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Authors: Eliza Graham

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BOOK: The One I Was
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‘Someone did that?’

‘At least it was empty.’

‘Could have been worse.’ He grinned, the years slipping from him. ‘Good to see you again, Rosamond. Make yourself at home before you do anything else. I’ve got some writing to do for a couple of hours, anyway. If I don’t drop off, that is.’ He touched his arm. ‘Damn patch.’

He was more like a newspaper editor with a new reporter than a patient with a nurse. But his manner was easy and gentle. ‘Leave Max up here, Sarah.’

‘Until later, then.’ I picked up the bag I’d left at the bedroom door. He raised a hand, already engrossed in whatever was on the laptop.

‘That new computer only arrived a few days ago. He’s been fiddling around with wifi connections,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s really perked him up. She glanced at my bag. ‘You travel light.’

Most of the time I simply wore black or grey jersey trousers with either a beige or grey cashmere v-neck over a t-shirt. Smart enough to look professional yet comfortable.

Other than these clothes and my underwear and toiletries my bag contained my mobile and a tablet computer. I didn’t own many other possessions.

‘You live like a gypsy,’ James had complained when he’d first got to know me. ‘Even this apartment of yours is like a temporary refuelling point or something.’

I’d laughed, but taken his point. There’d been a period of time, lasting no more than a month or so, when I’d thought of moving, of finding a house with a garden. But that had all come to nothing.

‘I suppose you’re used to … this.’ Sarah nodded over her shoulder at the door we’d just closed and blinked hard, a chink of emotion showing in her neatly made-up features.

‘I’ve had plenty of experience, but you never get used to all of it. You shouldn’t, really.’ I suppose I’m like a kind of midwife for the dying. I hope so. Rather than help them arrive, I help them leave. I never hurry the pace of the departure, though. And my loyalty is always to the patient rather than anyone else. I hoped I understood this properly myself.

She paused, frowning, outside the door next to Benny’s. For a moment I thought I was to sleep in there and clenched my suitcase handle. Sarah opened the door and looked inside. ‘I heard something in there. Probably a bird hitting the window.’

Or a ghost, letting me know it was aware of my presence at Fairfleet.

Sarah closed the door, allowing me a glimpse of neatly arranged shoes under the dressing table, and a well-ordered arrangement of make-up and perfume on the dressing table. Her own bedroom.

We followed the landing round to the right. Sarah opened a door. A west-facing room. In the evening pink light would flood in, warming the ivory walls.

‘It’s lovely, thank you.’ I placed my suitcase on the bed, beside two thick and obviously new ecru towels. Sarah had a gift for making rooms look welcoming. The wooden panelling had been left to speak for itself, the rest of the room was muted and neutral, except for the bluebell-coloured quilt on the bed, which matched the blue trim on the curtains. Sarah had piled new magazines on the small desk and arranged freesias in a square Perspex vase on the dressing table.

Four small candles in stainless-steel holders sat on a mirrored tile on the dressing table. I couldn’t bear to have candles in my bedroom. I’d hide them away.

‘If you’ve got everything you need, I’ll let you unpack.’ She reached the door and turned back. ‘Oh …’

I stopped, hand still opening the wooden doors on the wall beside the dressing table.

‘I was just going to tell you about the hidden wardrobe, but you’re too quick for me!’

‘Pure fluke.’ I hoped I sounded casual. She left me to my unpacking.

‘You won’t be able to get away with it, you know,’ James had said as I was leaving. ‘You’ll give yourself away. It’ll be something small you let slip.’ His face was creased with concern. ‘Why not just tell them who you are?’

‘Because they won’t think I’m a suitable nurse.’

‘You can’t know that.’

‘Oh, I do. Anyway, it’s too late now. They’re expecting me.’ And I’d picked up my suitcase and kissed him goodbye. His face had worn the same resigned expression I remembered seeing on my ex-husband’s face just before we’d broken up.

I washed my hands in the en-suite bathroom. The skin on my left arm was itching, as it often did at this time of year, when rooms were dry from central heating. I rolled up a sleeve and massaged the scar. I felt as I had when I was a child starting at a new school. To settle myself I switched on my phone and looked at the photos I’d stored on it. Mum. Dad. Granny. Andrew and I as children. It only took a minute for me to remember why I was here.

My unpacking didn’t take long. Sarah had promised me a lunch of soup and sandwiches at half twelve. I put my sheepskin coat back on and went downstairs. ‘Thought I’d stroll round the gardens,’ I told Sarah, who was chopping vegetables. ‘Benny sounds as though he wants to be left in peace for now.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘He makes it very clear when he needs his privacy. But I like that. I know where I am with him.’

‘I like things being clear, too.’ I blushed.

‘Make sure you take a look at the topiary,’ she said. ‘Beside the tennis court. We can’t find anyone who can cut the wonderful animals they once had here, but our spirals and cones look rather elegant, I think.’

The topiary walk wasn’t as I remembered, but I admired the frosted spires and cones, graceful like the house itself. I walked round the frosty lawns and flowerbeds towards the lake. If the weather stayed as cold as this the water might freeze. I couldn’t resist a childlike rush of excitement.

Money had been spent on the house and grounds. Probably raised by selling parcels of land. A second wave of housing had sprung up at right angles to the original new-builds behind the lake. The walled garden and tennis court were both in good repair, too, I noted.
Benny and his wife had cherished Fairfleet. I walked on, eventually coming out at the front of the house. The drive led to the lane, itself leading to the village.

I headed back to the lake. The wind blew into my face, seeming to come across the water from the North Pole. Like a little girl I shivered and shoved my hands into my coat pockets. I needed gloves. The wind’s rasping cold mocked my belief that I could handle being back at Fairfleet. The sun went behind a cloud. Fairfleet’s gardens looked lonely and abandoned.

My car keys were still in my coat pocket. With a turn of the key in the ignition I could be away, never to see this place again. I could abandon my few possessions; they were all replaceable.

‘Don’t go back,’ I heard Andrew tell me.

I stood there shivering, watching a flock of geese fly very low over the lake.

Then I forced myself to turn towards the back door of the house.

7

The warmth of the kitchen relaxed me. My mind turned to practical matters. I’d packed for this job in a hurry, knowing that if I took time to consider what I needed for Fairfleet doubts might shake me. I needed more warm clothes. If I gave lunch a miss I could drive into Oxford: give myself a temporary escape from the house.

‘I’m just going to do a quick bit of shopping before Benny needs me,’ I told Sarah.

‘What about your lunch?’ Something smelled delicious. ‘Here, let me serve you some quickly.’ The red-pepper soup defrosted me completely.

She explained how to use the park-and-ride system and told me where the bus would drop me off in the city centre. As I went to pick up my handbag from my room I worried she’d consider me restless, dashing out on an errand no sooner than I’d arrived.

Oxford felt busier than I remembered it as a child. I stood blinking in the Cornmarket as crowds milled round me. Shoppers shivered, faces pinched and grey as they hurried between shops. Christmas might only be weeks away, but nobody seemed to be enjoying the shop displays or the groups of cold-looking school children singing carols. Ahead of me pedestrians veered suddenly to the right. An off-key busker? Probably a hole in the pavement, cordoned off. I heard shouts, a man’s voice, deep and loud, screaming at passersby. An arm waved above people’s heads.

‘Not him again,’ a girl ahead of me muttered to her friend. ‘Total nutcase. He was hassling some poor woman yesterday. The police should move him on.’

The drunk, if that’s what he was, stood still, focusing into mid-distance, while he ranted at the crowd. He wore a long black coat, belted with a length of string, and a woolly hat. He didn’t appear any more threatening than the other drunks you saw everywhere in British towns. I scanned the street ahead for the department store I needed. Half two now. The short December day was almost at its ebb. I wasn’t sure I’d remember how to navigate the maze of country lanes around Fairfleet in the dark.

The drunk drew breath as I passed him. For a second I could make out the screech of bus brakes and the laughter of a group of students on the other side of the road. Something clenched my arm. I looked down and saw the drunk’s hand on my sheepskin sleeve. His nails were bitten and cracked, the skin red and chapped, mottled with some skin complaint. I tried to shake the hand off.

‘I know all about you.’ His blue eyes bored into mind. A small dent pitted the side of his head, as though his skull had once been dented. A grubby beard covered his jaw. I wanted to scream.

‘Think I’m stupid?’ he went on. ‘I know what you are.’ He nodded slowly to himself.

Shoppers turned to gawp at us.

‘Get off.’ I shook his hand harder, heart thumping. ‘Let me go.’

‘You don’t fool me!’ he roared.

‘Bloody leave her alone.’ The girls who’d been muttering about the drunk came towards us. One of them waved a mobile phone. ‘I’ve got a photo. I’ll text it to the police.’

He stared at them and then at the hand he’d placed on my arm. He let me go, stepping back into a doorway, still nodding towards me.

‘Should be her on the streets. Not me.’ He spat the last words at me, hunched his shoulders and shuffled off towards a coffee shop, presumably to harass people going inside in search of warmth.

‘You want us to call the police?’ The first girl waved her mobile.

‘No.’ The word sounded harsh. I softened it with a smile. ‘He’s just a drunk. I’ll leave it, thanks anyway.’

They walked on. ‘Nutter,’ one of them muttered. I wondered whether she meant him or me.

I reached the warm department store and forced myself to concentrate on the counters of make-up and the Christmas decorations around the moving staircase, the hubbub of the shoppers.

8

By the time I reached women’s fashions on the first floor my heartbeat was back to normal. I concentrated on the racks of cashmere, managing to ask an assistant to bring me the sizes I needed without my voice shaking.

‘This one is more expensive.’ The assistant looked me over. ‘But the quality of the cashmere is excellent.’

The taupe jumper felt like a warm waterfall running through my fingers. ‘I’ll take it,’ I said. ‘And the charcoal version, too.’

I saw her raise her eyebrows slightly and give me an approving nod. I hadn’t even looked at the price tags, just picking out whatever appealed. Lady Muck, James sometimes called me, affectionately. At least I hoped it was affectionately.

‘Quality lasts,’ had always been my rejoinder. That was what my grandmother and mother had believed. One perfect coat rather than two or three mediocre ones. Good-quality woollens because they could be washed again and again.

So two or three times a year I bought whatever I needed, without looking at price tags. I had accustomed myself to my wealth by now; we were old partners, making the best of one another. But as I replaced my credit card in my purse I couldn’t help thinking of the lack of money affecting so many people these days. The drunk’s face flashed into my mind. I shivered, even though the store was heated to tropical temperatures. Downstairs I picked up a pair of warm leather gloves, lined with sheepskin.

I was careful to make a detour back to the bus stop to avoid the Cornmarket, in case the drunk was still looking out for me. Perhaps he’d guessed I’d come in on a park-and-ride bus and was hanging around by the bus stop. Stop it, I told myself, you’re being paranoid, seeing things in his raddled expression that weren’t there.

As I stood at the stop I opened the store bag and unfolded the tissue paper to let my fingers touch the soft cashmere jumpers. The smooth, warm fibres soothed me. I could manage this. My mobile trilled, alerting me to a text message.
Pls. let me know how it’s going. J.x.

It must be break time. James would be in the staff room, grabbing a coffee. Worrying about me.

All fine. xxx
. My fingers tingled as I typed the lie.

Evening was already falling as I drove the last miles back to Fairfleet, the pale sun dropping below the hills. There were more streetlights lining the roads than I remembered, but when I turned off the lane into Fairfleet’s drive the darkness curled itself around the car, and I felt the now familiar mixture of excitement and anxiety. Proper inky winter night-time: a period for reflection.

I let myself into the house and went up to my room to unpack my purchases. As I passed Benny’s door I heard a low murmur of voices. Sarah and Benny, perhaps talking about the new arrival who’d dashed off so precipitously to buy something or other.

Time to push my personal considerations to one side. I put on my new taupe jumper over my long-sleeved silk t-shirt and prepared myself for Benny, trying to erase thoughts of the drunk’s grimy hand on my arm. I was safe here at Fairfleet. And my patient needed my energy and concentration now. As I applied a thin layer of eye-liner I felt myself slipping into my professional persona.

Benny was sitting up in bed when I went in, finishing a sorbet of some kind. Good choice for a patient with a dry mouth and possible nausea. Max still lay on the rug beside the bed, greeting me with a gentle wag of his tail. The smart laptop sat on the bedside table.

‘Nice jumper.’ Benny’s eyes glinted with something. Amusement? Irony? I decided not to analyze it. This evening his voice still sounded as it had on the television and radio: very English-sounding, but with the slightest note that might, if you listened carefully, make you aware of the fact he hadn’t been born in this country. Unlike other famous or successful people I’d nursed, he hadn’t surrounded himself with photographs of himself with fellow famous people. No awards on his book shelves, no press cuttings framed and displayed on the walls.

BOOK: The One I Was
10.03Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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