Chapter nineteen
For the last week or so, Lewis had been having his recurring cycling dreams, which was not good.
In his dream, he was coasting along a perfect stretch of road, with the wind at his back and the sweeping downhill stretches unwinding like a ribbon in a golden landscape of ripening wheat.
Although he was on his old racing bike, he had the sense of someone behind him in the same way Eunice had been behind him on the tandem, and, without looking, he knew it was Beth.
Joy rushed around his body like the blood pumping from his heart, as his wheels hummed and the wind blew through his hair.
And then, without warning, a sleek and healthy fox appeared on the road ahead – not running, just sitting on the white line, staring straight at him with yellow eyes.
He yelled, but it didn’t move. In his efforts to avoid hitting it, Lewis swerved, the front wheel skidded sideways from underneath him, he was hurled on to the tarmac and across the road, and the fox laughed, an eerie human giggle.
Lewis sat bolt upright in bed, sweating. He reached for the water on his bedside table, next to his glasses, and tried to slow down his hammering pulse with controlled breaths.
He’d had these dreams in the past, always before something bad happened at work. It was his subconscious telling him there was a detail he’d missed, or an unhappy employee nursing a problem, and as soon as he redoubled his efforts to meet targets and encourage communication, the dreams went away.
Try as he might – and he was trying with superhuman determination – Lewis was no closer to controlling Rosemount’s chaos.
There was now a substantial, and growing, thread on the Gazette’s Facebook page about ‘unexplained phenomena’ people had experienced while visiting relatives.
One of the cleaners had slipped on ripped lino in the cellar, and Lewis had found loose wiring that he was sure hadn’t been loose before.
More mouse droppings. Fewer calls from Eric Alexander, more from the finance team.
Another two residents leaving at the end of the month.
Nigel Callaghan had ‘a shortlist of culprits’, but he wanted to be sure before pointing a finger.
It hadn’t escaped Lewis’s logic that the culprit might be Nigel himself.
No wonder he was having the cycling anxiety dream night after night.
This time, though, Lewis had the uneasy feeling his subconscious was trying to tell him something different, not a target or a grievance he was missing: this was something he didn’t have a strategy for.
It was nearly three, and bright moonlight cut through the thin curtains on to the wall opposite his bed; the rental house had unsatisfactory curtains, no blackout lining.
Not up to his usual requirements. A moth battered its wings against the window, drawn to the meagre light coming from Lewis’s phone on the bedside table, and he flipped the phone over, for the moth’s sake.
Lewis stared up at the ceiling. The moonlight picked out pockmarks; it needed skimming and repainting too.
He hated not having a plan. Doing nothing felt like failure in itself; his whole ethos was built around never wasting a moment, never letting an opportunity pass.
Yet when it came to Beth Cherry – because he knew that was what the dream was about, his all-consuming, tongue-tied crush on Beth – every tentative attempt at romance came to nothing.
He wasn’t giving it his all, because he couldn’t bear the thought of failing, and that was a side of himself Lewis didn’t recognise. And didn’t much like.
He threw back the covers, got up and made himself a perfect chocolate mug cake which he left on his neighbour’s doorstep, before he embarked on an extra-long bike ride to clear his head.
Lewis’s official work day began at eight with a pot of coffee, ploughing through the emails that had built up overnight, before his regular nine o’clock with Pam.
His to-do list already ran into two sides, but he was determined to block out a story hour somewhere, as he’d spotted that Beth was due in, with Tomsk.
He was much keener to see Beth than Tomsk. He’d listened to his hypnosis seventeen times now, and wasn’t sure how many repetitions it would take before he’d be able to deliver wholehearted confident dog-fussing; however, there was no Beth without Tomsk, and no Beth was unthinkable.
Pam knocked on his door at nine on the dot, bearing a tray with two mugs and a plate of Viennese swirls.
‘Morning!’ Lewis’s coffee was in a new mug, bright yellow with the word Sunshine in gold capitals. When he raised an eyebrow of query, she explained, ‘I had to order new mugs for the staff room, and I thought why not follow your lead and get some inspirational ones.’
After their first review meeting, in which he’d identified her fundamental lack of confidence, Lewis had presented Pam with her own mug; it was red, the most motivational colour, and had A Cup of Ambition on the front.
‘They weren’t more expensive than the old ones,’ she added quickly. ‘And I thought it would set positive intentions, if we’re drinking a cup of happiness, rather than a cup of Sanitex Hygiene Supplies.’
‘Great idea,’ said Lewis. ‘Managerial thinking.’
She blushed, pleased, and opened her notebook. ‘So, today’s agenda.’
Lewis ate a Viennese swirl as his brain shuffled ideas around like a pack of cards.
Pam’s confidence as a leader was developing, but not as quickly as he’d hoped.
Although he wasn’t sharing it with the team, that morning Lewis had had another, unsettling, email from Eric headed ‘LL exit strategy’.
Lewis knew what that meant – Eric wasn’t convinced he could save Rosemount, and if he couldn’t, Lewis would be redeployed, possibly before he’d had a chance to help the Rosemount staff find new jobs.
Consequently, Lewis was determined that Pam should get the experience she deserved to aim her CV at bigger and better jobs if Rosemount should – much as he hated thinking about it – not survive the finance team’s axe.
‘So, run me through today’s highlights,’ he said, and sat back as Pam reeled off the varied daily events of a residential home: the new hairdresser, hospital visits, weekly menus, electrician checking faulty call bells and alarms, and the one Lewis had been waiting for, volunteers.
‘And Beth’s coming in with Tomsk,’ she finished. ‘She’s got three story sessions, he’s got a general appearance in the lounge.’
‘Tomsk’s more popular than the hairdresser,’ Lewis observed.
‘Not more popular than Beth, though – she’s got a waiting list now, you know! She’s the only volunteer people specifically ask for.’
‘She’s a good listener.’ Lewis had tucked away the memory of the way Beth had listened to him while he’d babbled on at that practice day.
He wished he’d been able to relax enough to answer her questions honestly.
He’d never shared much about his personal life, because it wasn’t a short conversation – not just his mum who’d died when he was ten (how did that feel?), his grandparents (did you mind being brought up by them?), boarding school (a whole can of worms), lack of girlfriends (do you think you might be gay?), on and on, and, as Nigel Callaghan had astutely observed, it was easier to turn the questions back on the other person than to come up with answers that satisfied their curiosity but didn’t expose you to even more questions.
Lewis didn’t have the answers, in any case.
He didn’t enjoy thinking about those things in his own leisure time, let alone in social settings.
Life moved on, and you had to move on with it, or be swept underneath the waves.
Experiences like his tended to be the headline people remembered about you, and he didn’t want his losses to be a badge.
Yet Beth, he sensed, was someone who understood pockets of sadness in otherwise happy people.
She’d hesitated over some of her own answers.
But then Beth was the one person he wanted to hide his complicated, melancholy childhood, his lack of experience from.
He wanted to be as easy as possible for her to love. Not a project.
Pam was unaware of Lewis’s inner turmoil. ‘I see you’re down to talk to Stan Walkingshaw this morning. He’s one of Nigel’s lunch gang so don’t be surprised if he tells you he was in the original line-up of the Bee Gees.’
Lewis snapped back to attention.
‘Great!’ he said. ‘Looking forward to it.’
‘So, Stan, if you had one piece of advice to offer the thirty-year-old you, what would it be?’
Stan Walkingshaw heaved a dramatic sigh. ‘Blimey, Lewis. Where would I start? Don’t marry Lorraine, would be one. Don’t marry Cherise would be another.’ He paused. ‘And definitely don’t get into anything with Cherise’s mother.’
‘Maybe not so—’
‘Don’t invest in Betamax. Don’t take up golf, it’s a fool’s errand. Do get travel insurance.’ He stared over his tinted glasses at Lewis. ‘Always get travel insurance, Lewis. You don’t know pain until you’ve been medivaced. And I mean financial pain, as well as physical pain.’
‘I’m a firm believer in insurance,’ said Lewis, even though it had been years since he’d been on holiday.
Stan sank back in his easy chair. ‘It was Cherise who wanted to swim with sharks. Not me.’ He pointed at Lewis.
‘Oh, and there’s another. Don’t trust men who wear bracelets.
Never trust a man who wears a bracelet and calls you “mate”.
No one who calls you “mate” is ever your mate.
Ditto people who call you “pal”, “bud” or “my friend”. ’
‘Noted,’ said Lewis.
Over the last forty minutes, in answer to the question, ‘Where were you happiest?’ Stan Walkingshaw, longtime expat and retired casino owner, had covered happy moments in nightclubs, Concorde, a shark tank, the Isle of Wight, and the birth of two children. ‘I’ve been a lucky fella, Lewis.’