a cricket scene on the wall, before taking the shopping bag from me and moving on into the kitchen.
He opened the bag as he entered, reaching inside for one of the cans and then barking, ‘Christ!’ and raising his right foot in the air as he almost stepped into a bowl of cat food down on the floor. Inside the bowl was a congealed mix of paste and kibble.
‘Stinks in here.’
He looked around him until his gaze zeroed in on the landline phone fixed to the far wall, close to the yellowed, freestanding fridge.
Based on his reaction, I gathered it was what he’d been hunting for in the other rooms he’d been searching, and I watched with a deep sense of trepidation as he set the shopping bag down on the small Formica table and crossed towards it, snatching the handset off the wall, trailing a springy spiral cord, then looking all around him before spying a pot of kitchen utensils from which he removed a pair of scissors that he used to snip through the spiral cable and then through the phone line connected to the wall unit.
There was a pedal bin close by and he stamped on it until the lid flipped open, then dropped the handset inside and, after a moment’s thought, added the scissors, too.
He took his foot off the pedal and the lid clanged shut, but already something else had attracted his attention.
He was peering curiously at the many tins of cat food stacked on the kitchen countertop on the other side of the room. There had to be twenty or twenty-five tins altogether.
Donovan strode towards them, then snatched open the doors of a cupboard above the counter.
He stepped back.
The cupboard was filled with yet more cat food.
‘He goes every day,’ I explained. ‘It’s his routine.’
Donovan nodded slowly and picked up the shopping bag again, removing the two new tins John had just purchased and stacking them on the counter alongside the others. He then scrunched the empty bag into a ball in his hands, passing it between his palms as if it was a thinking aid.
‘Tell me about the rest of his routine.’
If he was impacted by the reality of John’s dementia, he didn’t show it.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Where else does he go? Who else does he see?’
‘Nobody.’
He frowned, unconvinced.
‘Nobody except Sam,’ I told him. ‘And me, sometimes.’
‘What about a cleaner? Or a carer?’
I hesitated.
‘Don’t lie to me. Not again.’
‘We get a cleaning agency in,’ I told him carefully. ‘About once a month.’
‘When are they next due?’
My eyes travelled to the calendar on the wall behind him. Sam had circled a date a couple of weeks away in red. I didn’t like these questions. I hated to think where he was going with them.
‘A fortnight.’
‘Doctor?’
My voice dropped. ‘John hasn’t been in a while.’
‘Kids? Other relatives?’
‘No.’
‘His wife’s dead?’
I stared at him, a cold sensation streaking up my arms and legs.
‘There are photographs of them together,’ he explained with a jerk of his chin. ‘In the living room. On the tray table next to the hospital bed. On the fridge here. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?’
I glanced at the portrait shot on the fridge. It was an image taken from decades before, of John in his prime in his police uniform, his chest puffed out, Mary at his side, beaming.
‘Plus you told me earlier he was retired and lived alone, there’s no evidence of a woman’s things in that living room, and from the state of his clothes and this place generally . . .’
He left the rest unsaid but it was clear he hadn’t missed much.
That worried me. Because he’d also studied the photos of me and Sam in our home. What had he deduced from those, I wondered? What conclusions had he drawn from touring our house?
‘When did she die?’
‘About a year and a half ago,’ I told him quietly, glancing behind me over my shoulder. But I needn’t have worried about John overhearing us. He was in his own head right now. And the TV was too loud. I could hear the quizmaster joking with his co-presenter. ‘She had a fall on the stairs. Broke her hip. There were complications with her recovery in hospital. She never made it back home.’
‘So who looks after him?’
‘We do,’ I said. ‘Me and Sam.’
But mostly Sam.
Sam’s grandparents had been good friends with John and Mary. They’d lived next door to one another for most of their lives. And John and Mary – perhaps because they’d never had kids of their own – had taken a shine to Sam. They’d sent him birthday cards and Christmas gifts. Sam had been fond of them in turn.
It had been rough for Sam when he’d lost his grandparents. His parents had been killed in a car smash when he was only a teenager and so, when his grandfather and later his grandmother died, he’d felt properly like an orphan for the first time.
Like me.
I understood that was one of the bonds that had connected us, but it was also why Sam spent so much of his time caring for John. He’d call round most mornings before work and every evening to make sure everything was OK, which is why he had a key to John’s place. I’d got into the habit of cooking meals for Sam to bring over for him, too.
I loved Sam for doing it. I liked that he was so kind. But I think we’d both known for a while now it had been nearing the point where John was going to need more support than we could give him. I’d mentioned it to Sam several times, as considerately as I could. He’d nodded glumly and told me I was probably right, but he hadn’t acted on it yet.
I got that it was part of why he’d been so stressed about putting our place on the market. Once we had a buyer and the prospect of selling became truly real, everything with John would come to a head. I suspected Sam carried a lot of guilt about that.
‘Now can we go?’ I asked.
Donovan passed the bag between his hands some more, tilting his head from side to side as though he was running through the pros and cons of my suggestion. He pressed his lips together and made a small noise in his throat as if he’d reached a decision. Then he unfurled the bag and snapped it in the air so that it billowed and expanded.
‘Afterwards,’ he told me.
‘After what?’
But instead of answering me, he rushed out of the room with the bag.