Читать книгу The Disappearance - Annabel Kantaria - Страница 24

The pub John had asked me to meet him in was easy to find; the Sunday afternoon parking not so. In the end, I’d left the car in the town car park and walked the riddle of streets to The Fisherman’s Arms. John sat alone at a table, stooped over his mobile phone, a pint of Cornish cider on a cardboard drinks mat in front of him. He wore a tatty green sweater, jeans, hiking boots – the picture of the scruffy millionaire. He stood up to greet me.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi.’ There was an awkward pause during which I thought about giving him a little hug, but John sat straight back down and the moment was lost. I knew it was nothing personal – this was just how John was. I’d always been the more demonstrative twin. Mum used to joke about it: ‘Alexandra does the emotion for both of you,’ she’d say, laughing. ‘And John does the bossiness,’ I’d add under my breath.

‘Sorry, I didn’t get you a drink,’ he said, nodding towards the pint. ‘You’re driving, right?’

‘Yes. But I’ll have a coffee.’ I ordered at the bar, then pulled out a chair and sat across from John at the table. My knees knocked the wood when I tried to cross my legs. I uncrossed them and leaned forward on the table instead, unsure of how this conversation was going to go. John had called the meeting.

‘We’ve both watched her for a few months now,’ he’d said on the phone. ‘You can’t deny she’s vague. You can’t deny she forgets things. More than I think is normal for her age. She clean forgot I was coming down once. I think we should get together and have a think about how we’re going to take this forward.’

John was right. Mum hadn’t been herself. But it wasn’t anything I could put my finger on specifically. Yes, she forgot stuff – but who didn’t? I had the best part of three decades on her and I forgot stuff. I had ‘senior moments’ myself. Yes, she was always looking off into the distance and reminiscing about the past. This, I couldn’t deny. But was it serious? I was for a more organic approach. I felt the decision to move had to come from Mum herself, not from John and me pushing her.

‘So – what are your thoughts?’ John asked me now. That’s my brother: straight to the point.

‘I’m fine, thanks for asking. How are you?’ I said.

John rolled his eyes and I goggled mine back at him.

‘She seems okay?’ I said.

John sighed. ‘I thought you might be like this.’

‘Like what?’

‘Defending her.’

‘I’m not defending her.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘No, I’m not. She seems okay. A little forgetful, maybe. A little vague. But she’s nearly seventy. I’m sure that’s normal. Physically, she’s in great shape. We walked a bit of the South West Coast path last month.’

‘I’m not asking whether or not it’s normal,’ John said. ‘I’m not saying she has dementia. What I’m saying is that this is as good as it’s going to get. It’s only going to get worse from here in. She’s not getting any younger.’ He gave me a minute to absorb his words. ‘I’m asking you to help me come up with a way to move forward. I have a lot on my plate. I need to get this settled in my head before we get into crisis management mode.’

‘Crisis management?’

‘If she starts to go downhill. I don’t want to make a panicky decision when we’re up against it. I’d like to take our time and make sure we pick the right solution for her. Even if she carries on in a normal ageing trajectory, it’s going to get worse and we’re going to need a plan.’ John paused, met my eye. ‘You know she locked herself out the other week?’ I nodded – I did know. It turned out she’d already done it once; had used the spare key from under the plant pot out the back and forgotten to put it back. Too embarrassed to call either of us, she’d sat on the garden wall, waiting, in the hope that someone could help. A neighbour had called John and he’d driven over, had a chat with the neighbour, handed over another spare key. ‘I don’t want her to be a burden on her neighbours,’ John said. ‘I don’t want them thinking badly of us, like we can’t be bothered to help her.’

‘But we do help her!’

‘She didn’t call us – remember? And don’t get me started on what happens if she falls. What if she falls at home and breaks her hip – lies there for how many days? This is our future.’

I put my head in my hands. John was the worrier of the two of us. He saw danger in everything, always envisaged the worst possible outcome, and the fact that Valya had fallen down the stairs clearly hadn’t helped. I knew all this about John, but it didn’t make dealing with him any easier.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said. ‘I think you’re over-thinking things.’

‘I’m not. You know, the night after the car accident, she called me Mack.’

‘Mack? Do we even know a Mack?’

‘Exactly. She looked right at me – almost through me – when she was lying in that hospital bed, and she called me Mack. She looked like she was about to cry.’

‘Strange. Did you correct her?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘She shook her head and said “Of course. Silly me.”’ John did quite a good impression.

I traced the wood grain on the table. ‘I don’t think you can read anything into that. Really. Not given she’d just had the accident.’

‘Anyway, look, let’s not get sidetracked,’ said John. ‘We’re here to think of solutions, not drag over the past.’

‘So, what solutions do you have in mind?’

John picked at the skin around one of his nails. ‘Well. As I said the other day: perhaps some sort of sheltered housing would be the way to go.’ I recoiled as an image of frail old ladies on Zimmer frames filled my mind: Mum would shrivel up and die. But, equally, I didn’t have space for her at home. ‘You know,’ John continued, ‘something safer, where she’s got people to keep an eye on her twenty-four seven.’

I turned away, shaking my head.

‘Come on, Lexi. Admit it. You don’t want to be constantly running after her any more than I do. We both have busy lives. Work. Family. I know you’ve moved down here to be closer but seeing her once a month is about all either of us can manage – right?’ He looked at me and I pursed my lips. ‘You don’t want to be worrying about her all the time, jumping each time the phone rings, spending nights dashing down to the hospital, do you?’

I said nothing.

‘Let’s be honest: neither of us has time to babysit her every day.’

‘We’re not at that stage yet.’

‘But when it happens,’ John spoke through clenched teeth.

‘But it’s not happened yet.’ I echoed his tone.

‘I want to be prepared.’

‘I hear you. I do,’ I said, trying to be reasonable. ‘But sheltered housing? She’ll never go for it.’

‘There are some nice places out there. I looked.’

‘But she’s still entirely self-sufficient. And happy. She loves that garden.’

John laughed: a snort that sprayed cider onto the table. ‘Happy’s not a problem, Lex. She’s happy as bloody Larry. She’s go no idea. Floats about in a dream world.’ John shook his head and laughed.

‘Come, now. That’s a bit harsh.’

‘Really? Look at what almost happened with the painting.’

I tutted. Mum had a painting – a small piece that had always hung in the loo in Barnes. ‘If anything happens to your father and me, and you need money,’ she’d told John and I while we were growing up, ‘that painting’s worth as much as the house.’ I’d found it hard to believe: although the scene of country flowers was pretty, I saw nothing special in it: the lines were blurry and the colours muted – it wasn’t to my taste at all.

Still, a few months ago, John had arrived for lunch to find Mum had almost handed over the painting to a conman. John knew at once it was a scam that’d been going on in the area: the gang targeted the elderly. Under the pretence of cleaning artwork, jewellery, and antiques, they would take the originals and swap them for copies. Most of the victims never noticed the difference. Although Mum had denied she’d ever been going to get the painting cleaned, John had thought differently.

‘You don’t know she was going to hand it over,’ I said now.

‘Why else would she have had it out?’ he asked. ‘She was so evasive about the whole thing. Thank God I turned up when I did. She wouldn’t tell me why that man had been there, nor why the painting was out. When I told her about the scam, she had to sit down with a sherry.’ John shook his head as he recalled the day. ‘We nearly lost our inheritance that day, Lexi.’

‘You’ve no idea if that’s our inheritance or not.’

‘Oh, come on, Lexi! What else is she going to do with it?’

‘Pa didn’t leave anything to us. Remember he wanted us to “make our own way in the world”? Maybe she’ll do the same?’

‘I know, I know. “I’m a self-made man and proud of it.”’ John’s impression of our father was also eerily good; for a moment he was right back in the pub with us. ‘Anyway, this is Mum. Of course she’ll leave us something, and the painting’s worth a fortune.’

I shook my head. ‘That’s all by the by. The point is, we can’t push her out of her home just because she might – or might not – have believed a con artist.’ I paused. ‘She’d hate it. She’d curl up and die.’ I snorted. ‘Maybe Valya dived headfirst down the stairs rather than go into a home.’

‘Valya didn’t know what her name was, let alone what was about to happen to her. She had the memory of a goldfish by the time she died.’

I tutted. ‘Anyway,’ I leaned forward over my coffee cup, cupping it with my hands. ‘Back to Mum. So you want a plan “moving forward” and you’re thinking sheltered housing?’

John leaned back. ‘Yes. Exactly. Somewhere where there are people – professionals – there to keep an unobtrusive eye on her. Where she’s got a built-in support network to act in an emergency. Maybe she’ll even make some friends.’

‘Hmph.’ I was trying to imagine explaining all that to Mum.

‘If we go for something where she can sell her current house and invest the money in a flat of some sort, it can continue to be an investment. Rather than, say, something like a retirement home where you’re paying people to look after her and there’s no investment.’

I closed my eyes. My brother: always looking at the financial bottom line.

John buried his face in his hands. When he looked up again, he looked utterly defeated. ‘Well, can you come up with a better idea?’ he said. ‘I can’t think of any other solution. I mean, God, Lexi. Work is shit at the moment. I mean, really shit.’ His voice caught. ‘The twins just seem to need money all the time. Money and lifts and clothes and gym classes and riding lessons and music classes and school trips. It’s one thing after another. I’m hard up against it and worrying about Mum is just one thing I don’t need.’

I rubbed my jaw. As far as I knew, John was doing really well. He must be ploughing all his money back into the business. But, if cash flow was an issue, why didn’t Anastasia get a job? Even something part-time while the twins were at school?

‘All right, all right,’ I said. ‘But isn’t this something that should come from Mum herself? She needs to believe she needs to move, otherwise it’ll be a disaster. We can’t force her.’

‘That’s where we come in. We need to plant the idea in her head. Water it.’

I laughed. ‘Good luck with that!’

John narrowed his eyes and exhaled. ‘We could always try to expedite things.’ His voice was low and I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly.

‘Expedite?’

He cocked his head. ‘You know … speed things up a little.’

I shook my head.

‘Do small things to make her start doubting herself.’

‘What?’ I stared at my brother.

John shifted awkwardly on his seat. ‘You know … there are ways. It wouldn’t be too difficult.’

‘John! That’s evil! Pure evil. How could you even think of such a thing?’

He closed his eyes. He had the grace to look sheepish, I’ll give him that. ‘But if we don’t,’ he said, ‘how are we going to get her to agree to move?’

‘How about we talk to her? Express our concerns. Good grief, John, she’s our mother, not the enemy!’

John drained his pint. ‘Anyway, think about it. I’m going to do some research, check out some places.’

I closed my eyes.

‘I’ll send you some info,’ he said. ‘Maybe we can see a few places together.’ I didn’t say anything. ‘Look, I know what you’re thinking,’ John continued. ‘But they have nice retirement villages these days.’

‘Whatever,’ I said. I pushed back my chair and stood up. ‘Do what you want. I’m going to go and see Mum. I know it’s not your turn, but why don’t you come too?’

‘Sure,’ John sighed. ‘As long as the end’s in sight.’