The murders must have happened before Gran bought the cottage back in the 1970s. I know she went on to rent it out for decades after she moved to Bristol – we found out this detail only recently after she went into a care home. Mum and I had been a little surprised. As far as we’d been aware Gran had only ever owned one property: her red-brick terrace in the Bishopston area of Bristol where Mum grew up and where I spent every summer. Gran, who, before the dementia took over, loved to bake and tend her plants, was calm and practical, never raising her voice. Not like Mum who has a short fuse and no filter, although she’s mellowed a bit now. Those summers with Gran, in her Bristol house with the large garden and adjoining allotment at the end, were my sanctuary, a break from my mum and the drama that always seemed to surround her.
I’d loved Gran’s fat black Labrador with the grey whiskers, Bruce （Mum never wanted us to get a pet. Too smelly, she said but Gran’s house never smelt）， and the old-fashioned, comfy sofas with white cotton slips on the arms that Gran would wash and starch every week. The butterscotch sweets she had in a tin at the top of the cupboard and the garden with the wired fence that separated it from her neighbours. The warm, musty smell of the greenhouse and the tomato plants inside. It was comforting to see Gran in the greenhouse tending those plants, talking to them softly to encourage them to grow. I love my mum dearly, but she was – and still is – so high energy, so effusive and demonstrative, with her colourful clothes and over-the-top personality, that she sometimes makes me feel exhausted. I’ve always felt more of an affinity with Gran, both of us loving nature and the outdoors, slightly reclusive, preferring our own company to crowds of people.
Gran made me feel normal when I admitted I’d rather stay in and watch EastEnders than go out and play with the other kids in the street and that it was okay not to have to be out there and loud all the time. My mother was always telling me when I was a kid that I was ‘too quiet’ and ‘too shy’ and asking, ‘Why don’t you go and mix with the other girls in your year instead of just sticking with one friend?’ But Mum is a social butterfly, fluttering from one group of friends to another with an ease I have always envied, even if I don’t want it for myself. As a result I felt awkward and uninteresting growing up, never knowing what to say. Until I met Tom at university. Tom made me feel I could be myself and I realized that, with him, I was capable of being witty and fun.
The traffic builds up as I head towards Bristol. The care home Gran lives in is off a dual carriageway in a town called Filton.
It was nearly a year ago when I started to realize something was very wrong with her. It started off innocuously enough. Gran was always a little forgetful, forever saying, ‘’Ere, have you seen my bag?’ or ‘Where did I put my glasses?’ in the Cockney accent she’d never lost despite leaving London in her twenties. She was always so independent and practical. Even up until last year she was strong and able-bodied enough to get on a train to visit me in Croydon, following a map – she had an old-fashioned mobile phone and an A–Z that was dog-eared and always in her handbag – her little Westie, Snowy, in tow. She refused to let me or Tom pick her up at the station despite us constantly offering.
The first sign was the two birthday cards she sent me, one a few days after the other, as though she’d forgotten about sending the first. Then, when she came to stay with us a few months later she’d seemed more forgetful. Snowy’s name slipped easily from her mind, and she forgot to walk or feed him until I had to remind her or did it myself. And then, after she’d been staying with us a few days, she’d turned to me and Tom one evening while we were watching TV and said, ‘’Ere, where have the other couple gone?’ It had sent a shiver of fear down my spine. Because there was no other couple. Gran had been sitting with us all evening. And it broke my heart to realize that, at times, Gran had no idea who Tom or I was, her memory fading in and out like the radio with a bad signal.
On that visit it was obvious that Gran was finding it hard looking after Snowy so when I offered to keep him with me she agreed. I’d cried behind my sunglasses as I watched Gran get on the train without her beloved dog, pulling her wheelie suitcase, and I didn’t stop worrying until she rang later to say she was home safely.