Chapter twenty-four
Lewis took a moment to absorb what Eric Alexander had just said to him. It was so completely out of the blue, so wrong, that he struggled to make it fit with the reality he was currently inhabiting.
Lewis had thought his week – no, his year, maybe even his career – had reached its low point four days earlier, when Pam had phoned him to tell him that a fourth resident that week was being withdrawn by their families, citing loss of confidence in the facilities.
It had taken considerable reserves to keep strong in the face of that, and he’d only managed it for the sake of his staff.
‘You’ve frozen, Lewis,’ said Eric. ‘Have we got a bad connection?’
‘No, I heard what you had to say, but I don’t feel it’s the right decision.’
‘I appreciate it’s disappointing, and I don’t want you to take it personally.
’ He paused. ‘But I’m afraid there was always the likelihood that this would be the outcome.
We’ve had several evidenced complaints over the last few days which I was going to bring to your attention in our next meeting – over and above the current investigation.
Add to that, the final quotes for the upgrades required for the CQC reinspection, which are well over the budget we’d allocated, and well .
. . I called a crisis meeting this morning, and the general consensus was that the Rosemount tanker is simply now impossible to turn around.
As we’ve discussed previously, it was haemorrhaging money even before these unfortunate events, and since you’ve just lost another four residents . . .’
‘Poor choice of words,’ said Lewis pointedly.
Eric coughed. ‘Yes, of course. Apologies. But the bottom line is that it’s just not feasible to throw good money after bad at this point. It makes more sense to sell Rosemount and use what cash becomes available to shore up more profitable homes for the future.’
Lewis stared at the painting of the Duchess of Longhampton, sitting on an armchair with four of her favourite ferrets. They all had beady eyes, and they all urged him to put up a fight.
‘Eric, what we do isn’t just about money.’
‘But it is,’ Eric reminded him. ‘In this case, it absolutely is. Rosemount was a headache long before you arrived. The negative publicity is already impacting our other properties, and this latest incident is getting national attention.’
‘Our social media manager is working flat out to contain that.’ By which he meant Ellie was deleting every vicious comment she saw popping up; frankly she’d done little else since the first ambulance arrived.
The comments had started immediately, which was so concerning Lewis had allocated it a separate slot in his head to worry about.
Eric was bringing the conversation to a close.
‘You’ve given it your best shot, but we need to draw the line somewhere.
The group accountants have been briefed to prepare Rosemount for sale.
They’ll be in touch. And I’ve got to be honest, I doubt if anyone’s got pockets deep enough to take it on in its current format.
We’re anticipating offers from developers.
You’ll need to update the staff, and also the residents – of course we’ll do everything we can to support them in finding alternative accommodation.
But hold fire on that until I’ve spoken to our legal team about a timetable. ’
Lewis didn’t know what to say. He was numb with anger and guilt and disbelief and disappointment, so much that he barely dared open his mouth. But he was also exhausted.
‘Lewis? Are you there?’
For a moment, he came very close to hanging up on his boss without even speaking, under the pretext of losing signal, but Lewis was a professional, and a man who’d been brought up by four people very hot on manners, and he just couldn’t do it.
‘Please keep me in the loop,’ he said, and then he ended the call.
It took Lewis a moment to gather his shattered thoughts.
He usually resisted overemotional descriptions, but that was exactly how he felt: broken into tiny pieces, as if everything he’d tried to do, every plan he’d devised for Rosemount, everything he’d believed about the supposedly people-focused company he worked for, and above all, everything he believed about himself, had been unexpectedly smashed into insignificance with one punch.
Well, one punch, preceded by a lot of sneaky little kicks to the shins.
On autopilot, he began walking to a small productive task, anything that could be completed without much active thought, and found himself outside.
The lawn needed mowing – a simple job that always gave him headspace to ruminate efficiently on other, bigger projects – but once he was up on the ride-on mower, Lewis’s brain flooded with more questions, and he came to a halt.
He’d known that something was wrong in the house; his dream had told him that quite clearly. So why hadn’t he been more rigorous in rooting it out?
And what was it that had been malfunctioning – the call bells, or Hugh’s heart . . . or Lewis himself?
‘Lewis?’
A finger was jabbing him in the back.
‘Lewis! Are you all right, man?’
Robotically, he turned to see Nigel Callaghan standing in the middle of the lawn, staring at him, his hands on his hips. What on earth was Nigel doing out here?
It dawned on Lewis that Nigel was in the middle of the lawn because he was in the middle of the lawn, on a stationary lawnmower.
‘Have you run out of petrol?’ Nigel inquired. ‘Or are you doing some fancy new pattern?’
‘Neither,’ said Lewis. ‘I’m just very disappointed.’
‘In what?’
It probably wasn’t the discreet thing to do, but Lewis told him. Nigel, he sensed, would understand the bigger reasons for his disarray; he was a man of the world, who’d looked at the best and the worst human beings could do to each other, and prepared a balanced report on it for Newsnight.
‘But what cuts me to the quick,’ Lewis finished, ‘apart from not being given a fair chance to fulfil my brief, is the anonymous complaints.’
Nigel stared at him. ‘More than the implications that you’ve been criminally negligent?’
‘Well, yes. At least there’ll be a report that I’m confident will exonerate me.
’ Lewis really did hope it would exonerate him.
‘I’ve been open about tackling any issues here since the day I arrived, and I’ve asked people to be open with me in return.
So why didn’t they come to me? I don’t think I’m intimidating, am I? ’
‘Quite the opposite.’
‘And yet there’s someone here at Rosemount who doesn’t trust me to solve their problems. And of course,’ he added, ‘I hate the thought that there are problems. I thought we were getting on top of things.’
Lewis rarely used the word ‘hate’. Similarly, ‘nice’, ‘tasty’ or ‘pardon’, all vetoed by the grandmother who’d worked at GCHQ.
Nigel didn’t answer. He was staring up at the blank windows of the garden rooms.
‘Why would someone want to complain anonymously?’ Lewis didn’t mean to be whiny, but he was struggling to superimpose his professional persona over the hurt personal one.
‘Indeed,’ said Nigel, and narrowed his eyes at the windows. ‘Leave it with me.’
Lewis gave himself exactly one minute to sit in his shallow puddle of unmanly emotions, then he pulled himself together and finished mowing the lawn.
The lines weren’t as straight as he’d have liked, and he imagined himself mowing out swearwords into the now-lush green of the grass, but it was done.
If Lewis had hoped that Eric would have reflected on his conversation over lunch and changed his mind, he was disappointed.
Just after two o’clock, an email arrived with official guidance on how he should start informing key staff of the proposed sale, and, reluctantly, he began with Pam.
She entered his office with red eyes, and began crying before she’d sat down.
‘I know what you’re going to say and I’m sorry, so sorry,’ she wept, offering him an envelope. ‘I’ve already written my resignation letter.’
‘What?’
‘The call bells! I should have checked with the electrician, he must have disconnected the wiring when he came in that day. I don’t think any of them were working! I went up to check and that corridor was all off!’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘When the electrician came the other week, you asked me to show him round? I should have checked what he was doing but Dawn and Rosie needed me to help turn Marjorie, so I just left him to it.’ It was hard to make out what she was saying through the hiccups.
‘It’s my fault Hugh and Linda were on their own for so long.
I won’t let you take the blame for it. You’ve been so good to me, I’ve learned more about managing people in the last few weeks than in my whole career, and the one time you trust me to—’
‘Pam, stop right there.’ Lewis pushed the box of tissues across the desk. ‘It’s not your fault. The buck stops here, for everything.’
And he was to blame, he thought, guiltily. He’d stayed chatting to Stan rather than supervising the electrician, because he’d wanted advice on how to approach Beth.
‘That electrician was called in to look at the wiring in the whole house – none of it’s up to standard.
’ Another David Rigg botched contract. ‘Besides, the nurses reacted with remarkable efficiency. I should be commending you for keeping their skills up to date – the paramedics were particularly complimentary about Kemi’s chest compressions. ’
Pam snuffled into her tissue. It sounded like thanks.
Lewis sighed. ‘I have some sad news to share, Pam, but it’s not down to one single event.
’ He gave her an edited version of Eric’s call, and noted the visible collapse in her expression as the news sank in.
When he told her they’d have to help the residents find new accommodation as soon as possible, concern – and fresh tears – filled Pam’s eyes.