and chose to ignore him, busying herself tidying the dirty clothes. Feeding into it would do neither of them any good.
By the time Cheryl had come back with his tea – weak, splash of milk and precisely a quarter level teaspoon of sugar – he seemed to have got the measure of Maura and decided to play ball. For now.
According to Cheryl’s crib sheet, Gordon normally took a nap after his afternoon cuppa, so they left him to doze in his armchair.
As they walked back to the kitchen, Maura asked Cheryl what had happened to Miss Hall. ‘Daft old bat took a tumble down the stairs, broke her hip, bashed her face into the newel post and bust her jaw, according to Dr Moss,’ Cheryl said, painting the picture for Maura. ‘Nasty do, I reckon. Mind you, it isn’t half quiet round here without her – quite demanding is our Miss Hall.’
Maura seized her chance. ‘I don’t know of any local GPs of that name. The only Dr Moss I know is a consultant in psychiatry.’
‘Yes, that’s him. He’s their doctor, has been for years. They go private, see?’
It seemed an odd set-up to Maura. OK, all psychiatrists had to have basic medical training before they specialised, but it was the first time she’d heard of one dealing with general medicine privately. ‘They don’t have contact with a local GP?’
Cheryl paused by the door and turned to Maura, a puzzled look on her face. ‘Why would they? There’s no need. Dr Moss takes care of everything for them.’
Maura could bet he did, and no doubt he billed them handsomely for it. He was notoriously flash, which was why she’d been surprised not to see his sleek Lexus parked outside.
They made for the kitchen via the bloody baize door and all it represented. Maura knew she was about to be abandoned and the thought filled her with the kind of anxiety she hadn’t felt since she was a child.
‘Right, that’s me done for the day. I’ll be back in the morning at nine so all you have to do is make his porridge like I told you, and don’t forget he likes his toast with the crusts cut off. Don’t forget his cocoa at nine-thirty, and his hot water bottle, and I need to give you the key for the medicine cupboard,’ she said, slipping her arms into a faded blue mac. ‘His pills come in one of those reminder thingies, so all you have to do is dole them out in the right colour order – don’t get them mixed up or he’ll refuse to take them. And make sure the old sod doesn’t palm them or hide them under his tongue – he’s a bugger for that and a nightmare if he doesn’t take them.’
Maura nodded and held her hand out for the small key that Cheryl had taken from the bunch in her pocket. Abrasive though the woman had been at times, Maura felt a ripple of trepidation at the thought of her departure and the prospect of being left alone in the house. None of it had turned out as she had expected: the house was a maze, the patient was a nightmare and, despite the new housing estate being less than a quarter of a mile away in any direction, she felt as though she might as well have been abandoned in some remote castle in the middle of nowhere. ‘Who do I contact if anything goes wrong or there’s a problem?’
Cheryl looked heavenwards in a gesture that smacked of sheer despair and judgement. ‘There’s a list of phone numbers stuck on the side of the fridge. Don’t call me because I won’t come out at night. If anything goes wrong with him just call the doctor. If it’s anything else you can call Bob, the gardener and odd-job man – lives in a bungalow at the bottom of the orchard. He’ll come out if you need him. Just stick to what you’ve been told, don’t go poking around, and nothing will go wrong.’
Maura glanced at the list and wondered whose name had been scribbled out and why they were no longer a contact. The paper itself was old, yellowed and curling at the edges, yet the name and number had been obliterated recently judging by the bright colour of the pen marks. It seemed someone had fallen out of favour. She contemplated ringing Bob to see if he wanted to come and keep her company, which was an utterly ridiculous idea and more pathetic than she wanted to admit. The sound of his name, its ordinariness, had implied something comforting, something normal, something she instinctively felt was rare in the Grange. ‘Thanks, Cheryl, I appreciate your help.’
Cheryl gave her a brief nod and a “huh” then left unceremoniously. Leaving Maura standing in the brightly lit kitchen, hugging herself and wondering what on earth she was going to do until Gordon needed something and she had a purpose again.
Without Cheryl’s shrill voice to dominate her attention, the house was far from silent. In fact, now she was listening, it seemed to be cracking its knuckles and flexing its muscles through a series of creaks and groans, as if it was getting ready to tussle with her. The Grange struck her as a place where it would be easy to lose your sense of self and your grip on real time. It was old and grudging, full of dogged antiquity in the form of ancient furniture, faded formality and pointless knick-knacks. Maura hadn’t paid detailed attention to them but she knew they were there, oozing claustrophobia and gloom. The place felt as though it was stuffed to the gills with the collected kitsch of generations and all those long-dead Hendersons still making their presence felt, lurking in the shadows and breathing down her neck.
Maura took a breath – she had lived with worse shadows than the phantoms of dead gentry. It was going to take more than an ugly house and an overwrought imagination to faze her. Her logic agreed, her instinct did not – it was still grumbling away and sulking in her gut.
Though Cheryl had shown her around, it had hardly been a detailed tour, just a quick glimpse into too many rooms, most of which had seemed to be swathed in dustsheets. It seemed sensible to make a more exacting trip around the place, familiarising herself with the layout and the lifestyle. If she was going to look after Gordon in any meaningful way, it might help to get to know how they’d lived before he’d been confined to a single, stinking room and old age had got the better of him. Even if she was going to abandon ship, she would have to do something about that room, and not just the smell. It hadn’t escaped her notice that Gordon was a hoarder and had crammed his room with all manner of detritus. Given the ordered clutter of the rest of the house, it was clear to Maura that interfering with his living space was likely to upset him. As abrasive as Cheryl had been, she didn’t seem the type to leave a room unclean if she could help it, and from the little Maura knew of Estelle Hall, she didn’t come across as the type of woman who would tolerate disorder unless it had been foisted upon her. Gordon seemed to have entrenched himself in his pit and surrounded himself with things that brought him security, things that would distress him if they were interfered with, just as altering his routine, his food and his medication were likely to disturb him. Though it wasn’t Maura’s role to diagnose, it was certainly her job to assess, and in her opinion Gordon was suffering from obsessions and compulsions just as much as he might be from dementia. He also seemed to suffer from terminal unpleasantness, something that wasn’t entirely unexpected but that might prove to be a stumbling block to even the shortest therapeutic relationship.
She pondered this a while as she re-explored the house, taking her time on this occasion, not prying where she’d been told not to but soaking the whole place up and making peace with it in her mind. Weeks of being afraid of a building were not an item on her agenda and she refused to allow the atmosphere of the place to get any further under her skin. She had suffered enough cowed defeat lately; there was no way she was going to let a pile of bricks and mortar rattle her, no way on earth. If she and the house were going to engage in a battle of wills over whose personality was going to win, Maura was going in all guns blazing. Its shadows were just shadows, its creaks and moans just its twisted old bones settling, its air of impending menace just her imagination running away with her. Its residents? Just an elderly, frail man in need of her help and a slightly bonkers housekeeper who seemed to have learned her people skills from the Mrs Danvers school of charm. Despite that, Maura had quite taken to Cheryl, even if it was with the utmost caution.
‘Get a grip, Maura,’ she said to the empty kitchen. ‘You’re getting far too cynical and curmudgeonly. Make yourself a cup of decent tea and crack on with it, kid. You’re moving on, remember?’
The statement was as hollow as the echo in the empty room and, despite her bravado, Maura couldn’t stand it.