Chapter 5
The phone rang as Holly reached the road where her parents lived. Coffie.
‘Tell me you didn’t do it. I have other plans for my morning than getting you out of prison.’
‘Tim called her,’ Holly replied. ‘That shitbag thinks he can go behind my back and get her on his side.’
‘And is she?’
‘Of course she is. If Charlie switches schools, she never has to see either of us again. Where’s the downside for her?’
Coffie said, ‘Holls, I know you don’t want to hear this, but—’
‘No.’ She swung over and parked.
‘OK, what about a private school closer to you?’
‘There’s no way I can afford a private school right now. And Shit-For-Brains will only cough up if I agree to him getting custody. Which means I lose Charlie.’
Coffie said, ‘But what if it’s only for his last year at primary school? He could come back when he goes to secondary.’
Holly leaned over to reach her bag from the passenger footwell. ‘You really think Tim will give him up once he’s got him?’
‘He might. From what you’ve told me, he doesn’t strike me as a devoted dad. He might find the reality of dealing with a child with additional needs …’
‘Don’t.’ She opened the car door.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Don’t call Charlie a retard.’
‘Holly, you know I’m not doing that. But he’s not thriving at that school. He needs to be somewhere that will make him happy.’
‘He needs to be with someone who loves him.’
‘And his dad doesn’t?’
‘Botox Brenda doesn’t. She never will. He’ll be miserable there.’
‘He’s miserable now.’
Holly ended the call and locked the car. She’d phone Coffie later, apologise, say she passed through a stretch with no signal. Her friend wouldn’t be fooled, but he’d go along with it.
‘Only me,’ she called, letting herself in.
No immediate answer came back, but she could hear someone moving around upstairs. She aimed for the back of the house, where a small dining room looked out over the garden.
‘Morning, Dad.’
As usual her father was sitting in a winged armchair, staring out at the bird feeder, where a cluster of sparrows were quarrelling over the seed. Holly walked round the chair until she was sure he could see her. She had no idea how reliable his hearing was these days.
‘Hi, Dad.’ She crouched and forced a smile. Reaching out to touch his hand, she noticed that his dressing gown gaped open, revealing crêpey, veined skin. He looked so much older than his fifty-seven years. And he smelled of urine. ‘Mum upstairs?’
Her father’s eyes met hers for a second. It was weeks since Holly had heard him speak. He tried, occasionally, to articulate a thought, but rarely had the muscle strength or control to finish a sentence.
His hand, the one she’d touched, seemed to clutch at hers. She let him hold it for a second, ready to give him a reassuring smile when he looked at her again. His eyes, though, were fixed on a point behind her. She glanced round to see a framed picture leaning against the floor-to-ceiling window.
‘That’s pretty,’ she said, taking in the watercolour of an English seaside village. Tall pink flowers dominated the foreground. The water – a tidal river, judging by moored sailing yachts – took up the middle ground and rising above it, climbing a steep, green hill, was a sprawl of old cottages.
‘Is it new?’
Her father’s grip tightened. Sounds came out of his mouth, none of which came close to forming actual words.
She glanced to one side, to the dresser where they’d kept paper and pencils for some time now, but her dad had long since lost the ability to hold a pencil and write his thoughts.
He was trapped inside a body that no longer felt any connection with his brain. It was the cruellest of diseases.
Dropping a kiss on her father’s head, Holly got up. ‘I’ll go ask Mum,’ she said. ‘She’ll tell me.’
Holly squeezed past the stair lift, the rental on which she paid, and found her mother changing the sheets in the main bedroom. She stepped over a heavily soaked pair of incontinence pads.
‘Again?’ she asked.
‘Practically every night.’ Her mother pulled the bottom sheet from the bed and dropped it onto a pile.
‘Can’t the carers do this?’
Her mother hung the plastic mattress protector over the door. ‘They only have time to wash, dress and feed him. Mary says we need an hour in the morning.’
Mary was her father’s sister.
‘And is Mary offering to pay the bill?’ Holly muttered, knowing she was being unfair. Her aunt’s part-time teaching salary couldn’t possibly stretch to chipping in with her brother’s care. She bent to pick up the damp sheets. ‘I’ll stick these in the machine,’ she said.
‘It’s playing up,’ her mother replied. ‘It’s nearly ten years old, Holly. And I can’t get the dryer to work.’
It would be the filter again, Holly thought. At least she hoped it was. The filter was easily fixed. Replacing both washing machine and dryer was beyond her.
‘I’ll take them with me,’ she said, resigning herself to a car that smelled of her father’s piss for the next few days. ‘Dad seems upset. Is something bothering him?’
‘That man’s been again.’ Her mother gave a heavy sigh. ‘Yesterday. He means well, and God knows we don’t get many visitors these days, but I’m going to have to tell him to stop.’
‘What man?’ Holly watched her mother sink onto the unmade bed.
‘An old friend. He’s been a few times now. Knew your dad years ago, long before I met him. He knows all about you and Charlie, though, so they’ve obviously been in touch over the years.’
‘And that’s a problem?’
‘He brought your dad a picture of the village where they both grew up. It’s a nice gesture, Holly, but he struggles with things that remind him …’
Holly joined her mother on the bed and slipped an arm around her waist. ‘Of the man he used to be?’
‘Drives a big black Volvo,’ her mother went on. ‘One of those with tinted windows.’
‘I’d better run, I’ve got a lot on this morning. Speak to you later, Mum.’
Holly left, keeping all four windows cranked open on the thirty-minute drive to chambers.