Page 75 of The Secret Life of Beatrice Alright

‘I like the bench,’ I say, truthfully. ‘But yeah. Your number would be good.’

THIRTY-ONE

I spend most of my day at work looking out for Malcolm and Shayne, but they don’t visit. As disappointed as I am, I can tell MrsMorgan and MrsBrennan are more so.

‘He’s just afraid I’ll beat him this time,’ MrsMorgan says.

‘In your dreams,’ MrsBrennan retorts with a humph.

I wonder what they might be up to. I hope they’re using Shayne’s final days to spend some quality time together.

It’s Elaine’s first day back after Christmas and she has a face like thunder. I work up the courage to say, ‘Are you okay?’ And wait for her to tell me to mind my own business.

But, instead, she looks at me with teary eyes and says, ‘My father is sick.’

‘Oh,’ I say, surprised she shared something so personal, and didn’t follow it with a direct order of what floor to wash next, or bed to change, or shower tray to scrub. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Is it serious?’

‘I don’t know.’ She shrugs as if she’s afraid to find out. Her eyes are glossing over and if she blinks, I think tears might spill.

‘Didn’t he tell you?’ I say, fully aware that I am prying now and expecting her to snap at any moment.

‘No.’

‘Doesn’t he want to talk about it?’

Her face pinches, and I think she is weighing up whether to tell me more or not. There’s a few seconds of us standing side by side in awkward silence where I wonder if it would be okay to walk away and get back to work, until she finally says, ‘We don’t speak. We haven’t spoken in years.’

‘Oh,’ I say again, now more invested than ever.

Surely not, I think, looking at Elaine’s sweet heart-shaped face. Her silver bob sits blow-dry perfect below her ears every day, rarely with a strand out of place. Her steely blue eyes hide behind thick-rimmed lilac glasses as if time has faded their brightness. Malcolm has a round head, no hair and remarkably good vision for a man his age – he was doing the crossword without glasses, and that print is tiny. But Shayne wears glasses, I saw when he was using his laptop.

‘He sent me this,’ Elaine goes on, producing a Christmas card from behind her back. There is a picture of a front door with large wreath on the front.

‘That’s nice,’ I say, cringing as I search my brain for better words.

‘I haven’t seen him in over a decade and he sends me this. And sends it here. To the hospital. Órlaith said he handed it in on Christmas Day, can you believe it? There was a temp on reception and Órlaith only found out about it today.’

‘Better late than never, eh?’ I plead with my brain to stop blurting out the first thing it comes up with, but Elaine makes me nervous. She always has, but much more so since I’ve been living in the storage room onherward.

‘What the hell am I supposed to do with this?’ she says, and I think it’s more than a generic phrase, I think she’s actually asking me for advice.Me?

‘Talk,’ I say.

She snorts. ‘God, if only it were that simple.’

‘It can be.’

‘Oh, Bea,’ she says, a slender tear finally escaping her eye to trickle down her cheek. ‘You’ve no idea how complicated my life is.’

‘Nobody has any idea of how complicated anybody’s life is,’ I say firmly.

She straightens up and I hear her back crack and I know this conversation is over.

‘We should get back to work,’ she says, pressing her foot on the pedal of the giant bin in the hall and tossing the card in.

‘Yeah. Work.’

‘Take a look at the window in StJohn’s ward, please. There’s something sticky on the ledge. Needs a good scrub.’

---