The Last List of Mabel Beaumont(26)

I was a bit taken aback when Julie and Patricia said they’d both come with me to Dot’s old house to see if we could find anything out. But then, I know Julie’s floundering without Martin and Patricia lives on her own, so maybe they haven’t got anything better to do. A thought comes to mind. Perhaps while they’re helping me, I could help them. I get out the list I made, think again about how happy this would make Arthur.

1. Get in touch with friends and family

2. Contact the funeral parlour

3. Go to the supermarket

4. Clean the house

5. Find D





Items one to four are crossed off, now, but I add two new items to the end.

6. Help Julie get her husband back

7. Find out why Patricia is alone





So when they turn up on the doorstep, I get right to it.

‘Have you always lived on your own, Patricia?’

She opens her mouth and I know she’s going to ask me to call her Patty, but then she closes it again.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Until recently, my daughter and granddaughters lived with me.’

She is wearing a navy dress with a bold floral pattern and brown leather ankle boots. Could I wear something like that? I would always have said no, but it looks great on her. I remind myself that she used to be an actual model. Turn my attention to what she just said. There’s a story there.

‘Ah, and where have they moved to?’

‘Up near Manchester. My daughter, Sarah, met someone online and they’ve decided to make a go of it.’

I can hear in her voice that this is hard. She doesn’t approve.

‘And how old are the little ones?’

‘Six and four.’

Julie’s looking from me to Patricia and back again. This is all news to her, it seems.

‘You must miss them,’ I say.

‘Oh, I do. Terribly.’

So there it is. She’s lonely too. All three of us, on our own. Julie goes over to Patricia and puts an arm around her, and it looks a bit awkward because Patricia towers over Julie, but they make it work. Patricia pulls a tissue from her trouser pocket and blows her nose. I should say sorry, I suppose, for upsetting her, but it was in a good cause. I can’t help her if I don’t know what the problem is, can I?

‘Shall we go, then?’ I say instead.

I haven’t walked past Dot’s old house much, over the years. At first it was a conscious thing, and then it wasn’t, but it’s a bit out of the way, not on one of the routes Arthur and I used to take again and again around the village. From my house, you have to go towards the centre of town but then veer off just before you get there, and then there’s a maze of little streets and Manor Lane is one of them. When we get to the bit where you turn off, I find my feet are just taking me there, as if I’m back in the time when I made this journey so often, as if the decades have fallen away. I go second left and then third right, and Julie is sure we’re getting lost, but I know we’re not. And then we’re on Manor Lane, and I’m going past the houses on her street until I get to forty-two and stand in front of it, looking.

It’s smaller. I mean, it isn’t, of course, but I always thought of it as quite imposing and it’s just an ordinary family house. Victorian semi. I look at the window that Dot’s brother once broke with a cricket ball. The door’s changed colour. Once black, now a bright blue.

‘This the one?’ Patricia asks.

It strikes me as a silly question so I don’t bother to answer it.

‘Mabel?’ Julie asks, touching my elbow.

‘What?’

‘Is this Dot’s old house?’

‘Well, of course it is. Why do you think I’m staring at it?’

She does that raucous laugh of hers and just then, the front door opens and a smartly dressed middle-aged man looks a bit surprised to find three women standing looking at his house.

‘Can I help you?’ he asks, pulling the door closed behind him.

‘My friend used to live here,’ I say. ‘In the forties and fifties. Her name was Dot Brightmore.’

He shifts from one foot to the other, taps his car keys on his wrist. Waits for me to go on.

‘I don’t suppose you know anything about her, or her family?’

‘Sorry, we’ve only been here two years.’ He looks down, then back at us. ‘The wife and me,’ he adds, though it doesn’t make any difference to anything.

‘Thanks anyway,’ I say.

He lifts a hand in a wave and is about to get in his Audi when he stops and calls out. ‘I’ve just remembered. When we came to look at it, the previous owner told us she’d done some research into the house’s history. Maybe she’d know something. My wife’s inside, if you want to knock.’

He gets in his car and starts the engine, not waiting around to see how we react.

‘That’s something,’ Julie says. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Could be,’ I say.

Julie rings the bell, and a slight, nervous-looking woman of around Julie’s age comes to the door. She looks taken aback to see us, and I realise we must look a ragtag bunch. Not who you might expect to find on your doorstep on a Thursday morning.

‘Can I help you?’ she asks.