I assume you’ve got me blocked everywhere else, and I don’t blame you. But this is now extremely time sensitive. We’re coming through your little town on Saturday, and there should be no reason why you can’t meet up at some point. Any time is fine. But it’s urgent that we speak in person. You have my number. Text me a time and place, or I’ll come to the address I still have for your parents.
I could taste bile in the back of my throat as I read the email. The casual condescension of “your little town,” the threat to show up at Mum and Dad’s house, the insinuation that I had nothing better going on than to meet up with my cheating ex-boyfriend on a Saturday night…
Okay, that last part wasn’t untrue exactly, especially now that Phil had cancelled on me, but how dare he anyway.
Mum and Dad would be a problem. Well, really just Mum; she’d taken my breakup harder than she had any right to, despite never having met Chris. So letting him show up at the house wasnotan option. But Mum was nosy enough that going out to meet him would be a challenge, too. Wouldn’t she notice if I was out at an odd time? Given how pushy she’d been about me meeting up with old school friends or letting myself be set up with her friends’ adult children (most of whom I’d also known since school), all of which I’d firmly rejected, going out would absolutely raise her suspicions.
Except, I was always out on a Saturday night, wasn’t I? Orin, rather, but at Phil and Ethel’s instead of at home.
“Shit,” I muttered, knowing my hands were tied; I’d have to do exactly what he wanted me to do if I wanted to minimise the damage. So I typed out a reply:
From: [email protected]
Subject: RE: URGENT - please don’t ignore this
Don’t be so dramatic, Chris. It’s not a good look on you. Saturday night, 7PM. The Old Coffer.
Sent from my iPhone
It would have to do– it was the only nice bar in town, and a drink felt much more palatable than a meal.
Fuck. What the hell did he want? Why was he going to be in town? And importantly, what should I wear to communicate both that I was completely unbothered about his existence,andthat I was better than him in every way?
I’d just started mentally cataloguing every item of clothing I owned when my phone lit up again on the nightstand. I swallowed hard and took a deep breath, assuming Chris had already responded with something else underhanded and condescending.
But it wasn’t an email from Chris. It was a text from Phil; he’d sent me a photo. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was already smiling as I tapped the notification.
My screen filled with an image so dark I could barely make it out, but when I squinted, my smile widened. It was a pink and black rhodonite freeform on the plastic table in Ethel’s garden, charging under the new moon.
Chapter4
Phil
Iwalked up the driveway outside the house, squeezing between the cars parked out front. My beat-up blue Ford Fiesta was parked dangerously close to Ethel’s vintage Healey; it was the only way for them both to fit. She hadn’t driven in a couple of years, but she still smiled at it every time she walked past it, so it was worth having to squeeze myself like a tube of toothpaste every time I needed to drive somewhere.
Though, given how hard it was for her to get in and out of the Fiesta these days, I probably needed to think about getting something bigger, like Anil’s big van, which was parked on the street in front of the house. It would almost certainly mean having to move the Healey, or even sell it. I couldn’t think about that yet though. One thing at a time, one foot in front of the other.
I took my time walking up the front path, bracing myself to slip back into carer mode. It was still weird, being anxious to go inside; I’d used to be so excited to come home when I was younger. Ethel had always had something delicious for dinner and something for us to do together, whether it was watching a film or playing Texas Hold ’Em at the dining table. When had that changed?
Probably around the time she stopped being able to live independently, I thought. She’d had her fall nearly three years ago, breaking her ankle, and whilst it had healed reasonably well, her memory seemed to have taken the real hit. I learned later that it was normal for a physical injury to trigger neurological symptoms, but it had caught me off guard at the time. What had just seemed like quirky forgetfulness before eventually grew worrying, and when she’d had a panic attack at Tesco because she didn’t know where she was, I’d finally caved and asked for a referral. That was when they’d confirmed what we’d feared: Ethel had dementia. Over the last year it had just gotten worse and worse, and the whip-smart woman who had kept me on my toes my whole life was melting away in front of me, and my life had completely changed because of it. It was weird to think that just a year ago I’d been bored caring for Ethel. I’d really only been there as a precaution, and because I didn’tneedto work full-time as long as I lived with her. But now my days were full of more and more hospital appointments, therapies, and trying to keep her busy so she didn’t decline further. All whilst trying to keep us both alive, make enough money to cover our essentials, and try to have some semblance of a life.
I paused when I got to the front door, turning to the dwarf hawthorn planted on the right side of the path. The white flowers were starting to drop, flowering having peaked in May, but they still smelled just as fragrant, the sweet almond scent greeting me at the door for a couple of months every year. I cupped my hand around one, inhaling deeply.
“Hey, Mum,” I said quietly. I always associated spring’s flowers with Mum, whilst the autumn berries we harvested each year were Dad. It made sense; their ashes had been feeding the tree for nineteen years now. We’d chosen the hawthorn tree because, even at age eleven, I’d been able to tell how similar the fragrant blooms were to Mum’s perfume. And whilst I had no memory of it myself, Ethel insisted that Dad’s favourite cocktail had used hawthorn cordial. It had been our way of bringing Mum and Dad with us when we’d moved out of the home I’d grown up in, and even now it still felt like they were there every time I came or went.
I opened the front door to the familiar sound of theMasterchefintro; it had finished hours ago, but Ethel liked to watch the new episodes over and over. She was sat in her rocker in front of the TV, dressed for bed, and whilst she looked up and smiled at me as I came in, she quickly turned back to watch someone pull a tart out of the oven.
“It’s going to be soggy on the bottom,” she said to me, pointing at the screen, as if she was predicting it instead of remembering it. These days, I genuinely wasn’t sure which it would be.
“Amateur,” I agreed, then pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
I passed a stack of mail on the hall table as I headed towards the kitchen, which reminded me of everything I needed to do the next day. Ethel’s pension payment had been wrong last month for some reason, and I needed to see if her next appointment letter for the occupational therapist had come through; they were hoping to start more regular appointments at the hospital.
Then there were Anil’s account details to change since he’d moved banks. Ethel was probably eligible for an NHS nurse, but I liked the flexibility of someone who could change their shifts around as needed, and the consistency of having the same person every time. Even if it did cost me– I paid Anil well, but given that I refused to even touch Ethel’s bank accounts, I’d been slowly depleting what was left of my trust over the last few years. Ethel had put my parents’ life insurance payout and the money from their house into the trust I’d gotten access to after uni, but because I’d lived with her since then, it had gone a long way. I was technically my own trustee now that I had power of attorney for Ethel since her diagnosis. I knew it would run out eventually. But again, I couldn’t think about that.
I didn’t have my head completely in the sand. Most of our bills came out of Ethel’s account automatically, just as her pension went in. I added up all the paper statements each month, and by my math, we were just about breaking even in that account. So I didn’t even look at it; I didn’t want to even be tempted, if there did happen to be more money in there, to use it on things like craft supplies or groceries. I could pay for those things myself, whether out of my trust or with the money I earned doing ad hoc data entry jobs through an online agency. I only had a few hours for work most weeks, but that was enough for everything I needed (and most things I wanted), and it was flexible enough that I could scale it up or down as needed. Though, of course, scaling it up so I could afford more would mean that I then had to let some things fall by the wayside, or find more support, which of course cost more money. I’d become used to those kinds of trade-offs, but it didn’t make them easier, and I wasn’t about to put Ethel’s care on the chopping block for the sake of a little extra cash.
