take her to the GP?’
John, not the greatest fan of the NHS having worked on the inside, pulls a face. ‘Half the time what’s wrong with people is the last set of pills the doc prescribed.’ He pulls out his tobacco pouch and papers. ‘Not much can be done about TIA, anyway, apart from putting her on blood-pressure medication, and she’s already on that.’
‘I wish she was closer to the doctor. Why’d she have to move out here, miles from all the stuff old people need?’
John’s faded blue eyes meet mine, telling me I know the answer. She came back to end where she began. Where her mother and father are buried, in the churchyard at St James’s. A neat little roll-up starts taking shape between his fingers. ‘And how are you? he says.
‘Hey, you know. Same old.’
The busy fingers pause. He cocks his head on one side. ‘Different hair. Red for danger, is it, this week?’
‘Think it works?’
‘Honestly?’ He pulls a couple of errant strands of tobacco from the end of the roll-up, and stands up to light it from the candle burning on the mantelpiece. Imbolc, of course: I’d forgotten. John always lights a white candle for Imbolc. ‘No. Prefer you brunette. Remember when you did it blue? Though even that was marginally preferable to the raven-black interlude.’
‘That was my sad Goth phase. I was thirteen. This’ll fade when I wash it.’
John settles back in his chair. The ever-changing colours of my hair, which he maintains are an indicator of the state of my psyche, and I insist are no more than fun, has long been a bone of contention between us. ‘How’s your new-year resolution going?’
‘John. I’m hardly Feckless Young Ladette Binge Drinker of the Decade.’
‘You were putting away a fair bit before Christmas.’
‘You’re not used to what media people drink in London. I was…winding down.’
He shakes his head. ‘Looked more like depression to me. I was worried the helicopter crash had brought back…other stuff.’
‘No.’ I push down hard on a surfacing memory of my mother under the trees in Tolemac, a look of panic on her face. Get in the van, Indy…John, as usual, is spot on the button. ‘Well, perhaps when I first came back…But no. Everything’s cool’
He grimaces. ‘God, you’re like your grandmother. Never willingly admit anything. I remember seeing you surrounded by cardboard boxes in that miserable flat in London and I thought, How come our India’s ended up like Nobby No-Mates?’
This is really not fair. ‘I had plenty of friends–’
John is a master of the single eyebrow-raise.
‘It’s just that in London…it’s harder.’
‘Yeah.’
I glare at him. ‘I still have a lot of friends in television.’
‘Those would be the ones you keep telling me you’re never going to see again, then?’
‘You’re a complete bastard, you know that, don’t you?’
We sit in silence for a while, watching the log on the fire catch, John puffing his roll-up.
‘Is that pilot bloke still texting you?’ he asks eventually.
‘Not since I told him to piss off.’
‘Right.’
‘I know it hasn’t got anything to do with what happened but it feels like another thing that was wrong about that day’
‘Indy, people make dubious decisions all the time without the universe throwing a moral tantrum. Forget your bad experience at uni. Sleeping with a married man doesn’t always unleash the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.’ He stands up again to relight his roll-up from the candle. ‘Not that I’m recommending it, you understand.’
I glance pointedly at the green scarf. ‘You shag married women.’
‘I’ve learned to manage their expectations.’ John chucks his dog end into the fire, lifts the mugs off the reflexology stool and pulls it into position. ‘Can’t be bothered with the couch. Get your shoes off.’
‘Anyway,’ I attempt to muster some dignity as I haul off my socks, ‘I think I might be ready to resurrect my career in television, after all. Did you see the notice at the post office? Bloody hell, that hurts.’
‘Stress always collects in the soles of the feet.’
‘Fran!’ I call, as I open the glazed front door into the hallway. Usually at this time of day she’s in the living room watching one of those TV programmes that, by some miracle of demography, unite both elderly people and kids. Instead she’s in front of the hall mirror trying on a hat like a hairy raspberry.
‘Does this make me look like an old lady?’
‘It makes you look mad.’
‘It’ll do, then.’ She grins, then frowns. ‘What time is it? I’m sure Carrie Harper said she’d drive me to Devizes to do a supermarket shop. Or have I got muddled again?’
Fran has a relentless social life that revolves around people from church–every one at least twenty years her junior. I check the calendar on the back of the kitchen door. Under today’s date, in her shaky writing, it says, ’6 p.m. Broad Hinton W.I.’.
I’m snapping on rubber gloves and plugging in the vacuum cleaner before she has her coat out of the cupboard. Never enthusiastic about housework, Fran has recently decided it’s not worth the effort at all, so I grab every opportunity to clean unhindered.
‘What got into you? In’t you the girl I could never get to keep her bedroom tidy?’
‘Sorry. Once I start…’
‘Well, I wish you’d stop. I feel exhausted watching. You in’t thinking you’ll go fiddling in my room? Because don’t. Can look after it meself.’ ‘I wouldn’t dare.’ There’s little point in fiddling in her room, as I discovered when I tried a few months ago to find Margaret’s birth certificate there. An immense old-fashioned bureau in one corner holds Fran’s bank statements, chequebooks and personal detritus, and it is locked. The key is probably under her pillow, but Fran knows I’d never steal it. What a person chooses to lock away is private: that’s our rule, drawn up in the years when I kept a teenage diary. ‘Anyway, when was the last time you dusted in there?’
But I’m saying it to her back. The doorbell rings: her lift to W.I. She jams the hairy raspberry on her head, and stumps out of the front door: fully-functional Fran, because it wouldn’t do to be daffy in front of her friends.
The letter is jammed down the side of her armchair in the living room, the high one she finds more comfortable than the others. Could have been there a day, a week, months, years even, creased, with a strange greasy feel that makes me think it’s been handled over and over again. My fingers snagged the corner of it while I was plumping the cushions. I smooth out the paper–pale grey, torn off a pad, a curl of gum still attached to the top. Impossible to know whether it slipped down accidentally, or was pushed there deliberately, to hide it.
You have a nerve, it says. Typed, on an old-fashioned typewriter, not a computer. No address, no ‘Dear Mrs Robinson’ or ‘Dear Frances’, no punctuation.
Saw you in Church You have a nerve coming back after all these yrs not even bothring to pretend you married There are people here whom remember why you went away to Swindon no better than you ought to be Your dear mother would be turning in her grave good job she didnt live to see it But anyone with eyes in their head at the Manor knew what was going on the Devil was at work there I saw you call him in the garden with your five point star and your mask You should burn up wher you stand.
One final, vicious full stop.