I say goodbye and go to the front door. Sarah follows me. ‘Goodbye, Patricia,’ I call out.
‘Why do you call her Patricia?’ Sarah asks. ‘No one calls her that.’
It’s true. Patricia comes out into the hallway.
‘Are you all right, Mabel?’ she asks.
She’s a kind woman. I’m the one in the wrong here. It’s undisputable. But she is worried about me, all the same. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Are you?’
She looks at her daughter and I think I see her lip wobble a tiny bit. ‘I will be.’
Sarah reaches out and puts an arm around her mother, and it’s clear there’s a bond there that might be stretched by distance but which won’t be broken. It’s for life, family. It’s forever.
‘Thank you, Sarah,’ I say. ‘For listening. And thank you, Patty, for giving me a chance to explain.’
She looks surprised that I’ve used her shortened name, but she doesn’t say anything.
‘I’ll see you soon, Mabel.’
‘You will, I’m sure.’
On the walk home, I go a bit out of my way, telling myself I need a couple of bits from the shop. I could just message Erin, ask her to bring something home with her, but I don’t feel like going home yet, and that’s the honest truth. I’m starting to enjoy being out and about, with all that entails. Running into people, chatting. I go to the graveyard. There’s no one around, so I sit on the bench.
‘You wouldn’t believe what’s going on,’ I say. It’s Arthur’s grave I’ve come to first today. ‘I’ve made a friend, Erin, and she’s living in our spare room. She’s seventeen. She’s bright and funny and a bit lost, and she’s made such a difference to me. Well, her and Julie, the carer you sent, and a couple of others too. I didn’t realise how closed off I was, how isolated we were, until you were gone and I was on my own.’ I pause for a minute before saying the next bit. ‘I know I dragged you down, sometimes. And I’m sorry for that. Oh, and I know how to apologise now. Better late than never, eh?’
It’s when I’m talking to Arthur, these days, that I appreciate the changes in me. I’m a different person. And he’ll always be the same. I was so sure it was too late to change, but I was wrong. It’s only too late when you’re dead and buried. The Mabel I am now is more like the Mabel he met than the one he was married to all those years. Before Bill died, before Dot left, when I was so much more carefree.
Once, we went to the pictures, the four of us. Bill and Arthur wanted to see this Western that had just come out, and Dot and I didn’t argue because there was nothing else we were particularly keen to see. Dot was in a mischievous mood, said she didn’t fancy sitting still in the dark all evening when she’d been stuck at work all day, but the tickets had been bought by then, and none of us had money to waste, so we went. Working out who was going to sit where was always a delicate operation, and I remember that night Dot darted in beside Arthur and Bill was stuck on the other side of me, annoyed. It was raining, and we’d rushed to get inside, shaking off our umbrellas while standing in the doorway. When we’d sat down, I turned to look at Dot, and she had raindrops in her eyelashes. She blinked them away and grinned at me, leaned in close to whisper something about a party we should have gone to instead.
‘Emily, from work, she was having people over,’ she said.
‘But she didn’t invite us.’
Dot shrugged, as if such a thing didn’t matter one bit, and whispered that if the film was boring, we should sneak out at the interval and go to Emily’s house.
I didn’t watch the film. I’d missed the beginning and I couldn’t pick up the thread, and I didn’t particularly want to. There was a train robbery, a gunfight on horseback, and it was boring. I was thinking about Emily’s party, about being there instead of being here, because Dot’s hot breath in my ear had wakened something in me. I wanted to dance.
In the interval, Dot and I went to the ladies’ to reapply our lipstick.
‘I’m so bored,’ she said, leaning back against the washbasins. ‘We could go. Couldn’t we?’
I wanted to, but I felt a sense of duty, of obligation. We had said yes to coming, had let Bill and Arthur pay for our tickets. And I was tied to both men, I realised, whereas Dot was only tied, if she was tied at all, to Bill.
‘Do you love him?’ I asked. ‘Bill?’
I had asked this a handful of times, and Dot had never given me a straightforward answer.
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ she asked. ‘Come on, Mabel, let’s do something exciting for once.’
‘What sort of party is it?’ I asked.
We were looking at each other in the mirrors rather than directly, which felt strange, like I wasn’t standing next to her, our arms almost touching. She pressed powder onto her forehead and rolled her eyes.
‘It’s a party, Mabel. You know what a party is. Drinks, dancing, general merriment.’
‘But we’re not dressed for it.’
I had a long list of excuses and Dot knew it.
‘Well, I’m going,’ she said.
My mouth dropped open. ‘Now? Really?’
‘Really,’ she said.
When we left the toilets, there was no one congregated in the entryway. Bill and Arthur must have been back in their seats.
‘Tell them I had a stomach ache, or something,’ Dot said.
I looked at her. I didn’t want to go back to watch the second half of a film I wasn’t following. I wanted to go out with her, into the night, towards adventure. But could I do it?
‘I’m coming too,’ I said.
Had she always known I would? Her pull was strong. She reached out a hand and I took it, and we pushed through the heavy doors, giggling. There would be explanations and apologies to make, I knew. Bill would be waiting up for me when I got home, his face like dark clouds. But that was later, and for now, Dot and I were going to a party, doing something we shouldn’t, being wild and free in that way that you can when you’re young.
I don’t remember much about the party, only that Dot drank too much wine and was sick on the way home, and that Emily was surprised to see us but ushered us inside regardless, and that we did a lot of laughing and talking and it was more fun than seeing the film. Arthur and Bill were both in our kitchen when I let myself in, my ears ringing from the music and my steps light. They’d been worried, they’d left the cinema when we hadn’t returned and had spent a long time looking for us. The sheen of the night disappeared in an instant.
‘It was silly of us,’ I said.
Bill looked furious but Arthur had half a smile. And I knew, then, that this adventurous streak Dot brought out in me was part of what he liked about me. He didn’t know then, and neither did I, that it would disappear when she did, and he would spend his life married to a woman who played it safe.
‘We should have had more adventures, and that’s the truth,’ I say.
And I imagine Arthur sitting on the bench beside me, nodding his agreement. I get up, go over to where my family lie.
‘I’m inching closer to finding her. Dot.’