Chapter 87
Joyce
I don’t often write in the morning, I know. But today I just felt I should.
Yesterday was all very interesting, wasn’t it? Those boys, and all the murders and the drugs and what have you. I bet they had a lot to talk about when they headed off afterward. I wonder who they were meeting?
I wonder if . . . Oh, stop it, Joyce, just stop it. You’re putting it off. You don’t want to write it.
All right, then. So I have had some sad news, and the sad news is this.
I made my “All’s Well” call to Bernard this morning.
Lots of people have an “All’s Well” arrangement. You buddy up with a pal, ring them at eight a.m., let it ring twice, and put the phone down. Then they do the same back. So you each know the other is okay, without it costing you a penny. And, of course, you don’t have to have a conversation.
So I rang Bernard this morning. Two rings, letting him know I was safe and sound, hadn’t had a fall or what have you.
But nothing back. I never worry too much; sometimes he forgets, and I wander round and ring his buzzer and he shuffles to the window in his dressing gown and gives me a guilty thumbs-up.
I always think, “Oh, let me in, you silly old man, let’s have some breakfast, I don’t mind the dressing gown,” but that’s not Bernard.
So over I trotted. Did I know? I suppose I did, but I also didn’t, because it’s too big a thing to know.
But I suppose I did know, because Marjorie Walters saw me on my way over, and she said she’d waved but I hadn’t seen, just lost in a world of my own, which isn’t like me. So yes, I suppose I knew.
I buzzed and looked up at the window. The curtains were drawn.
Perhaps he was asleep? Had a touch of the flu and stayed in bed.
“Man flu,” someone had said on This Morning the other day.
It had tickled me and I’d told Joanna, but she said the expression had been around for years, and had I really never heard it? Which put me in my place.
I’m stalling, I know. Let’s get on to it.
I let myself into the block with the spare key fob. I walked up the flight of stairs and saw an envelope taped to Bernard’s door. On the front of it he had written “Joyce.”
Sorry, I have to finish there.
There was even a smiley face in the “O.” You really never knew with Bernard.