‘He’s hammered the final nail into his own coffin there,’ Enid’s dad had reassured her, after finding her crying in her room and reading the letter. Enid saw his face when he was reading. He seemed as repulsed as she was.

  The following week, Enid stood up to Roy. His persistent jokes were bordering on bullying now, and she didn’t need more of that in her life.

  ‘Fine,’ she said, calling his bluff. ‘I’ll meet you for a drink. Where?’ She’d expected Roy to backtrack, to apologise and acknowledge the cruel joke. He’d be polite about it, but ultimately, he’d reject her. She hadn’t expected him to provide a place and a time, like he’d been waiting for this moment, like he’d been planning for it.

  20

  By the time she reached the drinks aisle, Olivia’s trolley was close to full. She found she had mixed feelings about choosing wine that day. Normally, she enjoyed picking the wine – three bottles of red and three of white. On such a day, with the kids at school and nursery, she’d take in the labels and savour the choice, Sauvignon Blanc being their joint favourite grape, and New Zealand being a preferred region. Today she found herself reluctant even to pick up a bottle. God knew that she needed a glass every now and again, but what with David being as he had been recently, buying alcohol just felt like locking herself in. Into where, she didn’t know. If she didn’t buy wine at all though…well, that would just be throwing fuel on the fire. She picked up six bottles and threw them quickly into the trolley, before heading over to the checkout almost on autopilot.

  In the queue, she took her phone out, as usual, more for the false feeling of solitude than anything else. There were no notifications. She opened the news, ignored the headlines and then closed the app again. Then the same with Facebook, the weather app, and then Facebook again. After that, she just started scrolling between home pages.

  The phone vibrated and Olivia watched David’s name flash onto the screen. She didn’t open the message, and instead lowered her hand to her side. For all David knew, the phone could have been in her pocket.

  She looked up, behind her and then around the shop. She told herself that she’d had enough of staring at the screen, and wanted to take in her surroundings, but who was she kidding? Somewhere deep inside herself, where her unconscious collided fleetingly with her conscious, Olivia knew that she was checking to make sure David wasn’t near her, that he hadn’t seen her ignore his text. Luckily, his lack of presence allowed Olivia to tell herself that wasn’t the case.

  Just then, she noticed Duncan and Kara at a table in the café. She looked around for Martin, but the care home residents, seated two tables away from the carers, consisted of the same motley crew as before: an old gentleman and two elderly women, one of whom, Olivia remembered, was called Enid.

  Even without Martin there, Olivia considered walking over to say hello after paying. It would be nice to speak to someone – about anything really – but the thought was only fleeting. What would she say, and to whom? Kara and Duncan were the two nearest to her in age, but she suspected David wouldn’t like her talking with another man. He’d been so jealous in the past. Sure, he’d improved, but she didn’t want to encourage the relapse he seemed to be going through recently. Something inside her acknowledged the absurdity of her decision, but she pushed it down, ignoring the claustrophobic sensation tightening around her stomach.

  She lifted her phone again and tapped into her messages.

  Off out tonight. I won’t be too late xx

  Olivia felt her chest deflate. He would be late, drinking no doubt, and he would expect her to be awake when he returned. He’d be drinking from stress, and he’d be violent. This last point wasn’t a given, but she felt likely to say something he wouldn’t like, and then the crescendo of booze and stress would be hers to weather. She tapped the keyboard.

  Have fun. Love you xx

  Even if he came home in a good mood, which did still happen sometimes, she would find herself a nervous wreck all night, waiting.

  When it was her turn at the till, Olivia bagged up her shopping and paid, her body weightless, as if she was watching her movements rather than controlling them. When the bags were in the trolley, she walked past the café towards the exit, giving a small wave over to the carers’ table so as not to seem rude. Both Duncan and Kara appeared to be deep into some paperwork, and neither noticed, so Olivia diverted the wave to the residents’ table.

  She noticed that Enid, the elderly woman with the scar above her eyebrow, wasn’t sitting at the table as she had been. Rather, she was shuffling towards the checkout, away from the other residents and the carers. ‘Enid?’ Olivia called, and Enid paused and turned to look at Olivia, who left her trolley and walked over. ‘Enid,’ she said again, softer. ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘Oh…um…’ Enid frowned, and Olivia could see her determination to speak. ‘Roy,’ she said, and then, ‘how, oh. It’s you. How are you?’

  ‘You don’t need to ask about me,’ Olivia told her, though she was surprised to find herself flattered that Enid had.

  ‘Worried,’ Enid said. Olivia’s mouth opened slightly, and for the first time she and Enid had direct eye contact.

  ‘Worried?’ Olivia repeated. Enid began to stutter.

  ‘You know,’ she replied, clearly trying to find the words, ‘oh…uh.’

  ‘Your friends are there.’ Olivia gestured to where Enid had been sitting, just a few metres away from where they were standing now.

  ‘No,’ Enid said, and nodded pointedly at Olivia. ‘Worried, you.’

  ‘Worried about me?’ Olivia asked in a whisper. ‘I’m fine. I am fine. Do you mean Martin is worried? You can tell Martin that I’m fine.’ She felt heat rise inside her, but then continued, ‘and give him my love.’

  Enid looked flustered, and Olivia felt guilty for causing it. ‘Come on, Enid,’ she said in a recomposed voice, ‘let’s get you back with your friends.’ She lifted her hand to Enid’s upper arm, flinching from the pain in her shoulder. It was still recovering, taking an age after David had accidentally caught it in the car door. Enid lowered her head.

  ‘What, um…your, should…um. Shoulder?’

  ‘Just lifting,’ Olivia replied, as she always did. She turned Enid around to face the table and helped her down into her chair.

  ‘Now, where were you going, Enid?’ It was Duncan. He didn’t wait for Enid to reply, and instead looked up at Olivia. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘She never would have gotten very far.’ He smiled, and Olivia smiled back. He was probably worried she’d think they might lose Martin, but Martin always seemed happy with them, so they could do no wrong in Olivia’s eyes.

  ‘Roy,’ Enid muttered.

  ‘Cuppa?’ Duncan asked, and Olivia shook her head. She regretted coming over at all.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she answered, already turning to leave. I’ve got to…’ She paused, thinking of an excuse, ‘…pick up the kids.’ It wasn’t even an excuse. She heard Duncan cheerily wishing her a good day as she returned to her trolley, the supermarket a wall of noise surrounding her, the air outside deafening her on the way to the car.

  Once in the driving seat, Olivia found herself unable to cry. She held onto her shoulder with her hand. It was one thing lying to people about how she’d hurt her shoulder, but she’d started lying to herself. Of course it hadn’t been an accident. He’d hit her with the door twice. Accidents don’t happen twice, within the same few seconds.

  He’d hit her with his hands at home too. He’d held her against the wall and spat at her. Most of the ways in which David had hurt her could be hidden – from the children, from society and from himself – when he was playing a better version of a husband.

  Olivia had wanted to sit down with Enid, or Duncan, or Kara, but she’d run, scared of what David might do if he found her with them. What had Duncan said? Enid never would have gotten very far. He was right. Enid found it hard to move quickly, and she found it hard to talk. More than that, had Enid confessed to being worried about Olivia herself?

  Olivia found herself desperately lonely. She should go back. She should walk back into the supermarket and sit with the residents. She should talk to Enid, not about the pain in her shoulder, or in her stomach, or on her side, but just for the company. Just to remember what it was like. If David saw her, then so what?

  But she didn’t. Instead, she turned the key in the ignition, and drove out of the car park.

  21

  Roy watched the school doors dutifully. He knew a little about some of the women that surrounded him, waiting for their own children to finish school. Enid talked to them regularly when she waited for Barb, and she’d often relay the gossip to him in the evenings when Barb was asleep. It was all so inconsequential.

  Roy never found himself chatting though. Maybe it was because he was a man, or maybe it was simply the fact that he only picked up Barb once a week, due to his working hours not allowing him more. Either way, he didn’t mind, but he did always feel slightly self-conscious before the door opened. He tried to keep his head down, while at the same time scanning the faces, searching for the parents of Barb’s friends, just in case they approached him.

  He recognised one of the mothers, a brunette woman, standing a few feet away from him. Little Peter’s mother. Roy couldn’t remember her name. R something. He knew that she’d needed a plumber last week, and that she’d had to wait three days for one to come. That wasn’t useful to him. She was engaged in conversation with the woman next to her anyhow. It was unlikely he’d need to remember her name.

  A little further back, he could see Julia. According to Enid, Julia had had to mend her Andrew’s school uniform twice in the past month; boys hey, and… Wait. Roy raised his head, peering above the crowd. It was an action he wouldn’t normally dream of, but he recognised the slicked-back hair, the flat shapeless forehead; another man in the crowd of women. He squinted to make sure he wasn’t mistaken, but he wasn’t. It was Donald, Enid’s ex-husband.

  Roy ducked down again, but saw Donald’s head turn just before he did, and for the smallest of moments, they had direct eye-contact. What was Donald doing here? Roy knew he didn’t have children of his own, and he couldn’t imagine anyone trusting Donald enough to pick up theirs. That must be it though, surely, he thought.

  Still, Roy moved closer to the front, apologising to the women he overtook as he did so. He felt his heart-rate increase and took a second to regulate his breathing. He wanted to appear calm and unassuming. He would make it so that when Barb came out, he would be right there, next to the door. He would pick her up and they’d go home. They were having beef for dinner. They liked beef.

  The door opened, and Roy allowed himself to glance behind him, back towards Donald, but when he did, he saw that Donald had gone.

  Barb liked it when her dad came to pick her up from school. He made her feel like she was the only kid in the playground. He’d pick her up, swing her around, and then joke with her on the walk to the car. Today had been different. He’d held onto her hand so tightly, thanked her teacher under his breath and then ushered her to the car before she’d even had time to say goodbye to her friends.

  Barb sat still in the car. Normally she’d kick her feet rhythmically against the car seat and chat aimlessly with her dad about her day at school, or she’d hum some melody and he’d ask her what the tune was. Usually, it was a hymn she’d learned at school, and then she’d hear him humming along, giving away that he already knew it. Today, she didn’t kick, and she wasn’t humming. Her dad wasn’t chatting with her. Barb was acutely aware of her own stillness. She didn’t know what was wrong with him, but she sensed her dad’s stress, and feared that if she moved, she would make it worse.

  ‘Sorry, Daddy,’ she said, quietly.

  ‘Hmm,’ her dad replied, not paying attention. She tried to think why he could be cross with her. She’d apologised for trying to hold the birds and been told that it hadn’t been her fault; she wasn’t to know. And he’d left for work that morning happy, Barb remembered, he’d been singing his own made-up song about keys. She’d giggled.

  ‘Do you want to play jokes?’ she asked, tentatively.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘You tell one first.’

  Barb sucked her bottom lip and thought. She wanted to tell one of his favourites, though it was hard to know which ones were, because he laughed at them all.

  ‘Knock, knock,’ she said.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Twit,’ she smiled. She knew he’d know the punchline now.

  ‘Twit who?’ he asked.

  ‘Did you hear an owl, Daddy?’ Barb broke into a giggle, expecting her dad to join in, but instead he tapped his steering wheel, in thought.

  ‘Hm,’ he said. Barb felt lost in the break from their usual rhythm, but she tried to bring it back again.

  ‘Your turn, Daddy,’ she said, but he didn’t reply. She could see his eyes in the rear-view mirror, darting this way and that. He was in his own world, his lips moving every now and then. Occasionally, she’d hear a word or two of his mutterings, but they meant nothing to her.

  ‘Doing there… What… Why would… Hasn’t seen her for… Why at school…’ Barb started to fiddle with the material on the chair beneath her legs.

  ‘Are you cross, Daddy?’ she asked. Her words seemed to jolt her dad back into reality.

  ‘What?’ he asked, and then, ‘Cross? No, of course not.’ They rode in silence for a while, and then he said, ‘I love you and your mum very much – more than anything in fact.’ Barb watched his eyes look at her through the mirror and she smiled back at him.

  The words were reassuring, but Barb could only focus on the distance in his tone. She couldn’t wait to get home and see her mum.

  22

  Bloody Neil. It wasn’t as if Roy had fallen down the stairs; he’d just fallen on his way up the stairs, on the first step, no less. He couldn’t help but feel like it had looked worse than it was, but Neil had insisted on telling Barb, and Barb had insisted on telling a social worker.

  They’d prodded and poked him. He’d spent two nights in hospital, listening to Barb talking with doctors and social workers and all those professional types and what-have-you. They’d discussed him and his future right there, in front of his face, always asking what he thought about it, but never listening. He knew that no one had told Enid about his fall. Apparently, it would be ‘for her own good’, but Roy suspected she would want to know about the wellbeing of her husband.

  Eventually, when he was up and walking again, it was agreed that he would be allowed to come home. He had been assessed as mentally capable, which was the exact opposite of what Roy wanted. He wanted to be mentally incapable and living with Enid.

  Barb had been visiting daily, and Roy was grateful. He enjoyed her company and cherished the visits, but they also served as a hammer, waiting to fall. He knew that Barb was checking up on him, making sure that he wasn’t on the floor, that he wouldn’t be left alone again, helpless on the floor. He ought to be happy to have this kind of love in his life, and he was, but he was also distinctly aware that if Barb did come in one day to find him on the floor, that would be it. He would be shipped into the wrong care home. A home for the mentally capable, and he would never live with his Enid ever again.

  But Roy had a plan. He’d started kicking up a campaign of fuss. On the fourth of Barb’s visits, when he began to realise the main purpose of them, he began to forget people’s names.

  ‘How is Sam?’ he’d asked.

  ‘Sam?’ Barb had shouted.

  ‘Oh, you know, Sam,’ Roy had said, imitating the way he’d seen Enid waving one of her arms around when trying to communicate something. ‘Sam, your son.’

  ‘You mean Alex? My daughter?’

  ‘That’s the ticket.’

  When Roy couldn’t hear something that Barb was saying, which for Roy was often, he’d talk about printers, at length, forgetting the names of all the various pieces of machinery and of his former colleagues.

  ‘Well,’ he’d say, ‘back then everything was manual, you know, and the…um. Well, I’d have to operate that while… oh, the boy in the cap – what’s his name? He’d have to hold onto the…well…you know. It was different then, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I asked if Neil had brought you round a paper this morning, Dad,’ Barb would reply, looking annoyed.

  One Saturday, Barb had offered to pick Roy up the following day and take him to hers for a roast. Roy had said yes, and Barb had confirmed that she’d pick him up around midday. After Barb left, Roy walked to the shop and bought a raw chicken and placed it in the fridge before bedtime. He set his alarm for half-past eight, and when it woke him, he shuffled downstairs and turned the oven on. He put the chicken in at nine. At twelve, when Barb turned up, there was a distinct smell of burning throughout the house. Barb had sat on the sofa.

  ‘Why does it smell of chicken, Dad?’ she shouted so that Roy could hear.

  ‘Hmm,’ Roy responded. ‘I used to put the paper in, you know, and then I’d…well it depended on what I’d been asked to print, you see.’

  ‘Dad,’ Barb interrupted, this time louder, more annoyed. ‘Chicken.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m cooking a chicken for dinner. To help out, you know. Now, when did I put the oven on?’ Roy made a show of talking slower than normal. Barb stormed angrily into the kitchen to turn the oven off, but she didn’t bother taking the ruined chicken out.

  ‘What the hell, Dad?’ she said on her way back into the lounge, just loud enough for Roy to hear. He bit his bottom lip and looked straight in front of him, out of the window. Barb pulled the footstool up to his chair and sat facing him.

  ‘I know what you’re doing, Dad,’ she said loudly, and Roy gave her a sad smile. He knew, deep down, that she would. ‘You can’t fake dementia.’ She gave him the same sad smile in return. ‘You’re not doing a bad job of it – I’ll give you that – but you wouldn’t be able to keep it up.’

 

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