Although Tim was Olive’s nephew, sometimes that wasn’t enough was it? Tim had been a difficult boy – he’d always been whiny at school, very clingy, and his eczema used to flare up all the time. Emily, Stan’s sister, had indulged him, in Olive’s opinion. But as an only child, she supposed that’s what happened.
‘Here you go.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Your iPad.’
‘Don’t be silly, I don’t want that.’ Honestly, what was wrong with people? ‘What about my hair?’
Olive leant back into the sink at the ‘hairdresser’s’ – well, they would call it that, when really, it was just a corner of the upstairs corridor, with a screen around it, a basin and a couple of chairs. Oh yes, they’d stuck up some posters of Sophia Loren and Jane Fonda on the wall, looking all pouty and glamorous. Olive knew there was a dementia section of the care home next door, but she wasn’t in it, was she? No, sir. Her marbles were intact. Bit old, of course. She knew damn well that today was Saturday and that Sophia Loren had never had her backside in this chair, had she?
‘Right, Olive, what are you planning for later on with your hair all done?’ said Julian, wheeling her back to a seat by the mirror. ‘There’s normally a good event on a Wednesday in the residents’ lounge. The Midweek Mystery Quiz – you liked that last time, didn’t you?’
‘How would you know what I liked last week? You’ve only just started here!’
Julian placed his hand on Olive’s arm and she caught a look in the mirror she didn’t much like. Then he busied himself with combing through some thickening conditioner into her thinning grey strands.
Olive stared at Julian in the mirror, watching him carefully comb her lank grey wisps of hair and find the parting that she always had on the left, as things slipped in and out of place in her mind. It was like a train going onto another track. It was all there, she was sure it was. One moment everything was going in the right direction, going to plan, chugging along where she could see, then wham! It all changed. The tracks moved abruptly and her brain couldn’t keep up. She found herself being confronted more and more these days with her mind pulling into an empty siding, instead of running freely along the tracks. Midweek what? Oh, bother that bloody useless brain of hers.
4
Maddie
‘Where’s my life, Carole?’ Maddie laid down the metal serving spoon next to the baking trays in the school dinner hall.
Carole fixed her with her pale blue eyes. ‘Sweetie, your life’s right here. And you’re right here with bloody mash all over yer blouse!’ Carole grinned and wiped a bit of mash from her sleeve with her tea towel. ‘Pass the peas, will you?’
Her shoulders slumped as she remembered her school nickname. Was she still Mediocre Maddie? The mockery of it, the girls jibing at her.
She’d been having the dream more and more lately, ever since she’d been to Exeter and seen Greg again and ever since the doctors had hinted about Olive’s deterioration. In the dream, she ran away; she had been told that she was losing her memory, and photographs had started to fall from her brain – colour photos, black and white ones – and every time she tried to catch them she couldn’t reach. If they fell to the floor then she lost them forever. She woke up sweating and shouting about photos. It always took her ages to get back to sleep after that dream.
Is it that wretched photo dream again? Tim had absent-mindedly punched his pillow, muttering in his sleep and turning over. Well, yes it was. And it was bothering her a lot. She leant in towards Carole and nudged her in the ribs on the way to placing a dollop of mashed potato on a kid’s plate. He beamed at her and sniffed. Yellow snot glistened under his nose.
Maddie yanked her apron down. These stupid white aprons were the bane of her life. Wait a minute, had she just thought that? Had she just thought her apron was the bane of her life?
She stretched over the counter and swiped a piece of kitchen roll and handed it to him. ‘Here, wipe your nose, sweetheart.’
As the boy blew his nose noisily, she noticed the gravy on his plate start to slide to the left, to circle around his mash. Little tributaries of brown liquid then trickled across to the peas to form a gravy-pea-soup. He looked up and grinned at her, a few teeth missing. He reminded her of Ed at that age. It was almost like a physical ache, thinking about him. He hadn’t texted in a while. She must remember to look at his Facebook page later to see if there were any ‘updates’ from him. And she must stop worrying.
A gap year. She remembered when he’d told her he was taking one. The thud of her heart. She had promised him it was what she wanted too – fingers crossed behind her back.
A soggy tissue was being waved at her. She gingerly took in a pincer-like grip, then threw it quickly in the bin. As she watched the white snot-filled paper towel descend onto a mass of congealed baked beans, a memory from her dream swirled around her head.
What if she could get away? Away from soggy mashed potato and snotty kids, from tidying up after Tim and the dog with halitosis. From the smell of cabbage and bleached floors… But what about Olive? No, stop dreaming, Maddie, her inner voice berated her.
‘Oi, miss.’
She looked up to see Snot Boy.
‘Can I have more peas, miss?’
*
The bus was stuffy. Maddie put her shopping bags between her feet as she knew how bumpy this section of the road was on the way back to her house. She didn’t want her Tesco beans to go flying across the floor. A man sat down beside her. She shifted in her seat and loosened her scarf around her neck – the one with the hummingbirds on it, the chiffon one that he had given her all those years ago, at the graduation party… She shuddered. Had he seen her friend request? She almost felt foolish now.
Her mind drifted off as she looked out the window at the trees lining the road, green leaves fluttering in the breeze. She felt the sweat build up between her shoulder blades in the airless bus and wished she’d checked the weather forecast today. It was humid: late July, sticky and hot. It was as if Mother Nature was having a real go at summer.
All the kids had been tearing around with their shirts off by the end of day, a tradition on the last day of term, waving their signed shirts in the playground, sweat glistening on their foreheads – new schools, new friends to make next term. New beginnings. And where would she be?
And next term, in they’d come with their new school jumpers with the jazzy redesigned logo – sweating their way through the first week of school, the tiny ones who had bright new uniforms, jumpers that hadn’t been washed a thousand times to get the marker pen and Weetabix off. Bright and shiny. It wasn’t how she felt right now.
She’d read about ‘empty nest syndrome’ in a woman’s magazine recently. But it was more than that. Feelings had been awakened – and they were wriggling about and demanding attention.
She yanked her silk hummingbird scarf further down as her mind wandered. She thought about Ed. How long was it since she’d walked hand-in-hand with him and counted ‘all the red cars’ on the way home from school? The thought made her feel old.
You don’t see it coming, the end of a particular road. You don’t notice how it all is until it’s gone. Silence. Still bedrooms. No dishes on the draining board to mutter about, no odd socks flung across a messy bedroom. No one to kiss goodnight. To hook an elbow around your neck when they are taller than a giraffe. Your man-boy.