Determined to be up and gone early, I set my alarm for seven, and did the minimum ablutions before slipping under the duvet. I put that damn bracelet from my head and fell asleep thinking of the house on Lansdown Road.
I didn’t bother with breakfast the following morning. There were plenty of cafés in Bath where I could indulge myself. Apart from avoiding Theo for a few days, my plans were loose.
I’d timed it well and my bus arrived a minute after I got to the stop. It was rush hour, so traffic into Bath was more than usually slow. It didn’t bother me, I sat, stared out the window and let my thoughts drift. With no plans, I stayed on till the bus arrived at the station.
To get the kind of breakfast I liked, at a price I could afford, meant wandering outside the touristy area, but although I was hungry, I wasn’t in a hurry. Finally, almost an hour later, my rambling took me through Victoria Park and out onto the Upper Bristol Road. There I found just the place. Minutes later, for only a couple of quid, I was tucking into scrambled egg on toast and drinking decent coffee.
I had finished the food, and was sipping the end of my coffee, before I admitted that I’d no idea what the next step would be in the nebulous plan that had slid into my brain the day before. It needed a bit of substance if it was ever going to have a chance of working. If Carol were more forthcoming with information, I’d have been tempted to give her a shout, but I’d give her a few days in case my more frequent overtures made her suspicious. I wondered, without much interest, what she did on her days off, then put her out of my head to concentrate on the Wallaces.
It wasn’t till I had finished the coffee and the caffeine had made its way to my brain cells that an idea came to me. I hadn’t learnt much from Carol but everything she had told me had been filed away… just in case. And now one of those little pieces of information took on a shiny glow. Oonagh Wallace played golf every morning. I remembered Carol stressing every and raising her eyes to the ceiling as if golf was some kind of abnormal obsession.
I checked my watch. I’d begun my day early; it was still only nine thirty. If I hurried, I could make it to the Wallace house before Oonagh got back from her golf. And on the way, I’d come up with a plan to gain access and have a better snoop. If I didn’t, I’d simply wing it. I was a nurse, after all, an expert in swerving, making do, acting dynamically and getting things done.
It took me thirty minutes to walk to the house during which time I’d come up with what I thought was a clever idea to gain access. When I arrived, I climbed the steps to the front door, pressed the bell, and waited expectantly. When nothing happened, I did a double press, two short jabs, to let whoever was inside know I meant business.
It was another minute before the door was opened by a small stocky woman wearing an old-fashioned nurse’s dress at least one size too small. I didn’t expect to recognise her, the agency had hundreds of nurses on their books and apart from induction and yearly mandatory training, we didn’t get to meet others. She regarded me silently, without curiosity.
The ball, it appeared, was firmly in my court. Just where I liked it to be. ‘Hi, I’m terribly sorry to bother you. I know you must be so busy’ – probably gorging on biscuits and coffee and watching TV – ‘my name is Lissa. I’m an agency nurse. My friend Carol Lyons looks after Mr Wallace most of the week. You’ve probably seen her name in the reports.’ I smiled and waited for some sign of acknowledgement, some agreement that she did indeed recognise the name. There was no change in her bovine expression. If she recognised the name, she was giving nothing away. It cost nothing, apart from my patience, to persevere.
‘Carol was in a bit of a bind the last day she was here. The care assistant who was supposed to help her in the morning was in an accident, and they couldn’t get a replacement.’ I was taking a chance in assuming this nurse wouldn’t know about the day I had helped, and my story would only work if it had occurred within the last couple of days. I tried another smile. ‘You know the way it goes sometimes. Anyway, I was coming off a night shift elsewhere and when I heard I offered to help.’
Almost the whole truth. I waited to see a softening in her expression. If it was there, it was well hidden. I liked the ball in my court, but I was tired bouncing it up and down at my feet and was conscious of the minutes passing. ‘I don’t want to delay you, but I wondered if you’d found a gold stud earring.’ I put my hand up and pulled at my earlobe.
‘I haven’t, no.’
It speaks. ‘I didn’t realise it was missing until that night, too late to ring Carol and ask her to have a look. And of course, she’s been off since.’ I rubbed my earlobe again. ‘It has huge sentimental value so I thought it would be better if I came around; I’ll be devastated if I can’t find it.’
I guess I wasn’t much of a storyteller because she showed little sympathy. Instead, she looked behind, cocked her head, then turned back to me with the same dull, uninterested stare. ‘Listen, I’m sorry, I need to go,’ she said and proceeded to shut the door.
Time to make a move. Before she had time to react, I put my hand on the door, enough weight behind it to stop her shutting it. ‘I’m sure I lost it while we were moving Mr Wallace. He lurched, and his hand brushed against my head. It must have happened then.’ If I could have cried on demand, I’d have done so. Unfortunately, it wasn’t one of my skills. However, by luck, I’d hit on something she could relate to.
‘He did the same to me this morning. I need to learn to duck faster.’
Given an inch, I hurried to take a mile. ‘An occupational hazard, isn’t it?’ I dropped my hand from the door. ‘I know you’re busy looking after Mr Wallace. I don’t want to delay you by sending you on a search for my precious earring, but if I could come up, I know where I was standing and might be able to find it.’
Whether it was her sudden understanding that we were all in this together, or maybe my stress on the word precious, to my surprise, she stood back pulling the door open. ‘Mrs Wallace isn’t here, but I’m sure she’d understand, after all you were kind to have helped out.’
Her initial reticence to speak to me quickly vanished and by the time we’d climbed the stairway – she leading the way one plodding step at a time – I knew all about Jolene. She didn’t, as it turned out, regularly work with Mr Wallace. ‘It’s usually Carol or Michelle covering the day shift, but Michelle needed a few days off for a wedding and Carol couldn’t cover them all so they rang me. I don’t do private homes usually.’ She stood at the bedroom door, her hand on the doorknob. ‘I prefer to have more support, if you know what I mean.’
I bit back the caustic comment that leapt to the tip of my tongue. I’d worked with nurses like Jolene who did the minimum to get by, and happily delegated everything they could to junior staff, or worse, left it for whatever nurse was doing the next shift. I almost felt sorry for poor Mr Wallace to be left in her care.
But when we went in and I saw him, I realised my sympathy was wasted. It had only been a few days since I’d seen him, but he’d deteriorated dramatically. I didn’t feel any sense of pride in knowing I’d been right, that he wasn’t going to last as long as his GP had indicated. I’d given him days, maybe a week. Now, with a grey cast to his skin, a bluish tinge to his lips and a mottling of the fingers that lay curled on the white sheet, I was giving him hours.