But just three days afterwards Gran called me in a panic to say she’d lost the dog and I had to remind her gently that Snowy was living with me and Tom now.
The final thing that really did it, that made me ring Mum and tell her everything, was when one of Gran’s neighbours, Esme, contacted me.
‘It’s your gran, lovely,’ she’d said. ‘She left a pan on to boil dry. It was lucky I’d popped over – she could have burnt the house down.’
When I confessed my concerns to Mum, she flew back from Spain and whisked Gran off to the doctor. After that things happened quickly – but Mum always got things done, she was just that kind of decisive person – and a private nursing facility was found for Gran, not far from where she’d lived in the Bristol house with the allotment that I will always think of as home.
I pull into the spacious car park outside the front of the huge grey Gothic-looking building called Elms Brook, which makes it sound more like a retreat than a care home. Although Mum said it used to be an asylum with bars at the window. But it was nice, Elms Brook. It was mid-range price wise, although Gran still had to sell the house to pay for it. I swallow a lump in my throat when I remember how I’d felt packing up her things and clearing out her home.
It was in one of my grandmother’s more lucid moments, last November, when she told me and Mum about the cottage. This was the first time we even knew of its existence.
‘It’s in your name, Lorna,’ Gran had whispered, leaning forwards in her high-backed chair and holding on to Mum’s hand. ‘I transferred the deeds ten years ago.’ And I had marvelled at Gran’s astuteness. By putting the cottage in my mum’s name it wouldn’t have to be sold to pay for Gran’s care.
Afterwards, as Mum and I stood outside the care home saying goodbye, Mum, shivering in her bright orange coat, had turned to me and said, ‘I always knew my mother was a wily thing, squirreling her money away. She would have bought that cottage as an investment.’ She blew on her hands. ‘Anyway, I don’t want it. It’s yours, if you’d like it. I know you hate living in a city.’ And it had shocked me because, for once, I felt my mother really understood me.
‘But you haven’t even seen it,’ I’d protested.
‘What do I want with a cottage in the middle of nowhere?’ And I could see her point. A cottage in the countryside would be too mundane for Mum. No, she needed sunshine and sangria and exotic men who weren’t much older than me.
Mum had flown back to San Sebastián without even visiting the cottage. She couldn’t have been less interested in it. Which helped ease my guilt for accepting the offer. A free house. No mortgage. It meant the sort of financial freedom Tom and I had never expected in a million years, especially not in our mid-twenties. It meant I could give up my job in Croydon and go freelance, surrounded by idyllic countryside. A dream come true.
But now I revisit that conversation. Ten years ago Gran had transferred the deeds into my mother’s name. Why? Was it purely for financial reasons? To avoid inheritance tax? Or because she knew a murder had taken place?
But, no, that’s ridiculous. There’s no way Gran would have any knowledge of this. I know it like I know I love black coffee and peanut-butter sandwiches and the velvety patches of fur on Snowy’s ears and the smell of cut grass.
I take a deep breath and hold on to the steering wheel as though to steady myself. I can never predict when I visit which Gran I’ll get. Sometimes she’ll recognize me, at others she acts like I’m one of the staff, and each time it’s like losing her all over again.
As I get out of the car I notice a black saloon slowing down on the road so that it idles past me. I can’t be sure but it looks like the same car that was parked near the cottage earlier. The driver’s face is turned towards me as it coasts past. It’s a man but I can’t make out his features. Is it the same guy as earlier? Is he going to pull into the car park too? Then the car speeds up and drives off down the road. I stand for a moment staring after it, wondering if I’m worrying about nothing, or if this is something to be concerned about.