‘I will call the police.’

  David didn’t reply straightaway. Presumably he was weighing up how real Mr Alvarez’s threat was. Olivia felt Oona’s head arch back. She was waking up. Olivia prayed her daughter wouldn’t make a noise. She made an ‘O’ shape with her lips, afraid to make the actual noise to shh. She patted her daughter’s bum through the sling, and jigged her body up and down.

  Oona let out a huge cry. She was ill. It was inevitable. Olivia stood up and bounced quickly around the office, her tears dripping onto the toddler’s head.

  ‘Shh…shh,’ she said rhythmically, unsteadily.

  ‘Mum,’ Dillon hissed at her, urging her to keep quiet. There was a loud banging on the outside of the office wall.

  ‘That was Dillon,’ David shouted from the other side. ‘Is she in there?’ He spat out the word ‘she’ like Olivia was some disgusting object. The door burst open, and David stood in the doorway glaring at the three of them.

  Olivia watched as Mr Alvarez pushed past David and stood in front of him.

  ‘I will call the police, make no mistake,’ he said, ‘unless you leave, that is. Now.’

  ‘Alright,’ David shot back. ‘I’ll leave, but she’s a liar.’ He pointed two fingers over the head’s shoulders at Olivia. ‘She spews shit.’ Both Oona and Dillon cried harder now. Olivia carried on bouncing her daughter. Her lip was shaking, and she got the feeling that her whole body would join in if she were to stop bouncing. ‘I’ll be outside when you’re ready,’ David said, before backing out of the office.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Olivia heard him saying to Carolyn in the reception hall, ‘you really can’t listen to her though. I’m sorry to say it, I am, but she’s sick. My wife really is ill.’ When Carolyn came back into the office, Olivia noticed that she too was shaking, and had turned paler than she had been when Olivia had first turned up.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Carolyn asked her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, unable to convey just how much she meant it. Mr Alvarez was watching out of the office window. Olivia couldn’t bring herself to look, but she knew that David would be out there.

  ‘You can stay here as long as you want,’ he offered. ‘Mrs Gray won’t mind.’ Carolyn nodded, agreeing. ‘Did you drive?’

  ‘Yep,’ Olivia replied, feeling stupid. Even now, after this, nothing was going to happen. She was being sent home.

  ‘There’s a different way out to the parents’ car park,’ he said. ‘Whenever you’re ready, if you want, I can escort you to your car and he won’t know you’re leaving.’ He came away from the window and looked directly at Olivia. ‘You can call the school anytime – or the police. I can call the police now for you if you want me to. I would be very happy to do that.’ He seemed to emphasise the word ‘very,’ which made Olivia feel a little safer. She was about to take him up on his offer when he asked her if she and the children felt safe going home, or if they had somewhere safe to stay.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered, tightly. ‘Yes, we do.’

  She needed to get back to Enid.

  Enid squeezed her eyes tight. She pressed her back against the garage wall, feeling the sharp of the bare bricks through her clothes. Her lips were constantly moving, uttering noises rather than words.

  The fire on the rags hadn’t gone out. As far as Enid could tell, it should have by now. The flames should have died out and faded into the hard concrete floor, but instead they were strong, lighting up the underside of the barbeque. She should have waited for Roy to come home, but she couldn’t even remember where he had gone, let alone when he would be back.

  She took a few anxious steps toward the burning rags. How did one put out a fire without a tap? She could feel the heat against her legs now, her chin warming as she came closer. She coughed at the smell of smoke as, with difficulty, she lifted her right foot and, balancing on her left, she kicked at one of the blazing rags. Feeling unsteady, as though she might lose her balance, she dropped her foot onto the flames, and let out a silent but agonising scream. She pulled herself back away from the fire, her face tight with pain, her foot burning from the heat, though not, thankfully, in flames.

  Once she had recovered herself, allowing time to fade the pain, she looked back at the flames. She couldn’t stamp them out. She lifted her arm, expecting to a see watch. When, oh when, would Roy return?

  She scanned the room, unwilling to give up yet. She wanted Roy to come home, but she didn’t want him to see her in this state, to see quite how badly she’d failed. Over by Roy’s worktop – the old hall carpet. Enid remembered having it changed, it must have been years ago now. One of those items that never make it to the tip and instead become just another piece of furniture, a job for another day.

  She shuffled over to the worktop, each step feeling like the skin was peeling from her foot. The carpet wouldn’t budge, the worktop was pressed too close to the material. Enid held on to the desk, placing her fingers on the underside, next to the legs, in the absence of an ability to grip. She let out a grunt as her whole body jolted right, the worktop legs digging into her fingers and thumb as she did. The pain was excruciating, but the worktop moved. Only a jot, but it moved. She made the same movement again, immediately, and the worktop moved again. The roll of carpet was free.

  Enid pulled it down to the ground and shuffled it towards the fire with her feet, eventually finding it easier to unravel the roll across the floor. It wasn’t her shade of pink at all.

  Her hands hurt, more than ever before. Her right foot felt ablaze with fire, and her back felt scratched from the wall. When she stooped to unroll the carpet over the lit rags, her hips and waist called out to her to stop, but she wouldn’t. She pushed the carpet with all the upper body strength she could muster. The force sent her tumbling forward onto the rags, with only the carpet separating her chest and arms from the fire. She could feel the heat seep through the material and into the skin on her arm. She couldn’t move. Her eyes clamped tight in agony and the muscles in her neck tensed to the point of shaking.

  She didn’t know how long she lay like that before she opened her eyes, but when she did, although the pain remained, the fire had gone out. Shakily, she pulled her hand across the carpet up to her face and grimaced at the deep burn in her forearm.

  42

  The garage was dark. The bulb had gone out and Enid had gone from burning – quite literally – to freezing. Her forearm was numb except for when she touched it, something she’d stopped doing very quickly. It had taken an age to stand again. She’d rolled onto her back and shuffled her head sideways onto the remaining rolled section of the carpet so that she was propped up against it. From that vantage point, she had examined the damage to her chest and stomach. Not much, the carpet must have extinguished the fire underneath her. It had been her loose arm which had suffered. That and her foot, though she couldn’t work out for the life of her how she could have burnt her foot now. Eventually, she used her elbows against the rolled carpet to push herself into a sitting position, and from there managed to stand, with help from the worktop. More than once she was concerned that the whole top would fall and crush her.

  When would Roy be home? It was a strange thing about Roy. She knew that he wouldn’t scold her for starting the fire but congratulate her on putting it out.

  There was a sliver of light from under the garage door, allowing through what little light was left. Enid wondered how to turn the heater on, though didn’t trust herself to manage it, or even try. No matter, she thought. Roy, or one of the carers, would be in to help her soon; they could turn it on. If not, there was always that other woman, the one with the bruises on her face. Enid wondered where she had gone. Roy would be helping her with whatever she was doing, probably.

  She needed the toilet.

  ‘Uh…oh. Hello,’ she called, but no one replied. ‘Hello?’ She looked around the room for her personal alarm. There was normally a button near her wasn’t there? It must be hidden in the dark somewhere, hanging on a wall. The toilet can’t be far away.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, much quieter than before. She wasn’t sure who she was calling for any more; there didn’t seem to be anyone around. She shuffled towards the sliver of light on the floor and felt the wall above it. It was rough, cold metal, and it moved. She kicked at the bottom of the door, a shot of pain racing from her toe up to her thigh. The door moved out, but only slightly, and in at the top, again only slightly. Then it closed. She tried again, still feeling the cold metal with her hands out in front. There was a handle. Enid pushed the bottom of the door with her foot, holding her breath before doing so, bracing for the pain. She pulled at the handle. The door jolted, stiff at first, and then took on a life of its own, swinging up. Dim sunlight flooded the garage. It was still daytime. Enid stood, looking at the back of the caravan. The curtains were pulled shut; not quite right.

  ‘Uh…Roy?’ She peered behind her back into the garage, noting the carpet that Roy had left out haphazardly on the floor. She’d be the one to tidy that up, no doubt.

  Moments went past. Enid listened to the sky, to the occasional car that drove down the road on the other side of the caravan.

  Best bring the milk inside.

  She shuffled round to the front door and looked down at the step. It was bare. There was no milk, no newspaper, no doormat even.

  Enid tutted to herself. Where was her head? They must not deliver today. She chuckled to herself. You’re going mad, she thought.

  The door was locked. Enid looked down at her body for a pocket, for her keys. Her clothes were filthy, there was a hole in her sleeve and pieces of the material were sticking to raw skin. Her hands were wrinkled. When had she grown so old? When she got inside, she would change. She knocked on the door.

  ‘Roy?’

  He wouldn’t mind how she looked – he would love her anyway; Enid knew that. But she would change for herself; it’s nice to look nice. She knocked again.

  She went to call his name again but decided against it. There was nothing. Either he wasn’t in, or he couldn’t hear her. Her feet clung to the path as she shuffled back to the side of the house. She was limping with every other step, a deep scratching pain seemed to cut through her skin and into the flesh, though she didn’t know why. Age, she supposed. She tapped on the kitchen window. ‘Roy?’ It was empty. No people, few appliances. Unlived in. A flash of regret, nostalgia, loss.

  Maybe he’s in the garden, Enid thought, and she pushed the gate open to look.

  ‘Oh,’ the noise fell out of her.

  The length of the grass, it was spilling over onto the path. The neighbour’s tree hadn’t been cut back. The greenhouse looked empty of both Roy and his tomatoes; each pane of cloudy glass covered with spider webs. The grapevine which grew along the side had gone.

  She inched her way along the house wall and over a clump of weeds, trying to make sense of the garden. She tried the double doors at the back of her dining room, more panicked than before, and found that, to her surprise, she could open them with only a little force. Someone – Roy perhaps – must have loosened them.

  ‘I…um…oh, Roy,’ she said again when she was inside, much quieter than before. ‘I was…uh, shouting, you know.’ Enid looked around the bare room. ‘Stuck out...stuck out…’ She didn’t try to finish the sentence. The house appeared unlived in, but she knew it wasn’t. It was her house; their house. Roy’s and Barb’s. The woman with bruises on her face.

  Enid remembered the night before. She and that woman had slept there, without Roy, without Barb, downstairs. Enid pictured Olivia’s face – a memory returning – but it wasn’t bruised this time. She remembered Olivia’s pain, and it ran deeper than her face.

  Enid held on to the bare dining-room table.

  ‘Oh, Roy,’ she said again, but this time she didn’t expect an answer.

  43

  ‘No, Dad, she’s left the home, where she lives. She’s left.’ Barb paused again, waiting for a response or an answer. Roy watched her and sucked his lower lip.

  ‘How’s Alex?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m talking about Mum,’ Barb shouted.

  ‘Good, good.’

  She looked around her dad’s room. God, it was drab. Dated, yellow pastel woodchip wallpaper covered all four walls, three of them with a purple and gold stripy border stretched across them. The fourth – the wall next to Roy’s bed – had pictures of birds stuck on it, faded, and cut out with scissors. Barb wouldn’t be surprised to find they were stuck on with Pritt Stick, though she didn’t want to check.

  Roy was sitting on the large padded chair in the middle of the room. She felt small next to him, on the grey plastic chair which was always kept against the wall next to the door for visitors. They must never expect more than one.

  ‘And Calvin?’ Roy asked.

  Barb felt winded. She went to repeat the same thing about her mum, but then stopped. ‘I don’t know,’ she answered honestly. ‘He doesn’t really tell me anything any more – not unless it’s about Alex.’

  ‘Good,’ Roy sniffed. ‘Good, good.’

  Barb felt her heart drop. He didn’t remember. He thought that after this, she’d go back to Calvin and Alex, together as one family in their old home. But his mind was healthy, wasn’t it? It was his body that was failing him. That’s what they’d all said. She went to correct him but thought better of it.

  ‘The police say they’re doing everything they can, and I’m going to go home soon, in case Mum turns up there.’ Roy watched her, blank. ‘In case Enid turns up,’ Barb shouted again, slowly. ‘She’s left the home – missing.’ Roy smiled, his face radiating a moment of joy.

  ‘Enid,’ he said. ‘Good, good. Send her my love.’

  ‘She’s missing, Dad,’ Barb told him, not raising her voice this time. ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to.’ She knew he couldn’t hear her, and she was grateful. She’d stopped trying. He looked content, despite his surroundings. She was telling him out of a sense of duty; he wouldn’t be able to help. If he heard her, and if he understood, she would still have to leave him here by himself, alone, in case her mum found her way back. She stood and threw her arms around his shoulders, as she always did when she was leaving.

  ‘I’ve got to go, Dad.’

  Roy patted her arm, by way of a hug. ‘Right, well,’ he said.

  ‘I love you,’ Barb said.

  ‘Love you,’ Roy said.

  ‘Love you,’ Barb shouted, in case he hadn’t heard her the first time.

  There was still a clock in Enid’s lounge, painted faux-gold, but it didn’t tick, and the hands no longer turned. She watched it anyway. She wondered what time it was, how long she’d been sitting on the sofa, how long she’d been alone. The lounge was dark from the overcast sky, but night hadn’t fallen yet. It could have been morning even. She stared hard at the broken clock and tried to decipher it, to measure the length of her loneliness. She knew there would have been a time when she could have glanced fleetingly at the same clock, gaining everything she needed to know from it in a moment.

  Her eyes drooped down from the clock to the fireplace and time stopped mattering. It had never mattered in fact – as if Enid had never looked at the clock, as if she had never seen it. Her head lolled to the side, then jolted back up.

  ‘Oh…um,’ then silence again. Enid knew she was waiting, but she didn’t know what for any more. It wasn’t Roy.

  She felt the arm of her sofa with her forefinger and started to pick at the cotton halfway along the ridge. Then she stroked it. Ken had bitten the sofa’s arm when he was a puppy. Enid and Roy were going to fix the damage, but when Ken started lying on the same part of the sofa to sleep, they decided to leave it. It was Ken’s spot. By the time he had lived his life, neither Enid nor Roy noticed the damage on the arm any more. It wasn’t worth fixing.

  Enid tried to pull at the material around the hole, but her fingers were too swollen from all the activity, too numb and arthritic to feel where the cotton ended and the exposed padding began. She could see Ken now. She watched him as a puppy, pulling at her shoelaces and scrabbling at the wallpaper. She saw him lying in his bed in the corner of the kitchen and she saw an old dog, problems with his ears, lying contentedly in front of the fire. She stood in the room at the vet’s. She watched as Roy tried, but failed, to hold back his tears, attempting to be strong for her sake. He was always such a softie. Now, back on her old sofa, Enid knew that Ken had died. She wasn’t sad; it had happened a long time ago. The feeling of knowledge was calming, and slowly, painlessly, her solitude allowed her to watch the other pieces of her life fall back together.

  Enid didn’t live in this house any more – she knew that, and she shouldn’t be sitting on this sofa. She pictured her room in the dementia home, seeing it clearly; she saw Kara helping her to dress in the mornings, to get clean and to eat. She liked Kara’s face. She was always smiling, and always chatting. Enid noticed that her trousers were wet, but she didn’t move, and she wasn’t uncomfortable. She knew the reason behind the wet, but it didn’t matter. She remembered the people who visited her in the dementia home: Barb, Alex, Roy. She felt lucky, and she felt loved. It had been her choice to leave the dementia home, to run away.

  She felt her own disease, she saw her mistakes and reflected on the anger which grew so quickly inside her these days. She was grateful for the love that she’d continued to receive throughout her body’s decline, and her mind’s decline. That must have been hard for them. She remembered the love she’d lost when Roy had stopped visiting, her own despair, and the feeling of abandonment. She knew now that Roy must be in a care home – otherwise he would be sitting on this sofa with her, in their old lounge. Roy would always choose to be with her when he could be. She knew.

  Enid couldn’t picture Roy’s new room though. She couldn’t see his new bed, the building, or even the street. She didn’t know who Roy would be living with, whether they would be nice to him or not, what the carers would look like, or be like. She didn’t know anything about his new home in fact, but she did know, with a clarity that she hadn’t felt in a long time, that she had never visited Roy there, and she knew that she had lost him.

 

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