4
Gran is sitting in the day room by the bay window that overlooks the manicured grounds, a coffee-table in front of her and an empty chair opposite. The sun has come out and it streams through the net curtains, highlighting dust motes that dance around her head, like little orbs. My heart contracts with such love that my eyes smart. Seeing her here makes me ache with longing to go back in time to how it used to be: Gran bustling around her little kitchen making endless cups of tea the colour of treacle, or in the greenhouse showing my teenage self how to plant radishes.
Gran’s head is bent. She’s lost the plumpness to her face, the skin now hanging loose around her jowls, her cheekbones prominent. Her snow-white hair – it once used to be a beautiful coppery red, from a bottle Gran always claimed – is fluffy, the texture of cotton wool. She’s pushing the pieces of a jigsaw around the table and, for a moment, it takes me back to when I was a kid and we’d sit together in companionable silence in the evenings, as the sun went down, trying to work out the best way to construct the puzzle.
I stand in the doorway for a few minutes, just watching. The room is too warm and smells musty, like roast dinners and over-boiled veg. The carpet is the kind you’d find in an old-fashioned seaside guesthouse, all red and gold swirls.
‘Rose is having a good day,’ says a voice from behind me. It’s Millie, one of the carers, and my favourite. Millie is a few years younger than me with the kindest face and widest smile I’ve ever seen. She has short spiky black hair and piercings halfway up both ears.
‘Oh, I’m so pleased. I’ve some news for her.’
Millie raises an eyebrow. ‘Ooh. Good, I hope?’
I touch my stomach self-consciously and nod. I don’t want to think of the other thing. The bad news. The bodies.
Millie squeezes my shoulder encouragingly, then moves on to help an elderly man, who’s trying to get out of his chair. I make my way to the end of the room, weaving past some of the other residents clustered around the television and the old man reading a newspaper upside down in the corner, until I reach Gran.
She looks up as I approach and, for a moment, confusion flits across her features and I have to swallow my disappointment. She doesn’t recognize me. Today is not a good day after all.
I slide into the chair opposite. It has such a high back that I feel like I’m sitting on a throne. ‘Hi, Granny. It’s me, Saffy.’
Gran doesn’t speak for a few seconds, continuing to move around the pieces of the jigsaw even though she hasn’t started making the picture. The box is propped up at the end of the table. A black Labrador puppy on the front surrounded by flowers. ‘Let’s find the edges first,’ she always used to say, her weathered hands, the result of many hours’ gardening, nimbly seeking out the right pieces. But now there is no method, Gran instead just moving the pieces around aimlessly, her fingers gnarled and wrinkly.
‘Saffy. Saffy …’ she mumbles, not looking at me. And then her head shoots up and her eyes sparkle with recognition. ‘Saffy! It’s you. You’ve come to see me. Where have you been?’ Her whole face lights up and I reach out and touch her frail hand. She’s seventy-five but since she was admitted into the home she’s looked much older.
I know I haven’t got long before Gran’s mind slips back in time. It never ceases to amaze me how much she remembers about the past but can’t recall something as recent as what she had for breakfast.
‘I’m pregnant, Granny. I’m going to have a baby,’ I say, unable to keep the joy and fear out of my voice.
‘A baby. A baby. So wonderful. Such a gift.’ She clutches my hands, a little too tightly. ‘You lucky girl. Is …’ Her eyes cloud and I can tell she’s having trouble assessing her memories. ‘Is Tim happy?’
‘Tom. And, yes, he’s over the moon.’ Gran had doted on Tom, before the dementia diagnosis. She couldn’t do enough for him whenever she saw him. She used to send him little care packages: a home-made cake, some sloe gin she’d brewed herself, rhubarb she’d grown in the garden because she knew he loved it and I didn’t. ‘You need to feed him up,’ she used to tell me. It was a generation thing, I would remind myself. To keep your man happy. Not that I remembered Gran ever having a man. My granddad died before Mum was even born.