Same Time Next Week

Chapter 32

Miraculously, Ingrid hadn’t broken any bones, but her heart rate was up and her oxygen levels were low so they were keeping their eyes on her and the consultant would reassess things in the morning. Amanda texted Bradley to let him know as she’d tried to ring but he hadn’t picked up. That was nothing new, but she thought he’d be more interactive, with their mum being poorly.

Someone came to ask questions about Ingrid’s living arrangements and she and Amanda went into the lounge area so they could talk in private. As Amanda was filling her in on how her mother lived alone, but with family support, it just didn’t seem enough any more. And it was all very well having cameras in the house, but if you didn’t man them twenty-four-seven, this kind of thing could – and did – happen. And yes, a pendant around her neck that set off an alarm if she fell had been discussed, but Ingrid refused to wear one and she definitely wouldn’t have a key box put outside the house for the alerted call-centre personnel to access her property. Amanda told her that the family were going to act quickly now and move her into more suitable housing.

Ingrid had nodded off when Amanda got back to her but the other women in the bay were awake. The one by the window was shouting for help. ‘Nurse, nurse, I need the toilet and I need it NOW.’ She saw Amanda glance over. ‘What are you gawping at, you lanky arse,’ she shouted. ‘Get me a nurse.’

The lady in the next bed from her was just lying on her back, her eyes fixed upwards and Amanda wondered what, if anything, was going on behind them. The woman opposite was trying continually to get out of bed and squealing in a high-pitched voice that she needed to go home. A nurse was sitting beside her, calmly telling her she couldn’t, replacing her matchstick-thin legs onto the mattress every time they strayed over the side. Her gown had ridden up, revealing a big dressing between her legs and pants halfway down her thigh. Pull the bloody curtain around her and give her some dignity, Amanda wanted to scream. The same game played out for the next two hours without cessation: legs working over the edge, legs replaced. ‘Please let me go home’, her voice high enough to crack glass.

Dear God, get us out of here as soon as possible, mouthed Amanda upwards. Her brain was ringing like an over-struck bell. She wished she could gather her mother up and take her out of this nightmare of degradation. She didn’t want her being here a minute longer than she had to be.

‘You came back,’ said Molly, as Erin walked into the teashop for the second of her grief clubs. ‘I hoped you would.’

‘Yes, I found it… helped.’ It wasn’t a lie. Carona had thrown a blanket-thick dark shadow over her life and one session was hardly enough to lift it away entirely but it had shifted position, allowed her to see there was some light outside it, ready to break in.

Alex wasn’t there at first and then he arrived as they were about to start. To her surprise, Erin realised how glad she was to see him. Too glad for a mere second meeting.

‘Sorry, sorry, I’m late,’ he apologised, breezing in. ‘I was held up at work, the traffic further hindered me.’ He spotted Erin and waved over and her mouth curved into a smile by way of response. He threw himself down on the chair next to her and jogged her arm, nearly knocking her slice of chocolate cake out of her hand.

‘God, I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m a walking disaster today.’

‘Go and get yourself a nice calming cup of tea from Mr Singh, Alex, we can wait for you,’ said Molly, chuckling. She dragged two open hands down slowly through the air. ‘Let yourself breathe and relax.’

Just being in this wonderful teashop would make that happen. Erin had felt better for merely walking in through the door. She should have come weeks ago.

Jesse opened up a lot more that evening, but the fact that he would never get his answers weighed heavily on him. Had he been a good enough son? Could he have done more to make his father love him? And would he be forever stuck in this state of grieving?

‘Oh, we are so hard on ourselves when someone dies,’ said Molly. She had such a beautiful voice, thought Erin, like honey. She’d be great at hypnosis. Or telling bedtime stories to small children.

‘Grief takes a long time to process, Jesse. Too often we kick against it, swim against the tide, and that’s exhausting. Sometimes we need to accept it is a current too strong for us and we should let it toss us around until it tires of us. It does eventually, but it won’t be rushed and some people feel stronger currents than others. It’s not uniform.’

‘My boss at work… he said that three months is enough, I shouldn’t need any more time to get over it.’

‘Well, he’s a knob, then,’ said Erin. She slapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry, Father Paul.’

‘I’m inclined to agree,’ said Father Paul. ‘And I think when your boss is hit with a torrent of grief himself, he might be changing his opinion on that.’

‘Do you have any children, Jesse?’ asked Molly.

‘A little boy. He’s eight.’

‘Make sure he feels your love so he is in no doubt. That’s one thing you can do to help yourself, take your father’s mistake and mould it into something positive for your son. Maybe your father struggled to tell you what his feelings were for you, maybe he intended to but time ran out, or maybe he couldn’t. Our generation… the men… often weren’t very good at emotion. Maybe him saving up his money and giving it to you was him saying he loved you in the only way he felt able.’

Jesse considered that. ‘I hadn’t thought about it that way.’

‘I’m not saying it is, because we don’t know, but then again maybe it’s exactly right and it would be a good truth to believe. When we can’t find closure, we often have to make it ourselves, pat the problem into a shape that we can control, that will settle quietly within rather than it being a wild whirling thing that keeps changing and won’t rest inside us.’

Jesse, for the first time, gave something that resembled a smile – not much of one, but it was definitely a presence on his lips.

Father Paul said that he had made an appointment to see his bishop. He was going to be honest with him and tell him his story. It didn’t sit right with him, keeping it a secret any longer. But he was frightened, he said, because he knew he should have avoided Rowena.

‘I have to say in my own defence, she made me a better priest, more human, more understanding of people. When I was a younger man, I was definitely on my high horse, vain, holier-than-thou if you like. I thought because I wore the uniform, I was somehow superior. I’ve wondered recently if God decided to humble me. It worked, if that was his plan.’

‘Maybe God did send her to you,’ said Molly. ‘Maybe she made you stronger, not weaker, Paul.’

‘I’ll let you know what the bishop says.’ Father Paul nodded with a soft smile. ‘I’m a bit too old to retrain as an electrician if I’m thrown out of the Church.’

Erin had nothing to say today, she was happy absorbing the healing energy the group emitted. Alex said similar. He could feel a definite lifting of his mood. What had helped was him stumbling across an advert for a charity that supported teenagers who were floundering. He knew that Julian would approve of the large donation he’d given them; there was no doubt in his mind about it.

At the end of the session, Erin was very aware that she was hanging back, waiting for Alex to finish talking to Molly, hoping he’d ask if she wanted to call in at the pub again. He did, and she tried to make it look as if she was deliberating over it.

Bradley and Kerry arrived at the hospital just as the catering staff were collecting the dinner trays. Amanda had tried to wake her mum to eat something but she wasn’t interested. Amanda didn’t blame her. She wouldn’t have fed the square of grey fish in its watery sauce to a stray, starving dog. Her mother hated green beans at the best of times and the chips had been cold and limp when they’d landed. The shrieking woman had a curtain around her but it wasn’t fully closed and she was on a commode, filling the air with a stench, poor old soul.

Bradley was staring down at the untouched dinner plate and holding his nose.

‘I couldn’t eat that even without that going on across there,’ he said, none too quietly.

‘Well, it’s hospital food. It’s always bad, in’t it?’ said his wife.

What would you know? thought Amanda. You with your private healthcare.

Then she remembered what it was that Kerry had said that had awoken her at stupid o’clock that morning. It was a question she’d slip into the conversation when chance permitted.

‘I couldn’t put up with this for long,’ said Bradley, as the shrieking woman began crying out for ‘Shirley’ to come and help her.

Amanda had clocked up over six hours and she needed a break.

‘Now you’re here, I’m going for a coffee,’ she said.

‘We’ll come with you,’ said Bradley.

Amanda bit down on saying, ‘Don’t you want to stay here with Mum?’ They had things to discuss. That might as well be done now, while the metaphorical iron was hot.

‘What have the doctors said then?’ asked Bradley, sitting down with a hot chocolate and a muffin. He’d bought the drinks. Amanda was surprised half a dozen moths didn’t fly out of his wallet when he opened it up.

‘That they’ll look at her again in the morning. The good thing is that she hasn’t broken anything, but she’s slept constantly. It must have been a real shock to her system. Those bloody stairs—’ Amanda groaned. ‘I told you there would be an accident sooner or later and it turned out to be sooner. She needs one-storey accommodation and she needs it now, Bradley, you must see that. There was someone from social care around earlier on who agrees it’s the right option.’ Small white lie. ‘We could have a downstairs toilet built of course, but by the time we’ve applied for planning permission and got it, and then found a builder, we’re still looking at months. We could put a single bed in the lounge, but she wouldn’t use a commode, she’d just go upstairs to the bathroom, so there would be absolutely no point in doing that.

‘I can’t find her bank statements to see how much money she has. I think the best plan is to use her savings to buy a bungalow immediately, and put the house on the market. Even that will take weeks, though. Maybe we can arrange a respite home until completion. I’ve been looking on Rightmove while I was sitting in the ward, and there’s a one-bedroomed bungalow just come up in Dodley Bottom for a hundred and twenty thousand. We could make them an offer. It’s nice enough to move straight into and it’s easily still walkable for her to get to the coffee shop she likes.’

She saw the glance shared between Kerry and Bradley. It was a flick of their eyes to each other but noticeable all the same, and she wondered what it meant.

Then Kerry said, ‘Don’t you think she might be better off living with you, Amanda?’

Amanda waggled her head, sure she must have misheard. ‘I beg your pardon, Kerry?’

Amanda’s affronted tone punctured Kerry’s rare moment of bravery.

‘I just… we’ve been talking…’

‘What Kerry means,’ Bradley took over, one slow word after another, ‘is can’t you move in with Mother for a while?’

Amanda could feel her temper rising.

‘If you’ve been talking , as Kerry says, then you’ll realise how stupid a suggestion that is. Even if I did move in, she would be alone all day when I went out to work and she would go up the stairs. Why don’t you two move in with her? Kerry’s given up her job. She could be Mum’s carer.’

An equally senseless idea, but she just wanted to see his reaction.

‘Don’t be silly, Amanda, we have our own house.’

‘Am I going mad?’ said Amanda with a hard note of laughter. ‘I thought I had my own house as well. I’m sure I have. I vaguely remember a roof and a garage. Oh, and what was that Kerry said: that you’re having to pay for your private healthcare now, so how come? Aren’t you working at Beestock’s any more?’

Kerry gave a nervous jerk and Bradley cast her a quick side-eye of annoyance.

‘No,’ he said, through lips as pursed as his giant pearlies would allow. ‘If you must know, we have bought a business.’

‘Microsoft?’

The sarcasm was lost on him. ‘A sandwich shop, actually. Well, two. Big Baps. Both thriving and profitable, in very busy areas. They run themselves, with the present staff.’

‘What? You and Kerry aren’t even working in them?’ asked Amanda, her brows raised in faux surprise.

‘We are both taking a break from industry. Kerry and I have been working solidly for twenty-five years each. That’s fifty years between us.’

Those extra maths lessons I gave you didn’t go amiss then , thought Amanda. She was furious.

‘And when did all this come about?’

‘Not long. Six weeks.’

‘Three months,’ said Kerry at the same time. Amanda was inclined to believe her more because she was as thick as Bradley was wily.

‘So, basically, you’ve been sat on your backside while I’ve been running around like a blue-arsed fly after Mum is what you’re telling me?’

‘Absolutely not. We’ve been busier than we ever were.’

‘How could you afford to pack in your job and buy a business?’ And there was also the swanky house renovations, the cars, not to mention the blinding white choppers.

‘Well… Father, of course, if you must know.’

‘He left you that much?’

‘It was a considerable sum. He had property and the shop.’

The way Bradley was spending, Arnold must have left him Necker Island as well. Something didn’t add up though; the timeline was all to cock.

‘But he’s only just died, hasn’t he?’

‘We got a loan,’ rushed Kerry, trying to be helpful but from the look Bradley gave her, she wasn’t being.

He expanded on what she said but he wasn’t happy about it. ‘We took out a loan and Father’s money will repay it. We knew it was coming, since he’d been ill for a while.’

‘Nice,’ was Amanda’s only comment. Arnold wasn’t exactly parent of the year, but there was a large ick factor in Bradley being so impatient for his inheritance that he’d engineered a way to spend it before his father had even kicked the bucket.

‘Not that it is any of your business,’ Bradley said, clearly irate at being pressured to explain himself.

He was right of course, it wasn’t any of her business. The matter of their mum, however, was very much her business.

‘Well, just so we are clear, I’m not moving in because that is stupid and will solve nothing, and she can’t move in with me because, as you may remember, my garage is on the ground floor and my living quarters are above it, so that would be an extra flight of stairs to contend with. And even if someone were able to miraculously magic up a lift in my house, Mum would be nowhere near any friends or the coffee shop and she’d be lonely when I was at work. But you have a downstairs bedroom and bathroom, don’t you, Bradley?’

‘It’s our guest room. For friends,’ he said.

You have friends? she wanted to throw at him.

‘It is a daughter’s job to look after her mother,’ said Bradley then, in that slow, imperious way of his that got right up her conk.

If Amanda hadn’t been in a hospital café she could have grabbed Bradley’s big ears and shaken him until his brain turned to mush, which wouldn’t have taken that long.

‘Is that so? And which seventeeth-century book of bollocks did you pluck that from?’ She said it, but she knew he was just spouting their mother’s words.

‘We’ve got Kerry’s mother to look after.’

‘Kerry’s got four sisters. And it’s your job, Bradley, to look after your mother as much as it is mine.’ He was like a sodding eel, trying to wriggle out of his responsibilities and she wasn’t having it any longer.

‘Well, you can’t expect me to wash her and dress her, can you?’

‘There are carers for that sort of thing. You could, if you truly thought anything about her, use some of Arnold’s money to hire a private carer. After all, it was her money that helped to set him up in that business you’ve just benefitted from.’ My own father’s money, actually. Intended for me, not that nonce.

‘No,’ said Bradley, chewing on his lip, radiating annoyance.

‘Or… how about this.’ Why hadn’t she thought of this as a solution before? It was perfect. ‘Mum could give up her house and not bother buying another place. She could move into Sunnybank Manor.’

It was almost funny watching Bradley’s reaction to that. Sunnybank Manor was a luxury hybrid of old people’s home and sheltered accommodation that cost a bomb to live in. The mere idea of his mother paying hundreds of pounds per week for the privilege of residing there almost caused her brother to spontaneously combust.

‘Absolutely not. My mother is not going into a home.’

He meant, of course, that she was not going to spend his upcoming inheritance on herself, even if it was – for now – her own money.

‘Where are the deeds for the house, by the way, do you know? I couldn’t find them.’

‘I have the box full of Mother’s financial affairs.’

‘You do? Since when?’

‘Mother asked me to help her with them some time ago. I expect she didn’t want you to know she wasn’t coping.’

Another rabbit punch. Another Bradley – one, Amanda – nil score. Their mother had turned to son before daughter, as always. Amanda sighed resignedly. Okay then, if that’s the way it was, let him do something useful for a change, seeing as all he had to do with his time presently was play at being Alan bloody Sugar. Anyway her head was bursting and she just wanted to concentrate on getting her mum well, first and foremost.

‘I’ll see you both back upstairs. I presume you’re staying for some time with her?’ said Amanda, getting up.

‘I can’t see the point, if she’s asleep. We shouldn’t disturb her, let her get some rest,’ Bradley answered.

‘That’s what she needs most,’ added Kerry, with a sagacious nod.

Thank you, Dr Kildare, Amanda stopped herself from replying.

As she was going up to the ward, she pondered over what Bradley had been hunting around for in her mum’s house if he already had the box of financial stuff. Did he know about the existence of the tin of gold but not where it was kept? If that was the case, she allowed herself a wry smile at a rare Amanda – one, Bradley – nil score.