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Her laugh is dry. ‘A few people have said that. I’ve had to put up photos of myself around the house to remind her, because sometimes she forgets who I am. And Dad too – she can’t remember he’s passed. She wanders around the house searching for him. It’s heart-wrenching, really.’
‘It must be. And it’s got to be tough on you too.’ When she shrugs, I continue, ‘Gwen’s very lucky to have you. Everyone in the village has nothing but good things to say about you.’
Connie hesitates, and for a moment I think I might have said something wrong again.
‘I know I shouldn’t expect praise or gratitude,’ she says. ‘But sometimes, it’s nice to hear I’m doing okay. So thank you.’
We reach the top of the hill and make our way to Connie’s house. It’s one of a handful of red- brick semi-detached bungalows facing on to a small grassy area. I help her inside with her bags. It’s the first time I’ve been in here, and I’m immediately struck by how sparsely furnished it is. ‘The rest of my stuff is still in Italy,’ she says, as if reading my mind.
She thanks me again, and as I leave, I make a mental note to check in on her more often. Things are going to get a lot harder for mother and daughter. Unfortunately, bad things have a habit of happening to good people.
CHAPTER 4
CONNIE
The heat from inside and outside her house has me sweating buckets. Thursday is my day to clean this place from top to bottom, but by mid-morning, I’ve only finished the lounge, the dining room and the kitchen, and I’m ready to throw in the towel I’m using to mop my brow. I rifle around in the overnight bag I keep in the spare room for emergency sleepovers until I find a can of anti-perspirant. The shock of the cold blast under my arms takes me by surprise but I follow it up with a generous spray across my chest before it’s time to change her sheets.
My throat is as dry as the Sahara so I make my way downstairs to refill my drinking bottle with iced water from the fridge. Only then do I realise why it’s so stifling in here – she has closed every window and door I opened when I arrived.
‘Mum, this house is like an inferno!’ I complain. ‘Why have you shut everything?’
‘I thought you did?’ she says without looking up from the television.
I open my mouth but decide I can’t be bothered to argue, so I head into the dining room to slide open the patio doors again. Thesideboard, where she stores her best crockery and cutlery, is covered by more than two dozen porcelain figurines of cats. I don’t see the appeal but she adores them and has named almost all. Even when she’s having one of her bad days, she can identify each one. Her favourite is the tall, jade-green Siamese cat ornament, but it’s also the one I dislike the most. It’s about a foot tall and towers over the rest with its elongated upper back and neck. It wears a conceited expression and sometimes I want to accidentally nudge it to the floor with a feather duster, then gladly watch as it shatters.
I return to the lounge with today’s dose of medication in the palm of my hand.
‘What’s this for?’ she asks suspiciously.
‘The Reminyl is for your ...’ I tap the side of my head so she doesn’t have to hear me say the ‘D’ or ‘A’ word. ‘The rest are your aspirin and happy pills.’ She hates it when I call them anti-depressants. ‘It makes me sound weak,’ she often reminds me. ‘I’m not weak.’
She eventually obliges, swallowing them with a swig from my water bottle.
Outside, a vehicle catches my eye. It’s that handyman’s dirty white van reversing up her drive. Before I can say anything, she’s up and out of her armchair faster than Usain Bolt and is darting towards the front door like it’s a finishing line. So much for her balancing issues. She closes it behind her and she and Paul begin a conversation outside. I’m being nosey and stand behind the net curtain wishing they’d either speak louder or I could lip-read. She smiles a lot at what he has to say and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was blushing. I’m in the hall when she returns a few minutes later.
‘Why is he back?’ I ask.
‘Who?’
‘Paul. The man you were just talking to.’
‘Oh, is that his name?’
I look away to an imaginary camera filming my frustration. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘So why is he back?’
‘I thought you’d asked him.’
We could go around and around in circles like this for the rest of the afternoon so I cut out the middleman and ask Paul myself. He has already let himself in to the back garden via the open gate and scaled a tree, and is sitting astride a branch as thick as his thighs, a saw in his grip. His T-shirt lies on the grass and he catches me checking out his broad chest and the tribal tattoo wrapped around his bicep. All he needs is a can of Diet Coke.
He grins. ‘Enjoying the view?’
I hope the heat of the day and my already reddened face will mask the fact that yet a-bloody-gain, I’m flushed in his presence. ‘I thought your last visit was a one-off?’ I ask, not bothering to disguise my suspicious nature.
‘Gwen asked me to shape her walnut tree,’ he replies. ‘Which isn’t a euphemism.’ This time I find his smile disarming. But the sound that leaves my mouth is part pig-like snort and part-laugh. Its volume takes us both by surprise.
‘And when I’m done,’ he adds, ‘she wants me to level and jetwash the paving slabs and clean out the old pond at the end of the garden.’
‘Old pond?’ It must be very overgrown because I didn’t realise we had one. ‘Oh, right,’ I say. ‘And who is paying for all this?’
