Chapter 42
The beginning of October could have started off better.
On Wednesday, Gemma’s washing machine went on the blink and on Friday, she had to tell her youngest patient, skateboarder Andie, that her chemotherapy treatment was going to be paused for six weeks because she’d developed severe anaemia and needed a blood transfusion.
At least she’d made up with Nick. Deep down, she never really wanted to fall out with him and now, she had to admit that she was looking forward to him coming over on Sunday to try out her electrolysis kit – an activity she’d never in a million years do with any of her other friends or, heaven forbid, have ever imagined doing with Adam.
‘So, where did you learn how to make one of these?’ Nick asked when he arrived with his rust-encrusted padlock.
‘YouTube. Where I learn everything.’
Gemma had set up her electrolysis kit on the outdoor table in the back garden, so that the house didn’t fill with noxious fumes.
She’d made a pot of coffee and bought apricot pastries because he’d mentioned once that they were his favourite.
She wanted the morning to go well, as she still felt bad at how she’d treated him.
‘All you need is a mobile phone charger with two alligator clips attached to the end, a stainless-steel spoon and a bowl of bicarbonate soda dissolved in water,’ she explained.
‘You fix one of the alligator clips to the spoon and the other to the tarnished, rusted or mud-hardened metal item you want to clean. Hopefully, the rust will come away to reveal any previously hidden distinguishing marks or imprints. Shall we give it go?’
Nick nodded.
‘You do it and I’ll guide you.’
Nick followed Gemma’s instructions and when the kit was ready, dunked the padlock into the bowl. Very quickly the water became cloudy and brown as the rust lifted off.
‘Now, get the tongs and take it out of the water,’ Gemma instructed. ‘Dip it in and out so it isn’t just sitting in it. I’ve had coins fall apart doing that.’
‘That’d be annoying.’
‘I know, but I don’t think you should make old things too shiny and new again because then it feels like you’re negating their past.’
‘True,’ he agreed.
‘That’s enough now. Put it on the towel and let’s see what’s engraved on it.’
Nick peered at the lock. ‘C Brown & Son, London 1801,’ he said.
‘Excellent. Now you have a name so you can start searching.’
Nick leant back in the seat. ‘Wow, how amazing is that? Do you want to electrocute anything?’
‘I have a lead token and an eighteenth-century button, whose iron shank is rusted,’ she said. ‘But they can wait. More coffee?’
‘Thanks. So, how was your week?’
‘Frantic. I wouldn’t mind a holiday,’ Gemma said, refilling his coffee cup. ‘Yesterday I started googling “best places for a long weekend”. I’m thinking Amsterdam because I’ve never been.’
‘Yeah, nice. I’ve been there on a stag do but didn’t see as much of it as I could have.’
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Gemma looked up at the sky where to the east the blueness was striped with aeroplane contrails, and the west punctured with dark clouds. The silence felt comfortable and easy.
Then, eventually, Nick said, ‘Actually, I’ve been thinking about you and your family stuff.’
‘You have?’
‘I don’t want to intrude and stop me if I’m being presumptuous but the sleuth in me can’t help himself,’ he said. ‘I want to help.’ He picked up a pastry and bit into it.
‘Okay …’ she said hesitantly because she was cautious as to what Nick was proposing.
‘Have you looked up your half-brother?’
Gemma shook her head. Nick put down the pastry and pulled out his phone. ‘What’s his name again?’
‘Benjamin Reed, but he may go by Ben, of course.’
‘Oh, God, there’s a ton of them on Facebook.’
She leant over to get a look. ‘You know that Facebook’s passé now. He mightn’t even be on it, given he’s in his early twenties.’
‘True. What about Instagram?’ He did another search. ‘No good. The Ben Reeds who’ve used their name for their Instagram accounts have made them private.’
‘It was the same when I was looking up my birth mother’s name. It’s too hard,’ Gemma said, taking a pastry.
Nick put his phone away. ‘Okay, that’s for another day, perhaps. But among the info you received, did you get an address of where your birth mother died or where she lived?’
‘I think so,’ Gemma said.
‘Let’s go there.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll come with you. I can knock on the door and pretend I’m doing research. Which will be kind of true.’
‘Are you being serious?’ Gemma felt a rush of adrenalin at the thought of going to a house related to her birth mother.
‘Of course. If there’s a residential address on the death certificate that means she died at home rather than in a hospital. And if you know where she’s buried, we could go to the cemetery.’
Gemma pulled a face. ‘I don’t like cemeteries.’
‘Me neither, if I’m honest. My sister persuaded me to go with her to Dad’s grave last weekend.
I hadn’t been there since the funeral. It’s …
Well, I won’t lie, it is upsetting. But we tended to the flowers and reminisced at how Dad wasn’t really a floral kind of a guy and how we should have planted that bright green, fuzzy type of ground cover that reminds me of the trees in Doctor Seuss books.
Then, Sam, my sister, reminded me that it’s Mum who loves flowers and that they’re more for her than for him, which makes sense when you think about it.
Everything we do for the dead we’re really doing for ourselves. ’
‘True,’ she said. ‘But do you think going there helped with your grief?’
‘That’s the weird thing. You’d think it would do the opposite, wouldn’t you? When I saw his mound, I didn’t imagine him as bones in the ground but rather, as a spirit in the sky. As if the real Dad was wafting around us like smoke.’ Nick waved his hands in the air expressively.
‘Was that comforting?’
‘Well, yeah, which was surprising because I don’t believe in any of that. Yet, it helped, it really did.’ Nick nodded.
‘I’m so pleased.’
‘Me too. Except when I thought of the smoke analogy, I wanted a cigarette. Again. Can you believe it?’
Gemma thought she probably could. She watched the neighbour’s cat scuttle along the top of the back fence, turn to look at her, then jump into the next property.
Nick continued. ‘Sam and I shared one. But afterwards, I left the packet on his grave as a votive offering of sorts and a symbol of me stopping. Because that’s it. No more,’ he said, slicing the air with a hand to reiterate his point.
‘Good for you,’ she said.
‘Yeah, Rosie’s been going on at me to quit, even though it felt like I’d never really started. Like it was always going to be temporary, you know?’
Gemma gritted her teeth at hearing the professor’s name. ‘Well,’ she said, trying to cover up her reaction. ‘It was what you needed while you were grieving. I wouldn’t beat yourself up about it.’
‘You mean, I might get to the pearly gates after all?’ He laughed. ‘Are you spiritual? What with your job and all that?’
Gemma thought for a moment. ‘I want to be but … I dunno.’ Then, unable to come up with anything enlightening, she asked him how it was going with the professor, because now that he’d mentioned her, she was on her mind.
‘Yeah, pretty good, thanks,’ Nick said. ‘It’s early days, of course.
There’s lots to like about her but there’s …
Ah well, never mind.’ He paused but didn’t elaborate, which felt like a bit of a tease.
Still, did Gemma really want to know how it was going?
Or did she wish it had ended before it had properly started?
Annoyed, she flicked pastry crumbs off her lap and told herself to stop prying.
‘Anyway,’ Nick continued. ‘Back to your relatives. I know that whoever answers the door may not be a relative, but they could be! At the very least, you’ll get to see the house. Maybe even inside. What if I said I was there to read the meter …?’ His face lit up with excitement.
‘I think that’s going too far,’ she said.
‘But the rest isn’t?’ he said.
‘A part of me wants to jump in the car and do it now, the other to not do it at all,’ Gemma said.
‘Let’s run with the first sentiment.’
Although Gemma had been curious to find out who lived at the address she had and whether they were a relative or not, she hadn’t yet found the courage to go there on her own. Nick’s offer to accompany her was the nudge she needed to do it.
‘Okay,’ she agreed. ‘But can we formulate a strategy first?’
‘Sure.’
She picked up the bowl of dirty water. ‘I’d better change this. If you like, you could help me zap my pieces, and we could work something out?’
‘Okay, I’ve nothing else on.’
While Nick stayed on to help with her electrolysis, they came up with a plan: Nick would pick her up in his car – which was actually his father’s ‘old banger’ that he’d inherited.
They’d drive to the house and Gemma would stay – hide?
– in the car while he knocked on the door.
Then … well, who knew what would happen next.