Same Time Next Week

Chapter 35

Amanda drove over to her mum’s house to check everything was okay, and to pick up another nightie and clean underwear from her drawers upstairs. Then, while she was in the bedroom, she moved the unit away from the corner, peeled the carpet back and put the large rusty tin back in the hole. It was her mother’s property and she hadn’t really any right to take it, she’d decided. She felt better when it was restored to its rightful place.

Bradley and Kerry were sitting with Ingrid when Amanda got to the hospital. Ingrid was sitting up; such a different scenario to yesterday and Amanda was beyond relieved. She glanced at Amanda and smiled, which set Amanda’s alarm bells ringing immediately. She couldn’t remember the last time her mother had greeted her with a smile so wide.

‘Amanda, good news. The doctor said that they’re thinking about letting her out tomorrow. Didn’t they, Mother, say they were letting you out tomorrow?’ Bradley patted his mum’s hand while he was talking to her as if she were three.

‘Yes. I’m going home, thank god because this place is full of people I can’t stand,’ said Ingrid. ‘And she’s the worst of them.’ She jabbed her finger in the direction of the woman by the window, who was fast asleep.

Bradley chortled.

‘Oh Ingrid, you can’t say that,’ said Kerry.

‘It’ll be nice to be back home. I’ll call in and see Edie next door and make sure she’s all right. She’s had her foot off, you know. Or it might be two, I can’t remember.’

Eh ? thought Amanda. Ingrid hadn’t lived next to Edie for forty years.

‘She’s got a house in Spain, she’s always asking me to go. I’ve said no so many times I can’t count.’

‘Have you? You should go,’ said Kerry in her best dopey voice.

‘They’ve got too many animals over there, parrots, cats. I can’t do with animals. And stairs, loads of stairs. She can’t get up them because she’s got no feet.’

‘Kerry, can you go and get a nurse,’ said Amanda.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Bradley, feathers ruffled that Amanda was ordering his wife around.

‘Because neither of you have noticed, have you, that Mum is talking absolute bollocks.’

Sky had been in a deep dreamless sleep, deep as Loch Ness. It had caught up with her, having had such a poor night’s sleep before. It took Bon a few gentle shakes of her arm to bring her back to the surface. She sat bolt upright, disorientated, embarrassed.

‘Oh god, Bon, I’m so sorry,’ she said, jumping to her feet so quickly she staggered backwards.

Astrid was standing behind Bon, smiling at her, an unsure sort of smile that went in and out on her lips.

‘Sky, I hope you don’t mind but I have opened me big gob and said probably more than I should have. I told Mr van der Meer about the creepy man in your house.’

‘Okay,’ said Sky. It wasn’t that big a secret, but it wasn’t as if he could do anything about it.

‘Sky, Astrid tells me that she has a room you could move into,’ said Bon.

‘Yes, but I can’t expect Astrid to keep it open until my tenancy agreement is up and that’s months—’

He cut her off. ‘I want you to show me where you live. You’re going to be moving out in the next hour, if that’s what you want.’

‘I… I can’t do that because—’

‘Do you want to leave that house?’

‘Well… yes, I—’

‘That’s all I needed to hear, the yes ,’ said Bon.

To be fair to the nurses, Ingrid was talking very convincingly about Edie with one foot who kept a menagerie in Spain, but Amanda was totally disgusted with her brother for not spotting the rubbish her mum was coming out with. After further investigation they found she had a water infection which was causing the confusion.

‘How was I supposed to know there was no one called Edie living next door?’ Bradley seethed at her. ‘She might have meant the new neighbours.’

‘The young pharmacist couple with all feet intact, as you’d know if you actually conversed with Mum. You swan in twice a week, Bradley, stay an hour with her if that, you never take her out—’

‘I’ve got my own life,’ Bradley bit back.

‘That is your eighty-year-old mother in there, Bradley. And she thinks the sun shines out of your arse. Now I’m warning you, on Saturday morning the estate agent is going round to take photos of Mum’s house and it’s going up on the market. And that is final.’

‘You can’t do that,’ said Bradley, his mouth puckering like a cat’s backside.

‘Watch me,’ she replied and turned to go. She needed a coffee. Strong.

‘I’ve got power of attorney,’ Bradley shouted at her back.

Amanda braked. She turned on her heel.

‘You what?’

‘Mother gave me power of attorney in case she lost her faculties. Financial and health. It’s all legal. If anything happens to me, it’ll be Kerry; that’s what she wanted so don’t blame me, it wasn’t my doing.’

Amanda was seething. ‘Oh, I’ll bet it wasn’t your doing. And when did you pull that little trick?’

‘It wasn’t a trick, Mother asked me to get a solicitor to come to the house to do it all, and he was assured that she was of sound mind.’

Amanda laughed, not caring that the sound filled the hospital corridor.

‘Please tell me you don’t mean your mate Johnny Wilson? The one that got struck off?’

‘He was reinstated,’ said Bradley, breathing so heavily he was rasping. ‘What happens is that I don’t step in unless I have to. Mother remains in sole charge of things until then.’

Amanda opened up her mouth to say the words crowded in there, but she would have been thrown out of the hospital for the volume and the language. She needed to get away from her brother before she did something she’d regret. No wonder she was drowned in her own menopausal sweat by the time she got to the café on the floor below, and no HRT patch on earth had the power to stop such a tsunami.