‘Why not?’
I put the kettle on to boil, and when it starts its whistle, I take two mugs out of the cupboard, hold one up to Erin. She nods. She’s like me, never says no to a cup of tea. She’s learned how to make it just the way I like it. The way Arthur did.
At the table, eating our meal, Erin asks about Dot.
‘Will I be in the way, when she’s here? You two have so much to talk about.’
‘We do, but it will be fine.’
‘Just say the word, if you want me to give you some space. I can always go to my room, or out.’
I like that she calls it her room. I hope she always will. I realise this is probably as good a time as any to bring up the thing I’ve been mulling over.
‘Erin,’ I say.
She looks up, suddenly serious. She looks like she thinks I’m about to tell her I’m dying. ‘What is it?’
‘I just want you to know you’ll always have a home here. University holidays, after graduation, whenever.’
She lowers her head and when she lifts it again, I see that there are tears in her eyes.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ I say. ‘It’s just, I don’t want you to think you might have to go back there, to your family. Because you won’t.’
Does she see what I’m saying? It’s all signed and sealed. This house is hers, when I go. But is it too much, to actually spell that out, right now, over beans on toast? I don’t want her to think she has to show me endless gratitude. As far as I’m concerned, it just makes sense. I have this house, and I won’t need it for much longer, but she will.
‘Thank you,’ she says.
And it’s impossible to know whether she fully understands. Whether it will come as a shock when I die and she gets the call to tell her she’s a homeowner. I’m happy to leave it like that, for now.
‘Do you have plans with Hannah tonight?’
‘No,’ she says, frowning a little.
‘Trouble?’
‘No, nothing like that. It’s just that her parents are cracking down on her, saying she needs to get serious about her exams. And I do too, I suppose. So I’ll be shutting myself up in my room and trying to get all my dates in order for History.’
I nod. Think of us, our evening ahead. Me downstairs, her upstairs.
‘I’d be very happy to help. To test you, or something,’ I say. ‘I mean, I don’t know the things you know, but if you have books I can refer to…’
I trail off, but she’s grinning. ‘Would you?’
‘Of course.’
She crams the last piece of toast into her mouth and then disappears upstairs, returning with her arms loaded with heavy textbooks. And I don’t feel daunted by it, this offer I made, on a whim. I might learn something. And that’s a privilege, at my age. To change something, or learn something. To keep growing.
42
The morning Dot’s due to arrive, I can’t keep still. She said she’d be here at midday, and I wake at five, my heart heavy in my chest, as if it has too much love to hold. I go downstairs and put the kettle on, and something catches my eye through the window. A flash of green, poking out from behind one of my pots. I open the back door and go out there in my slippers. It’s a bone toy that Olly used to play with. I’ll drop it round to Kirsty’s next time I’m nearby.
Time drags. I wait for Erin to wake, and when she does, I offer her porridge and toast. She laughs as I make pot after pot of tea. Then she announces that she’s going to the library and I want to ask her to stay and help take my mind off the waiting, but I know I can’t. I’ve turned Dot’s visit into this seismic event, which I’ve been building up to my whole life, but it might, in fact, be as small and simple as two old friends catching up after many years apart.
As I wash up the breakfast dishes, standing where I stood when I saw that flash of green earlier this morning, I remember something. Just a small snippet of conversation from that last day Arthur and I had together.
‘Do you know where Olly’s bone is?’ he asked.
‘That green thing he carries around? I haven’t seen it.’
‘I’ll have a look for it tomorrow. He seems a bit lost without it.’
That was the extent of it. But am I imagining it, or did he reach across for my spiral notebook after he said that, as if he was going to make a note of it?
Find D
And did I see him start to write something, and then ask if he wanted a cup of tea? He looked up, put the pen down, said he would get it. I finish the note for him, in my head.
Find Dog’s bone
Did I push that memory aside, bury it somehow, because I wanted the note to mean something else? Because I needed it to? It doesn’t matter now. He is gone, and I will never know. And if a scribbled, unfinished note about a dog toy was what it took for me to do the thing I’ve always wanted and needed to do, that’s fine with me. Life doesn’t always take the expected, straight path. I know that now.
I go to make yet another cup of tea, and Arthur’s in the kitchen, leaning back against the counter. I look at him, really take him in, and I know, somehow, that this is the last time. That when Dot comes inside this house, he’ll really be gone.
‘Goodbye, Arthur,’ I say. ‘Sleep well.’
And I blink, and he’s gone.
At half past eleven, I force myself to stop flitting about and sit in my armchair. Erin brought home fresh daffodils after her shift yesterday, and they’re just beginning to open. I find myself going back over how Dot and I met. We were eleven, both new to grammar school, pushed together when the teacher, Mr Dennis, asked us to get into pairs and she looked over at me and raised her eyebrows in a question. We were learning about the lead up to the Second World War, and it didn’t quite feel like history, back then.
‘How do you think Hitler persuaded people to vote for him?’ I read aloud from the sheet we’d been given.
Dot ignored me. Looked around, checking where the teacher was. What was she going to do?
‘Do you dare me to go out and run to the end of the corridor and back without him noticing?’ She jerked her head in the direction of our teacher.
I was bewildered. Why would she want to do that? ‘No,’ I said.
She shrugged, pulled the sheet of paper towards her. ‘Let’s do this, then.’
And I knew, in that second, that this girl was nothing like me. Saw, for the first time, how very different people could be. And how intoxicating. That was the only thing I learned that day.
There’s a knock at the door, loud and confident, and I get up and take a deep breath before going out into the hall. She is standing on my doorstep, here in Broughton, where I found and then lost her. And to an outsider, it would just look like one old woman visiting another. Nothing special or earth-shattering. But from here, from inside my heart, it’s a tiny miracle to be standing across from her.
‘You’re here,’ I say, and then wish I could take it back and say something less silly.
‘I’m here,’ she says. ‘Can I come in?’
There is so much to tell her. So much to ask. But where do you start? With tea, I decide. I’ve bought some fancy biscuits and I put them on a plate while the kettle boils. I’ve left her in the front room, and I picture her in there, looking around and making silent judgements about the life I’ve lived. My hands are shaking when I reach into the fridge for the milk. I tell myself to stop, to calm down. I don’t know what’s going to come of any of this, and I mustn’t build it up too much. It might be nothing.