Page 48 of Big Nick Energy
‘Are you and him courting then?’ she asks.
‘No.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ she asks. ‘He looks like the sort who’d get about.’
You know what, Janey? He very well could be, but I don’t really know a lot about this bloke. I know parts of his family history, he’s a bit serious, he’s good at wrapping gifts and knows a lot about Christmas trees. We hang out together now, it would seem.
‘You’d have to ask him yourself. He’s just…’ I’m not even sure I can call him a friend. At present, he feels like a seasonal acquaintance. ‘…Santa. I’ll just pop up and fetch Nana. I’ll come back for these books in a moment.’
She smiles broadly as I make my way to Nana’s room on the second floor, treading through these familiar hallways of beige carpets and floral prints on the walls. This place will never really fill me with a sense of comfort, but it’s bright, the staff have become familiar, and like the social bunny she is, Nana’s always participating in bridge or karaoke night. As I approach her room, the door is ajar and I see her sitting up in her chair, watchingLoose Women. As soon as she sees me through the door, she jumps up and shuffles over in her slippers to greet me.
‘Oh, my Kitty Kay. Look at you, all Christmassy! How are you, lovely?’ There is something about her arms wrapped around me that will always feel right. ‘Have you grown or am I shrinking?’
‘It’s Christmas. With the amount of chocolate I’m eating, it’s likely that I’m growing,’ I joke.
She hits me playfully. ‘Less of that, you’re lovely looking. So Christmassy. I love it. Let me look at your face.’
She does this more and more now each time I visit, taking prolonged looks at my face, as if she’s hoping it’ll help her failing memory. ‘Katherine Michelle Redman. Twenty-first of July,’ she says.
‘You are right,’ I say, and she kisses me on the forehead. I go into my bag and get out some things for her that I always buy. She likes a gossip magazine, hand cream and those gummy foam sweets shaped as teeth and lips. Sometimes she gives them out to her mates who don’t have teeth so they can sit around the day room and laugh. She goes around her room, straightening out things, her silvery-brown hair still tightly curled on her head, her glasses on a string around her neck, nestled in a lavender cardigan. ‘These scones are from Helen,’ I say, putting a Tupperware on her bedside table.
‘Helen. Your mum was called Helen?’ she says.
‘Mum’s called Diane, Nana. Your daughter-in-law, Diane? Helen is someone I work with,’ I remind her. Her eyes look into mine, searching but completely lost, and I try and smile to reassure her. ‘It’s alright. You know Diane. She married your son, Fred.’ She nods but I’ve lost her. And this is the bit that always hurts. It’s a sign that she’s not with me, I can see the frustration in her eyes and it floors me that I can’t do anything to help her, I can’t rebuild those memories as much as I can’t fix this, any of it. ‘Who are the flowers from?’ I ask, nodding towards a vase by the window, trying to change the subject.
‘Oh, that’s Jim, one floor up. I think he’s a bit sweet on me but he’s a bit dim. When we play Scrabble, he’s a four-letter-word man, maximum.’ I marvel at what she does know, what she does remember. As long as she remembers me. ‘You also needto explain that thing over there,’ she says, pointing to a basket in the corner of the room. ‘That arrived in reception last week, they all thought they got this place confused with Buckingham Palace.’
I look down at the Harrods hamper in the corner. After our little visit last week, Old Nick arranged to send this here as a gift for Nana. After his big gesture of the earrings, we walked around Harrods and Nick spent the hour buying things. Not that I asked for any of it but we went to the food hall and he filled a basket full of cookies and tins of tea and truffles, telling me it was all for family and friends, asking me for advice. Advice? I drink three types of tea: normal tea, Earl Grey when I feel posh and fruit tea that sits in the back of my cupboard. And then he said he’d send something to my nana. Harrods didn’t do those teeth sweets apparently. Funny that.
‘Who’s Nick?’ she asks, asking me to sit down on the edge of her bed. ‘Kay and Nick, imagine my surprise to see a young man’s name there on the gift card.’
I have been here in the weeks since I reconnected with Nick but I’ve not said a word, mainly because when we did break up the first-time round, Nana declared him a mortal enemy for life. ‘Nana, do you remember when I was at university and I dated that boy…’
‘Nick,’ she says, his name dripping out of her mouth with disdain.
‘Yeah, we bumped into each other again and we might be going out. Kind of.’
Nana stares into space. ‘Was he the one with the earring like a pirate?’
‘No.’
‘Shorts in winter?’
‘No.’
‘This white wine tastes like lighter fluid,’ she says.
I laugh. ‘Yeah, that’s the one.’ I hadn’t remembered that. Nick had come round for Sunday lunch at Nana’s and had been snooty about the wine. Nana left the table and went to find a bottle of lighter fluid so Nick could make the comparison for himself.
‘Explains Harrods then. He used to buy me flowers though. Is he still posh? Snooty?’ she asks.
‘I think he’s mellowed a little. He’s very generous, kind. We went ice skating. You’d have loved it. What’s in the hamper?’ I ask, not mentioning that we share baths now too.
‘Oh, all sorts. That lovely lad, Milosh, who works in the kitchens here, I gave him some bits – the gourmet chutneys and nuts. And Ivy upstairs, I gave her the loose tea so she can do her readings.’ I smirk to know everyone’s futures in the building will be a lot posher. Nana takes my hand. ‘I won’t comment but is he nice to you? Are you happy, lovely?’
‘I’m happy because I’m here with you.’
‘That’s a shit answer.’
