The Last List of Mabel Beaumont(14)

At home, Olly wants feeding. I open a pouch of the food he likes the most, fill his water bowl. Arthur used to give him all sorts but I’m trying to get him to like me more by offering his favourites. It’s not working. He still sits at the far end of the sofa, looking at me in my armchair like he’d rather I wasn’t there. I bend down to pat his head and he looks up from his bowl, his eyes doleful.

‘What is it, boy?’

I’ve started talking to him more, since it’s just been me. He puts his head on one side, the way people do when you tell them something sad, then goes back to eating. He hasn’t growled for a couple of days, though, and that’s something.

It must be the thought of Dot in the supermarket that has me standing on a chair in the spare bedroom pulling the photograph albums out. If I fell, if I ended up on the floor with a broken leg, how would anyone know I was there? Olly might bark a bit, once he was hungry. It’s a sobering thought that I could die here, alone, with no one to find me.

There they are, tucked away at the back, two albums in pretend leather, one blue and one red. Tissue paper crinkling inside. I don’t look at them until I’m sat in my armchair by the window, and when I open the first one I catch my breath. There she is. Dot.

It’s an image of me and her, Bill and Arthur, all of us looking a bit formal. Mother took it, if I remember correctly. It was one of the first dances we went to as a four and she suggested getting a photograph ‘for posterity’. Perhaps she thought that was going to be the night, that Bill was going to come home saying he’d proposed to Dot. She and I had dresses that pinched in at the waist and had full skirts. The photograph is in black and white, of course, but I remember that mine was pale blue and hers a lemon yellow. It was a little tight, that dress, and I never had much to eat before putting it on. I could have asked Mother to let it out a bit but I preferred to pretend I was that bit slimmer than I was.

Dot used to come over after her tea and we’d put on our dresses and do our hair. Mother used to say she’d never heard so much giggling. Then Arthur would knock on the front door and Mother would let him in and call us down. Bill would appear from his room, full of smiles for Dot, and we’d all head off together. Dot and I would link arms and the men would walk behind us. The getting ready and those walks were my favourite part of the evening sometimes. Almost always, really. Once we were in the dance hall, it was often a bit loud and I was never all that good at dancing, but when we were on the way, walking down the hill, the whole town spread out like a blanket, it felt like the world was there for the taking, as if we could pluck it like an apple from a tree.

The photograph doesn’t give much of a sense of her. She looks a bit stiff, like she wishes it wasn’t being taken. We weren’t used to having our photograph taken, not like youngsters now, always posing. I hold it up to the light, try to make out that sparkle she always had, but it isn’t there. Mother didn’t capture it. Or the camera didn’t. I look at myself, next. In some ways it’s hard to believe I was ever so young, and in others that’s how I think I still look now, until I catch my reflection in a mirror unexpectedly. My dark hair is swept up, my skin clear. My chin juts out a bit but it’s not the disaster I always thought it was, back then. Bill just looks like Bill, the way he always did. No apologies or discomfort. People talk now about being comfortable in your own skin, and that’s what Bill was. His hair was slicked back with Brylcreem, his gaze steady, his shirt a little crumpled. I can picture Mother leaning forward to brush the creases out as best she could before holding up the camera. So handsome. And Arthur, next to Bill, his eyes smiling. You can’t make out the reddish tint to his hair or the fact that he was slightly heavier, slightly more solid than Bill. His eyes aren’t focused on the camera – he’s looking slightly off to the side, in Dot’s direction.

We all look young and beautiful, and that’s the truth of it. And now, Bill’s been gone for decades and Arthur for just a few weeks, and I can’t help but wonder about Dot. Whether it’s just me left, or whether she’s still walking the Earth too, somewhere.

I hear her voice again, little more than a whisper. Find me.





8





I can’t remember the last time the doorbell rang, so it makes me jump. I push my feet into my woolly slippers and shuffle out into the hall. When I open the door, there’s a woman standing there, beaming at me. She’s about fifty. A good age, lots of life behind you but lots still ahead. She has bottle-blonde hair cut in a bob and her clothes don’t fit right.

‘Who are you?’ I ask.

She throws her head back and laughs. She’s the sort of woman who laughs with her whole body. But she’s got sad eyes, too.

‘I’m Julie,’ she says. ‘Your new carer. Can I come in?’

Carer indeed. I tell her there must be some mistake, but she’s insistent. I can hardly let her in when she’s a complete stranger, can I? She shows me her lanyard thingy but anyone could knock up one of those. We seem to be in a sort of stalemate, until she offers to telephone her boss. Once she’s got hold of him, she passes her mobile telephone over to me.

‘Hello,’ I say, ‘this is Mabel Beaumont and I have a woman at my door claiming to be my new carer but I did not arrange for this.’

‘Ah, didn’t you receive a call from us?’