Page 46 of Birds of a Feather

My phone started to ring. I eagerly grabbed at it to see if it was the Australian embassy calling to tell me she’d been caught up in a known international granny-trafficking operation – or Gran herself.

‘Hi Mum,’ I said, answering the call. I knew I couldn’t tell her I’d lost Gran until I knew all the details; there was a very real risk she’d be on the first flight out if she thought Gran was in danger. She’d been keen to come even when she didn’t think that.

‘Hi, Bethie. I’m just checking in to see how it’s all going,’ she began generically.

‘It’s great. I forgot how much I love London. It’s such an incredible city.’

‘It sure is,’ she replied.

‘I mean, what’s not to love about a place where entire streets are made up of house facades that are exactly the same as the one before it, and the one after it,’ I continued. ‘It’s like each street is a satisfying architectural repeating pattern. It’s—’

‘Yes, it’s great,’ she said quickly. ‘And Gran, she’s having a good time so far too?’ Her tone was thick with innuendo.

‘She is,’ I said, cautious not to say anything that would reveal that I hadn’t seen her since she set off for her reunion last night.

‘And Gerry …’ she paused, as if waiting for me to provide an answer to the question she hadn’t yet formed.

At dinner on the night before we left, Gran had told the family about Gerry and their planned reunion. I was grateful – it was one less secret I had to keep. She casually dropped it into conversation in the way people do when they want to share something significant without making a big deal of it. But my family was the wrong audience for understated announcements. They made a massive fuss, which, admittedly, she seemed to enjoy. Even Jarrah’s nattering about ‘true love’ and ‘soulmates’ was somewhat tolerable when it was directed at someone else.

‘I haven’t met her yet, but she sounds amazing. She’s so accomplished and well respected,’ I said, as much to placate her concerns as my own.

‘Yes, I’m sure she’s wonderful.’

I heard the click of the room key in the lock. ‘Sorry Mum, I have to go. I’ll chat to you later,’ I said, hanging up the call and abruptly springing from my bed.

‘Hi,’ I said, a little more shrilly than I’d intended as Gran appeared through the opening door. ‘How are you? How is she? How was it?’

Gran laughed as she struggled over the threshold, partly because the door was heavy and partly because I was unintentionally obstructing it.

‘Let me in, darling, and I’ll tell you all about it.’

‘Sorry,’ I said, shuffling out of the way. ‘I’ve just been so excited to hear …’

She moved inside and extended her hand to cup one side of my face, and then calmly walked towards the table where she placed her bag.

‘It was wonderful,’ she beamed. ‘She’s just as I remembered: elegant, sophisticated and worldly, and with just as much charm as she always had.’

Gran described their dinner and how they’d talked into the night. But she hurried over the details, as Gerry would be arriving shortly to collect us for brunch, and for a wander through Portobello Road Markets.

‘You didn’t need to come back here,’ I said as she rummaged through her suitcase. ‘I could have met you there.’

‘What? And have me walk around in these all day?’ she gestured to her new clothes. ‘It was bad enough doing the … what’s that expression you young ones use?’ She paused, searching for the term, and then clicked her fingers. ‘The walk of shame,’ she whispered.

Gran saying that she’d done a walk of shame was definitely not on my ‘things Gran would say’ bingo card.

Gran hummed as she made her selection of clothes to change into and ran the shower. Even through the closed bathroom door and over the running water, I recognised Etta James’s ‘At Last’ as soon as I heard the first two notes, before she manoeuvred through various trills and scales.

She emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later. I noticed that she’d reapplied some, but not all, of the make-up she’d used the night before and was wearing another top that I didn’t recognise.

‘You ready?’ she asked with a bounce in her voice as she checked her watch. ‘We’ll wait downstairs.’

Gran shooed me out the door with an urgency I hadn’t experienced since school mornings when Mum overslept and would hustle us off to school with a piece of plain toast for breakfast, a handful of coins for a lunch order and instructions to use our fingers to comb our hair.

Once downstairs, Gran paced the lobby, checking her watch every few minutes.

‘Why don’t you sit down, Gran?’ I encouraged. I was worried all this frenetic energy would cause her blood pressure to rise.

‘No, darling, I’m fine. Being up is good for the circulation. Move it, or lose it. That’s what they say.’

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