Sleight of Hand (11 page)

“No thanks. I thought she'd freak out too, but she seems to accept pretty much anything. She's a great kid.”

“She is.”

Jenny carries the two cups of tea to the kitchen table and we sit face to face. “So,” she says.

“So.”

“I'm going to have to go and have a kip once I've had this.”

“Right. I can make dinner, so …”

“I'm ever so grateful for, you know … And I'm sorry I was a bitch.”

I shrug. “I deserve it. It's karma,” I say.

Tears are clearly visible in Jenny's eyes now and after a few sips of tea, I say, “I'm so sorry about your mum.”

She sips her tea and flicks away a tear with one finger. “It's not that,” she says. “I haven't even had time to think about it. That's the worst thing. Not having the time to think about anything.”

I nod. “Sure. What with the hospital and everything. Still, you can have some time-out now. Just rest and think about everything. Get it all into perspective.”

“Yes,” Jenny says. “Get it all into perspective. Right.”

Jenny's life imposes its own new rhythm upon mine. In the mornings, Jenny gets up and gives Sarah her breakfast. She claims to be unable to lie in any later these days anyway, and that certainly isn't a problem I share. At nine, she wakes me with a mug of tea and returns upstairs to bed.

I walk Sarah to nursery and pick up any shopping we need on the way home.

When I get back, I Skype Ricardo – the only moment in our corresponding timezones when this is possible. We talk for at least an hour every day. We discuss Jenny's illness (Ricardo is disgusted that the NHS still haven't given her any indication of what's wrong, something he calls worse-than-third-world-service). We talk about Jenny's mourning and Ricardo suggests that I find a way to get us out of her mother's house – clearly a great idea with no apparent solution.

Because Ricardo brings the subject up, we repeatedly discuss Tom as well. I detect a note of jealousy in his repeated probings about Tom's presence (which so far has been limited to a few crisp phone calls to enquire about Jenny.) Ricardo's jealousy irritates me, but of course it reassures me too.

In fact we talk about pretty much anything as long as it revolves around
my
life rather than his and I'm left wondering if it has always been this way. Anything to do with how Ricardo might be feeling is quickly sewn up with a short sharp, “I'm good, I told you.” As ever, I can't work out whether he is selfless,
indestructible, or an emotional cripple. But the hours he's prepared to spend talking to me prove his devotion, and I'm never left in any doubt of the fact that he loves me and misses me. Unless he is interrupted by another phone call or the need to go to work, it is never Ricardo that ends our conversation and by the end of our daily chat, even at five thousand miles, I'm always left feeling as loved as I have ever felt. And in the sombre landscape in which I find myself, that love shines like a lighthouse in the distance. The fact that he exists, the fact that he loves me, the fact that he's waiting there to wrap his arms around me makes it all ultimately bearable.

On Thursday, when Jenny hands me my mug of tea, she says, “You should, you know, take the room upstairs. There's a bed going to waste up there. This whole sofa thing is silly.”

I sit up, wrap the quilt around me and pull a face. “I know,” I say. “But I don't feel that comfortable about … well …”

“I know.”

“You won't even go in there.”

Jenny nods and slumps on the sofa beside me. “I know,” she says.

“It's full of all her stuff.”

Jenny nods. “I know,” she says again. “I'm sorry, I can't … I thought if it was your room, rather than hers, well, that might help. But I can't clear her stuff. I'm not up to it.”

She glances around the room – the same gesture I have seen her do a hundred times. She always looks like she's scanning the horizon for some hidden potential assailant, but this time, because of the context, I understand what she's doing.

“You're not comfortable staying in this house
at all
are you?” I ask.

She shrugs. “It's like you say … it's just all the stuff. I keep checking to see that none of it has moved. And I keep being surprised that it hasn't. Which is weird, I know. It's like it's all waiting for someone who's not coming back.” Her eyes are misting and I see her force herself to stop and stand. “I have to go for my kip,” she says. “I feel shit.”

And so it is that I take on this new task – the gut-wrenchingly sad job of trying to remove as many of Jenny's mother's personal possessions from around the house as discreetly as possible: a cardigan here, some knitting needles there, her underwear from the chest of drawers. As Jenny snoozes, I creep around binning a friend's mother's clothes and moving her clutter to boxes in the attic, slowly but surely erasing the traces of her life.

Jenny notices every single change – I can sense the way each vanished object makes her skin prickle. Occasionally she asks questions such as, “It
was
you that took her toothbrush, right?” and I nod sadly and stroke her arm.

“Good,” she says. “Just checking.”

My final push to de-grannify the house comes on Friday.

With Sarah at nursery and Jenny insisting she wants to go to her appointment in London on her own, it's the perfect opportunity.

I blitz the house removing as many traces of Marge's personal possessions as possible. Of course this being Marge's house,
everything
was a personal possession, but I try to remove anything that only she would have used and anything someone of my generation simply wouldn't give houseroom to. Out
go doilies beneath pot plants, and a few of the plants themselves. Out go antimacassars from chair backs, a flowery pink umbrella, some unfinished knitting, a calendar in the kitchen on which the days had been crossed out, ceasing on the sixteenth of September. From the kitchen I bin half a jar of Horlicks, a mug marked “Grandma” and a copy of
Diet For Life - Live to a hundred by eating nature's superfoods
. I roll rugs and cart them up to the attic. I move furniture to new, less satisfactory but at least different configurations.

In her bedroom I remove everything except the furniture which I inexplicably wash down before rotating the entire contents of the room ninety degrees clockwise. I strip the bed, flip the mattress and put the curtains in to wash before covering every available surface with the few possessions I have in my own bag. Even being in the room still gives me the shivers, but Jenny said she thought it might help if I made it my room, so that's what I attempt to do.

By the time I have finished, the house looks as different as I can make it look without actually redecorating the place.

I sit back and wait for Jenny to return, a little exhausted but pleased at how uncluttered the place suddenly feels. And then I start to worry. I start to think that I have maybe gone too far and that Jenny will walk through the door and have a nervous breakdown.

When Jenny
does
arrive she looks grey and drawn. She looks like she doesn't have the energy for a breakdown.

She looks around, blinks twice, and says, “Can you pay the taxi somehow? I'll get it back to you, but right now I just need to sleep.”

As she climbs the stairs to her own unchanged room, I head out to the waiting black cab, fumbling in my wallet and counting the change from my pocket as I walk.

“Alright mate? How much is it?” I ask, working out that I have just under nineteen pounds.

He winks at me and taps the top of the meter. It reads £137.50

I laugh. “You're joking, right?”

“Nope,” he says. “No sense of humour, me. You can ask my missus.”

I frown at him. “That is … Is that pounds?”

“Nah mate, it's Pesetas,” he says.

“Where did she … ?”

“London. St Thomas' Hospital. Door to door.”

“Right.”

“I told her the train was cheaper, but you know women.”

“Right. Umh … Jesus.”

He beckons to me so I lean in the window.

“I don't think she's well, mate,” he says in a confidential tone. “I don't think she could face public transport if you know what I mean. Don't give her a hard time – I don't think she's having a very good day.”

“Well no,” I say. “No, of course. It's just that, I, um, don't have that kind of cash.”

But the cabby takes Visa, Mastercard and just about any other method of payment on planet Earth, so I stick it on one of my cards and wish him a safe journey back.

The taxi dealt with, I peep into Jenny's room to see if she wants to talk, but she insists, quite aggressively, that she needs to
sleep.

My mind racing as to just how bad her day can have been – and why – I head off to pick Sarah up from the nursery.

The next morning, I'm awoken by Sarah pulling the sleeve of my t-shirt. I open one eye and grunt – despite this being my first night in a proper bed for nearly a week, I have slept just about as badly as I have
ever
slept.

“Why are you in Gran's bed?” Sarah asks with ear-piercing brightness.

“Umh?”

“Who moved everything? Did Mummy?”

“Shhh.”

“Where are all the things?”

“Um?”

“All the things. Where are they?”

“In the attic, now come and have a sleep.”

“The attic?”

“Up there,” I say, pointing at the ceiling as Sarah climbs into bed.

“In heaven?”

“No. Just in a little room up there.”

“Why are you in Gran's bed?”

“Why are
you
in here? It's only six. Where's Mummy?”

“She's not getting up today. She said to wake you up instead.”

“Did
she now?”

“Lazy Sunday.”

“It's Saturday. Now, go to sleep.”

But there's just no way Sarah is going back to sleep. She fidgets and talks and fidgets some more and within minutes I'm feeling wide awake myself – wide awake and hungry and grumpy. So I get up and make breakfast.

I pour Sarah a bowl of cereal and park her in front of cbeebies on TV. It's the first time I have resorted to the electronic babysitter, and I'm more than impressed at just how powerful and instantaneous the box's hypnotic effect is. Click. Silence!

Sarah suitably paralysed by the Tweenies, I return to the kitchen and watch the sky as it turns from deepest grey to … Actually, it doesn't change much this morning. Maybe from nighttime-grey to daytime-grey. Apparently our run of good weather is over.

I'm feeling a little grey myself – tired and a bit depressed and a little resentful at Jenny's decision to stay in bed. I could do with a cuddle, and I don't mean with Sarah. I'm really missing Ricardo this morning.

At nine I take Jenny a cup of tea, as much as anything, to find out if she has any intention of getting up. But her responses are entirely monosyllabic.

“Are you OK?”

“No.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No.”

“Fine. I'll see you later then.”

“Right.”

At ten, as Sarah and I head out the front door, it is starting to drizzle. The temperature has dropped spectacularly too, and I can see my breath. A reminder that we're heading towards winter here. Thank God I will be back in Colombia by the time it hits.

“What's wrong with Mummy?” Sarah asks as I button her coat.

“She's not feeling well.”

“Has she got flu?”

“Something like that.”

“Franny had flu and I wasn't allowed to go round in case I catched it.”

“Caught
it. Right. OK, come on Miss, let's go.”

“Where's the brella? It's raining.”

“The
um
brella? It's in the attic.”

“Why?”

“We can buy another one in town.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to buy one.”

“Can we buy a Polly Pocket too?”

“Yes. Exactly. We can find you a Polly Pocket too.”

“You have to go to Toys R Us for Polly Pockets. Are we going in the car?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I'm not insured for it.”

“What's in sured?”

“A special thing I don't have.”

“Why?”

And so passes our morning. Sarah's questions are constant and random and if truth be told, I don't think she's even very interested in answers. I learn not to exhaust myself going into too much detail.

We take the bus into town – Sarah insists that we travel on the top deck and memories come flooding back of the bus I used to take to school. Upstairs was the smoking section in those days – imagine!

We buy a new “brella” and track down a Polly Pocket without, thankfully, having to brave Toys R Us. And then the three of us – myself, Sarah, and
Polly Pocket #3 – walk very very slowly back to the house.

When we get home, Jenny is sitting at the kitchen table in her dressing gown.

“Look Mummy!” Sarah says, bouncing the doll across the table.

Jenny squints at her daughter as if her squeaky voice is causing her physical pain. “That's nice,” she says. “Why don't you take her upstairs and show her her new home.”

“Are you feeling any better?” I ask once Sarah has bounded obediently away.

By way of reply, Jenny simply shrugs. Her eyes look puffy as if she has been crying, but it could just be lack of makeup.

“What happened yesterday?” I ask her.

“Yesterday?”

“In London.”

“Nothing really. They did some tests.”

“Tests?”

“Yeah.”

“What tests?”

“I don't know really.”