old?” said Pansy. “Where did you meet an old lady? What do you want an old girlfriend for?”
I said, “She’s in her seventies like you and she’s not my girlfriend and I met her in a cab office last Friday night on my way home.”
Pansy pursed her lips tight and sucked air in like she was smoking an invisible cigarette which didn’t taste good and she said, “Mercy said you pinched her money, you bloody cheapskate.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t,” I said, and then she sort of waved her hand around to say let’s not talk about that and said, “What’s a seventy-year-old woman doing in a cab office on a Friday night?” which was the question I’d been waiting for.
“She was on a shelf,” I said a bit too quickly, and Pansy glared at me.
“Have you been smoking that wacky baccy again, Lucas?”
I glared back. “Gran, you know that’s not really relevant.”
“Don’t use those long words with me,” Pansy said. “I told your dad about that stuff and look where he is now.”
I kept looking at her and I said, “Dad could be anywhere, we don’t know, but Violet is trapped on a shelf in a mini cab office and she needs our help.”
It felt like one of those things people say in films, and it was coming out of my mouth.
“Where’s Violet? What in hell are you talking about, Peter?” Norman said, and he made me jump because I’d forgotten he was there.
“I thought you were asleep,” I said.
Pansy winked at me and whispered, “Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.” And then she yelled, “Nothing Norman! Go back to sleep. It was the telly,” which was a bare-faced lie because the telly wasn’t even on. Then we were back to the film script and she said, “Is there a ransom?”
It wasn’t quite what I was expecting. “What?”
“If someone’s holding an old lady hostage in a cab office they must be doing it for a reason.”
“She’s dead, Gran,” I said, and I counted to ten for it to sink in.
“They’ve got a dead lady on a shelf? That’s disgusting!” Pansy had got over excited. I could see the little explosions happening behind her eyes. “How did you meet her if she was dead, Lucas?”
“She’s in an urn. She’s been cremated.”
Pansy didn’t say anything to that. She just unclasped her hands, fingers spread out either side of her face, still trying to catch the answer to her last question. Her eyebrows were raised so high up her face that her forehead looked like a terraced hillside. I knew I had her full attention. Now it just remained for me to reel her in.
“Gran, I’m not promising anything, but I think she’s communicating with me from …”
Pansy mouthed the words at me in a furious display of facial gymnastics, “ …the other side?”
I nodded and went to put the kettle on.
I did this because I know that my grandparents’ response to anything, from the disappearance of their son to the adverts in the middle of Emmerdale, is to make a cup of tea. I don’t think they’ve ever gone more than an hour or two without one in fifty years. They are tea junkies.
And maybe there’s some truth in their tea beliefs. Once she’d had had a sip, Pansy was back to her normal self, no more gawping and tonguing her teeth back and forth. She was all helpful hints and blinding ideas.
I said I wanted to rescue Violet. The rest of the plan was mostly down to Pansy.
It was brilliant and simple.
The first thing to do was phone Apollo Cars.
“If I don’t know the answer to any of his questions I’ll just tell him I don’t remember. Nobody gives an old lady a hard time,” Pansy said, and then she dialled the number and started mewing into the receiver in her old lady voice. This always gets me because you’d think an old lady wouldn’t be able to do a good old lady impression, but Pansy can.
“Hello? Mr Soprano?” she said, and I waved NO at her but it didn’t register. “Have you got my sister there?”
Then she said, “Maybe I’ve got the wrong cab office. She’s been mislaid and she’s in an urn and her name is Violet. Ring any bells?”
I could hear his tinny squashed voice from where I was sitting but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
“Well, I am sorry you’ve been stuck with her all this time, I’ve been abroad you see,” and she said “abroad” like she imagined the queen would and arched her see-through old eyebrows at me.
I had to leave the room then because Norman had woken up and was misbehaving in the kitchen. Norman and the dog scoff chocolate together behind Pansy’s back, like she’s running a prisoner of war camp and him and Private Jack Russell have got contraband. She says she wouldn’t mind except that they both do it until they’re sick. She says Norman doesn’t remember how much he’s had and the dog just takes advantage.
I took the chocolate off Norman and let the dog out, and when I got back, Pansy was wrapping things up. She was blowing her nose in a fresh pink tissue and sounding all teary, the old faker (“It’s very kind of you, Mr Soprano, to go to so much trouble, only if you’re sure, I can’t thank you enough,” etc, etc.) and then she banged the phone down with a smile. The thing about false teeth is that they don’t match your face. Pansy looks like she’s borrowed someone else’s grin, some famous actor, George Clooney’s perfect Hollywood pearlies stuck in the middle of her collapsing face.
“He’s coming,” she said, “in half an hour, in person, to hand her over.”
“Well, I’d better go then,” I said, getting my coat and trying to manoeuvre past Norman who was in the doorway and wasn’t sure if he was on his way in or on his way out.
“Lucas Swain, you get your arse back in here!” Pansy said.
“He can’t see me, Gran. If he sees me he won’t let you have her.”
“Well, hide in the bedroom then. I’m letting a stranger in here for your benefit. The least you can do is be on hand.”
So I hid in Pansy and Norman’s bedroom for twenty-four minutes and I worried about what might go wrong.
The urn would get dropped and burst open.
The urn would roll around on the backseat of the car and burst open.
Soprano would crash the car and get concussion and forget about the urn entirely.
He’d just lied to get an old lady off the phone and had no intention of coming over.
Pansy had given him the wrong address.
Pansy had forgotten to give him an address at all.
Norman would open the door and say no thank you or you’ve got the wrong house and shut it again.
Norman would think the ashes were my dad and lose it completely.
Norman would think the ashes were Pansy and lose it completely.
Norman would blow Pansy’s story by saying very loudly she never had a sister called Violet.
Pansy would call Violet the name of one of her real sisters (Dolly, Daisy, Daphne, Delia – I don’t know what happened with Pansy. They must have run out of D’s).
Pansy and Norman would fall asleep and not hear the doorbell (quite common).
One or all of these things would force me out of hiding so Soprano would see me before the drop and smell a rat.
After twenty-four