Page 39 of Close to You
Veronica eyes me for a moment, but I can’t explain much more than that. She wasn’t working here when David was around. She probably knows my husband disappeared – everyone seems to – but I don’t want to get into it today.
‘Bit chilly out,’ I say, which is enough to break our impasse.
Veronica pulls her satchel higher again, agrees with me, and then heads off towards the furthest of the bungalows.
I let myself into Mum’s, though she barely looks up as I enter the living room. She’s in her chair, arms folded, watching an auction show on TV.
‘Look at this,’ she says. ‘He’s trying to get £200 for that flowerpot. No chance.’
I go through the basics – filling the kettle and setting it on the stove before cleaning away the cups and plates Mum’s left in the sink. Veronica does it some days, but it’s not really her job. When the kettle starts whistling, I make a pair of teas and then head back into the living room. Mum takes hers without a word and sips from the top before putting the cup on the side table.
‘Do you want another pillow?’ I ask.
‘I’m not an invalid.’ She takes a breath and then nods at the screen. ‘I told you he’d never get £200.’
I sit on the sofa and shuffle around, trying to get comfortable. I only stop when Mum tuts loudly in my direction and it feels like I’m a scolded six-year-old again.
‘Mum…’ I say.
She doesn’t turn from the screen.
‘You said you saw David…’
She snaps her reply: ‘Who?’
‘David. My ex-husband.’
Mum’s attention switches to me momentarily but only for a second until she looks back to the screen.
The thing is, she’s not been diagnosed with anything like dementia or Alzheimer’s. First, she would refuse to go to the doctor; second, she wouldn’t acknowledge any diagnosis anyway. Third, she can sometimes be frighteningly clear about things that actuallydidhappen in the past. Finally, there’s a horrible part of me that doesn’t want to push for any sort of confirmation because I don’t want to know.
Sometimes, she will talk about things from a decade ago as if it’s happening now. Once, she spoke as if Dad was still alive and he was in the other room. She can forget that she now lives in Poynton-on-Sea instead of Gradingham, where she spent her previous fifty or so years. She thinks she’s on holiday and talks about looking forward to getting home. And then, twenty minutes later, she’ll have forgotten we ever had the conversation.
There’s obviously something not right – and it’s getting worse. That doesn’t mean that I know what to do. Her own stubbornness will win over anything I could suggest.
She doesn’t speak for a good thirty seconds as she watches the TV – and then, from nowhere, she says: ‘David…?’, making it sound like a question. It is as if she doesn’t know the name, like it could be a character on television about whom she is unsure.
I show her the photo on my phone from the other night. She takes it from me, her hands shaking as she tries to grip the screen.
‘I hate these things,’ she says.
‘Do you remember David?’ I ask.
She squints over her glasses at the photo: ‘Course I do.’
‘Was he here, Mum?’
‘He made me a nice cup of tea.’
The hairs rise on the back of my neck. It feels as if there is someone behind me, blowing a gentle breeze.
‘When?’
The delay is interminable. On the television, someone in a red shirt is running along a street, waving a lamp at someone else in a red shirt. Mum is captivated by it, her gaze unflinching.
‘Oh, y’know…’ she says.
I wait to see if there’s anything more, but that’s all she has. This is the type of response she gives when she doesn’t know the answer but will absolutely refuse to admit she is unsure. I won’t get a better reply.
