around her belly and thighs, this new thinness does not suit her: her arms poke out of T-shirts and her hair has got thinner at the ends, sparse as straw.
She is not yet so far gone that she does not care about these changes. She has never been enamoured by her own appearance but these days it makes her sad to look at herself in the mirror. She sees an image of a face reflected but it does not seem to be her. There is no recognition at the image in the glass. There is nothing there, just emptiness, a lack of expression.
She feels defeated.
She senses Andrew sitting down on the edge of the bed, his weight causing her to roll slightly towards him. She thinks: why can’t he just leave me alone?
‘How long have you been in bed for?’ he asks and she hears in his voice the tone of disapproval. In fact, she does not know the answer. Her sense of time has become rather elastic but she knows she must offer him something concrete, so she lies.
‘About forty minutes or so,’ she says, choosing a number that is long enough to convince him she is telling the truth and yet short enough still to be within the realms of respectability.
He nods his head once, satisfied, and then he reaches out and strokes her hair softly. She has not had a shower for days and for a brief moment she worries that Andrew will notice the grease, coating the palm of his hand.
‘Darling, you must try and keep going,’ he says.
He is a good man, her husband. She knows this. He is good in spite of her badness, in spite of her being unable to pull herself together. He loves her still, even though he knows her love has gone somewhere else, has been lost and cannot find its way back.
‘There’s something I need to talk to you about,’ Andrew continues and she notices there is a small note of hesitation in his voice. She can still read him so precisely, so intimately. This knowledge, which used to provide her with such a sense of security, now seems only to frustrate her. She hates the thought that they have become so dependent on each other, moulding their shapes and their silences around the solidifying shadows cast by the other person.
‘It’s about my mother.’ Andrew’s voice drifts back. ‘She’s taken a turn for the worse. Mrs Carswell called up this morning and said she’d found her in her nightdress, lying in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. We don’t know how long she’d been there but she wasn’t making much sense, apparently.’ Andrew breaks off, waiting for a response. She opens her eyes lazily and meets his gaze. He looks sad and confused: a small boy. ‘It was already hard enough understanding her on the phone so goodness knows what state she’s in now.’ He shakes his head. Caroline sits up, propping the pillow against the curved bars of the bed frame so that the coldness of the iron does not press through her cotton nightdress. The effort of this single movement leaves her momentarily dizzy and unable to speak. She touches Andrew’s wrist lightly. He grabs hold of her hand too eagerly and lifts it up to his lips, brushing a kiss against her knuckles. She lets him hold her hand for a few moments longer and then slips it back down to the mattress.
‘Poor Elsa,’ she says and she can hear that the words are slurred. She tries to remember how many pills she’s taken today but she can’t. Not a good sign.
Andrew looks at her quizzically. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Oh . . . fine.’ Caroline turns away. She glances at the rosy wash of the linen curtains held up against the fading evening light. There is a tap-tap-tapping sound against the window like pebbles scattering across glass. ‘Is it raining?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ Andrew replies. ‘It might even be hail by the sounds of it.’ He clears his throat. ‘Anyway, Mrs Carswell said that she’s not sure how much longer the current arrangement will be . . .’ he pauses, searching for the right word, ‘viable.’
‘Oh?’
‘She was very nice about it but she doesn’t think she can offer Mummy the necessary level of care. She seemed to think that Mummy might need someone with her on a more permanent basis and she suggested . . .’
Too late, Caroline can see where this was going. A scratchy panic rises up her gullet and lodges itself there.
‘Well, she suggested that maybe Mummy could come and live here,’ Andrew finishes, speaking the words quickly so that the damage is done as quickly as possible. ‘After all, we’ve got the room.’
She doesn’t say anything but the thought of looking after anyone else, of having to plan what to make for dinner, of having to exist on a day-to-day basis, of continuing normal life, of picking it up where they had left off as if she were picking up a fallen stitch in a piece of knitting . . . the thought of it overcomes her and seems to press the breath out of her lungs.
‘I know that the timing isn’t ideal,’ says Andrew. ‘But she is my mother, after all, and I feel I owe this to her.’
His voice is firmer now, less apologetic. He has a streak of steeled strength buried underneath all those layers of politeness and good-humoured kindness and a strong sense of right and wrong. It is part of the reason she used to love him so much.
‘Andrew, I don’t know if I can . . .’
‘Darling, I know you feel very weak at the moment –’ She looks at him, disbelieving. Does he honestly believe that is all it is? Weakness? ‘But maybe, just maybe, having someone else in the house might alleviate the pressure a bit.’
‘You think I’m wallowing, that I’m being self-indulgent.’
‘No, no,’ he insists. ‘I think you are having a terrible time, of course you are, but you can’t go on like this. At some point, you, we, both of us, we’ll have to get on with our lives . . .’
‘And forget Max ever existed?’
Andrew looks taken aback. ‘Neither of us will ever, ever do that,’ he says quietly. ‘But it’s been four months now –’
‘Three-and-a-half.’
‘OK, three-and-a-half months and I’m worried about you. I’m worried about these things –’ he takes the bottle of pills that is on the bedside table and rattles it in his hand. ‘You need to start living again. And part of that is being able to look outwards, to think about other people.’
She doesn’t say anything. She knows that this is Andrew’s way of coping: always doing things, thinking about the next thing, losing himself in involvement.
‘I’m not suggesting we move Mummy in immediately, but I do want her to come and stay with us. I know it’s an awful lot to ask but she’s old and fragile and she needs our help.’ He looks at her cautiously.
Caroline closes her eyes. After a while, she feels Andrew stand up and hears him walk out of the room, his footsteps going down the stairs. There is the sound of plates clashing as he loads the dishwasher. She is angry at that, at the resumption of normal service in the kitchen below, and she reaches, without thinking, for the pills, pressing down on the white lid of the bottle so that the catch releases as she twists. Caroline puts one in her mouth and swallows it with a sip of water from the glass on the bedside table. Within seconds, she eases into the familiar fog. Her thoughts relax. Her mind unclenches and fills slowly with the whiteness of space. The image of Andrew, washing plates, dissipates and his face is rubbed out, slowly, bit by bit, until there is nothing of him left and she falls into a state of numbness that is not quite sleep but near enough.
If she casts her mind back, she can remember the first time she met Elsa. The image comes to her completely intact: she is in the passenger seat of Andrew’s car, feeling the sticky rub of leather against her bare legs, and they have turned into a short gravel driveway and parked underneath the bending branches of a yellow-green willow. She has to be careful opening the door so that it does not scratch against the tree trunk and then she must squeeze herself out, shimmying through the narrow space, making sure her skirt doesn’t ride up her thighs as she manoeuvres herself upright and out of the car.