Page 44 of Every Silent Lie
“Maureen,” he declares. “It’s her favourite.”
“Right,” I muse, still not sure who Maureen is. There’s no wife, no family. “Have a good day, Mr. Percival.”
His gloved hand comes up in goodbye, he slips his flat cap on, and I trudge up to the door, swinging it open, hearing the tree pines crunching under my trainers as I walk down the corridor, slowing when I spot something on the floor outside my door. A round cake tin. I crouch and pick it up, removing the lid, and a waft of something rich and indulgent hits my nose. Brandy and fruit. “Christmas cake.” I take in the uneven icing encasing it as I push through my legs to rise again. “Jesus,” I groan, my muscles screaming, each one feeling like it’s being stretched to capacity and could ping at any moment.
I’d have a bath, soak in some Radox.
If I had a bath.
Throwing my keys on the side, I go to the kitchen and slide my cake onto the counter, drilling holes into it. There aren’t many suspects. Only one, in fact. Sighing, I get a blunt dinner knife, not a sharp chef’s knife—don’t have one of those—and push it into the icing with some weight behind me, cutting a small slice. My conscience is the only thing making me try a piece—and the fact I could do with a sugar hit.
I wrap my lips around it and lower to the chair. The fruit drenched in brandy hits my taste buds like a torpedo, exploding in my mouth. “Wow,” I mumble around my chews. Mr. Percival knows how to make good Christmas cake. Five bites are all it takes to finish the slice, and I want more. So I cut another piece, catching a crumb on the edge of my lip and sucking it off the tip of my finger. My chewing slows when my phone beeps. Not a message, not a call, not an email.
A weather warning. I stare down at that one fatal word.
Snow.
“No,” I whisper, opening BBC News, scanning the report detailing the impending cold snap moving in later, the snow, the ice, the disruption.
No transport.
No running.
No work?
I jump up and go to the window, looking up to the sky, as if that might tell me the weather reporter is wrong. A white, dense blanket greets me. “Shit,” I sigh, slipping the last of my second slice into my mouth and chewing as I go back to the kitchen.
I put the cake in the fridge.
It’s a splash of colour in the pallid space.
Grit lorries are out in force when I leave a couple of hours later, chugging up and down the main roads spitting out stones. And the temperature feels like it’s dropped even more, making the walk to see Mum feel so much longer.
My fingers are like freeze pops by the time I arrive, my nose certainly glowing, my lips blue. I need a hat. Some gloves. I wouldn’t know which box to search for those, and I wouldn’t want to even if I did. I’ll grab some from a shop when I’m passing.
I nod my hello to the lady on the desk as I sign in, the urge to ask how Mum is nearly getting the better of me. Her health isn’t a marker on whether she’ll recognise me today.
The double doors click as I’m approaching, allowing me through, and one of Mum’s nurses, Deirdre, spots me and makes her way over, falling into side beside me. “How’s your cheek, Camryn?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Did you have it checked out?”
My hand instinctively reaches for it as snapshots of Thursday evening parade through my mind—all Dec. His worry when I opened the door. His hand on my cheek. How his presence provided unexplainable healing powers. And then, inevitably, the kiss we shared last night. I lay awake for hours agonising over what happens next, and the fact I simply do not know only makes the voice in my head louder. The voice that’s telling me to protect what’s left of my devastated heart at all costs. “Yes,” I say. Why hasn’t he been in touch? A text, a call. Anything. After that kiss, I feel like I need something from him.
No, you don’t.
Yes, you do.
“About the carols service.”
“What about it?” I ask, reaching up and rubbing my achy head.
“It’s December twenty-first, in case you’re not working.”
“I am.”
I hear Deirdre sigh. I’m not sure if I was meant to. “She’s been better today.”
