She signalled for the luxury four-wheel drive that was ready and waiting, puffs of smoke rhythmically pumping out of its exhaust. Toby emerged from his trailer as it pulled near and ten seconds later the car was speeding away up the drive. When it had disappeared from view, Gemma smiled to herself. Now that was why she earned her lovely fat pay cheque.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and called through to a rather harried First AD to let him know that their star was on his way. Fabulous. Time to go and start dishing out those call sheets …
Her phone had just hit the bottom of her pocket when it buzzed at her again.
What now? She hoped desperately that they weren’t going to tell her it had started raining again and that she’d be back on A-list babysitting duty within ten minutes. But when she stared at the caller ID she realised it wasn’t either of those options.
I know you must be terribly busy rubbing shoulders with Brad Pitt or whoever, but I really need to talk to you about Christmas. ;-) Call me. Jx
The cute little winky face didn’t fool Gemma one bit. She could hear the silent screaming that had gone on while her sister had composed her breezy little message. She stared at it as the screen dimmed from bright to half-lit. She knew she needed to talk to Juliet about Christmas. She’d known it for about a fortnight now. But …
The image of a gently swaying palm tree over golden sand and a cocktail big enough to house goldfish flitted across her mind.
She sighed.
She wasn’t in the mood to talk about gingerbread recipes ad nauseam or debate whether to have turkey or goose for the big day. She also wasn’t in the mood to deal with thinly veiled comments on how she lived her life, how often she phoned or if she’d remembered to ask about the kids’ school reports. If she responded now she’d only come across as stressed and defensive. Which she was.
Later. She’d talk to Juliet later. When she’d finished work. When she had more time.
When she’d had a couple of gin and tonics, maybe.
Twenty minutes later Juliet found herself standing outside the ball pit in the local leisure centre’s soft-play area. She closed her eyes and opened them again, not quite able to believe what she was seeing. There was Great-aunt Sylvia, sitting in the middle of the thousands of brightly coloured plastic balls, looking grim. Apart from her aunt, herself and two uniformed officers, the play area was almost deserted. A few cross-looking mothers were hurrying their children into their coats and shoes and tutting about having to cut short their afternoon’s activities.
‘She won’t come out, no matter what we say,’ the petite female officer told Juliet. ‘She keeps asking for Mary.’
Juliet nodded. Well, no luck there. Her mother had been dead for almost five years. She stepped into the ball pond and waded towards her aunt. ‘Hello, Aunt Sylvia … These nice police officers are wondering if you’d like to come out of here now.’
Aunt Sylvia shot a withering look at the two uniformed people looking on. ‘I don’t like the look of that girl. Eyes are too close together. She’ll get up to no good when she grows up, you mark my words!’
Juliet stared at her great-aunt helplessly. Somewhere deep inside she wanted to weep – for the indignity of the situation the old woman was in now, for who she’d become and who she’d forgotten she’d once been – but Juliet didn’t do crying. Not in public, at least. And especially not when everyone else was expecting her to make everything right again.
She held out her hand. ‘It’s time to go home now, Aunt Sylvia. Come on …’
Her aunt’s head snapped round as she stopped glaring at the female police officer and transferred her attention to Juliet. ‘Mary!’ she exclaimed.
Juliet gave her a weak smile. She supposed that in her aunt’s dementia-riddled mind, the boundaries between mother and daughter had somehow blurred. And the older she got, the more she saw her mother’s face staring back in the mirror at her. Same brown eyes, same long nose and high cheekbones. Not exactly pretty, but with enough good bone structure that she’d never be plain, either. But in the last few months the grooves in her forehead had grown deeper and her eyes had become more hooded. Her age – and her divorce – were showing up there now.
Sylvia crossed her arms. ‘These people put me in here and won’t let me get out again,’ she said. ‘That’s why I said they had to fetch you. I knew you’d come and sort it all out! You always were such a good girl …’
‘I’m not Mary,’ she said soothingly. ‘It’s Juliet. Mary’s daughter.’
A flicker of confusion passed across the old woman’s features. Juliet inched a little closer, but her aunt, suddenly wary and now doubting the identification of her visitor, just backed away.
Juliet sighed. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. She lowered herself, jiggling slightly to push the balls out of the way, until her bottom made contact with the slippery plastic padded floor.
Aunt Sylvia suddenly smiled. ‘Oh, yes! I remember …’ She stared out across the sea of bright plastic for a moment, her lips in a slight curve, lost in a memory that Juliet suspected might evaporate before she managed to vocalise it.
But then she muttered, ‘Lively little thing, Mary’s daughter. She looked like an angel with those big blue eyes and white-blonde curls.’
Something inside Juliet sank. After all the hours spent with her great-aunt over the last couple of months …
She’d been blonder when she’d been little, but her hair had always been straight with a wavy kink. She’d never been blessed with the wispy ringlets her aunt was describing. It wasn’t this sister that Sylvia was remembering.
Her aunt blinked and turned to her again. ‘You know her, you say? Mary’s little girl?’
Juliet opened her mouth to explain it all patiently again, but closed it before any sound emerged. What was the point? ‘Yes, I know her,’ she replied wearily.
Sylvia smiled back. ‘Did she send you to me? She’s been away for such a long time.’
Gemma hadn’t seen Aunt Sylvia since last Easter, and the old woman could really do with regular visits from people she knew and remembered. Not that Juliet’s twice-weekly sessions seemed to be helping much. Back in the summer Sylvia had nearly always called her by name, even if there had been a handful of days when she’d smiled and nodded blankly, then referred to her as ‘that nice young girl’. But as the days had become shorter and greyer, her great-aunt had grown more and more confused, as if her memory was seeping away with the sunlight. Now she only knew who Juliet was one visit in four, and even then her recollection was patchy, fading in and out, like a badly tuned radio.
‘No, Gemma didn’t send me,’ she told her aunt. ‘But she’ll be home for Christmas this year, so you’ll see her then.’
‘Oh, good! Do you think she’ll want a sweetie when she gets here? Little girls like sweeties.’ Aunt Sylvia plunged her hands into the plastic balls beside her, not seeming to register the noisy rattling that echoed through the hangar-like building. She pulled her handbag out and rested it on her lap, then rummaged inside before proudly producing a small object, which she held carefully between thumb and forefinger. Juliet thought it might once have been a boiled sweet, but the lint and other old-lady gunk from the bottom of the bag had disguised it almost completely.
‘Here it is! Do you think she’d like it?’
Juliet thought of Gemma, how everything was so effortless for her, how she breezed in and out of everyone’s