“I don’t think it would be a good idea if the grandmother didn’t have access. She’s not very mobile, that’s the problem. Otherwise…Look, I don’t want to sound grudging, but can I get back to you? No, today, I promise. One way or another, certainly.”
“You do know what it’s like in a geriatric ward? Then you know why I’m anxious he should be moved.”
“Hello, this is Rachel Chaplin, city office. Yes, fine thanks. You? Good. Oh, really? That’s great. Listen, there was a woman you used to use for short-term fostering. I met her once at that case conference we both went to. Yes, that’s the one. I was wondering…Where? Australia. Thanks, anyway. Bye.”
For the first time in maybe an hour both receivers were in their cradles. Rachel stood up and arched backwards, stretching the muscles of her back.
“Alexander technique, that’s what you ought to try,” Carole remarked.
“Isn’t that where you lie flat on your back and have someone walk all over you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Always resisted it. Reminds me of too many relationships.”
“You’re all right, you and Chris.”
Rachel looked at her.
“I mean, he’s not like that.”
“More subtle.”
“Why don’t you get him to give you a massage?”
“Can’t see him having the time.”
“Find it. Last thing you want is a bad back. Something like that starts to go and the next thing you know you’re applying for a mobility allowance.”
Sitting back down, turning the pages of her address book, Rachel laughed. “Thanks very much!”
“You’re still a young woman, but that’s when it all begins to go wrong.”
“You can say that again.”
“I’m working with it all the time. People who’ve never given their bodies a single thought and then suddenly they’re sixty and looking around, wondering why bits and pieces are malfunctioning. I mean, if it were a car, you wouldn’t…”
Carole broke off as Rachel’s phone rang.
“Hello, this is…Chris? Anything wrong?”
She glanced across at Carole, who gave a quick smile before starting to dial a number.
“I was going to skip lunch,” Rachel said. “I don’t think I’ve got the time. Besides, I brought a sandwich.”
Continuing to leaf through her address book, Rachel’s face set in a frown. She didn’t want this.
“Look, Chris,” she said, interrupting him. “I’ll meet you by the church. Five-past. Now I’ve got to go.”
“Well, I suppose that depends on how you define incontinent,” Carole was saying.
Rachel closed the book decisively and rang the internal number of the officer in charge of domiciliary care.
The sheets, the duvet cover, even the mattress, all had been stripped and bagged, taken away to forensic for analysis and reports. Resnick sat on the iron frame of the bed. Graham Millington was squatting on his haunches, knuckles of one hand resting against the floor. The drawer of the bedside cabinet was open and empty. Between Resnick and Millington, spreading across the carpet, overlapped, the letters.
“It’s raining.”
Funny, isn’t it, Rachel was thinking, how suddenly, one day and for no good reason, all those banalities we exchange throughout out lives become so intensely irritating.
“I said…”
“I know.”
“Well, do we have to stand out in it, getting wet?”
“It was your idea.”
“Not to come here.”
“I didn’t want to go far.”
“Surely we could go to a pub? Even if it’s only for a quick half.”
Rachel went through the arched iron gateway and turned right along uneven flagstones towards the south porch. Surrounded by scaffolding, like so much of the church, it was in the process of restoration.
She took her hands from her pockets, unfastened the top of her coat. Pushing his fingers through his damp hair, Chris Phillips followed her out of the rain. A couple of solicitors’ clerks scuttled past them, cellophane-wrapped lunch inside white Marks amp; Spencer bags.
“So what was so urgent?”
He started to speak, checked himself, half-turned his head aside to where the rain glistened on the black of the railings and a couple of petals clung, pale, to the bed of rose bushes.
“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?” he said.
If Rachel heard him, she gave no sign.
Dear Box 124,
As you can guess I’m replying to your ad in Lonely Hearts. I’d better come right out with it and say that I’m a bit of a way outside the ages you mention-forty-three next birthday-but thought I’d give it a go anyway. After all, what’s the price of a stamp these days!
Seriously though, I am caring and lively. Given the chance, if you know what I mean! Used to be married and have one kiddie, who I see every other weekend. The wife, as was, lives in Lincoln now so, as I’m not running a car at the moment, the journey’s a bit of a problem. But enough of my difficulties! (You don’t say if you’ve been married at all, not a lot about yourself at all-slim, attractive, twenty-nine-that’s good enough, I suppose!)
Anyway, to save me rambling on, why don’t we meet up one evening and see how it goes? You can’t phone me at the moment (no phone!) so just drop me a line and say when and where.
I really hope you do.
Sincerely,
John Benedict
“Rach.” (God! She hated it when he called her that.) “I just want to know what’s going on.”
“It’s cold, it’s windy, I’m eating a…”
“Enough, Rachel.”
“…sandwich and you’re doing a very good impression of ‘deeply worried, Notts.’”
“Rachel, enough.”
Count up to ten, Rachel, she thought, stop being such a shit.
“All right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ve been trying all morning to sort out some kind of care for two kids who’ve still got to be told their mother’s been murdered.”
He put an arm around her shoulders and she found herself trying not to flinch.
“I’m sorry, too,” Chris said. “I understand that you’re preoccupied,” (Preoccupied, is that what I am?) “but the same could go for both of us.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze before stepping away. “It’s bloody typical, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“You can’t think about anything but work, which means you haven’t got any time left over for us, and my stupid brain’s so clogged up with what’s happening to us, I can’t think about my job for more than five minutes at a time.”
Dear Caring and Lively,
I don’t want you to think I’m in the habit of replying to these things, though I will admit to glancing through them, mainly for a laugh. There was something about the sound of yours, though, that made me want to set pen to paper for the first time. I couldn’t see you, of course, when I was writing but somehow it felt as if I could. See you there, sitting and having your lonely breakfast, sliding the end of the knife into my envelope and opening it up.
Why not give me a call?
Maybe you’ll be as attracted by the sound of my voice as I was by the words in your advert. We’ll never know till we try.
Yours,
Caring and Lively II (Not the Movie!)
“I just feel that I can’t touch you, I can’t talk with you, anything I do is wrong and everything I say is either stupid or insensitive or both.”
“Chris…”
“No, I mean it. I feel I’m offensive to you. That’s what it is.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
“It’s the way I feel.”
Rachel stood with her face in her hands, leaning back against the parish notices, the poster for a concert of early music, details of the restoration appeal.
“Rachel, it’s the way you make me feel.”
Dear Miss Lonely Hearts,
I’m sure that you will already have received a mass of replies to your advertisement and so I suppose I shouldn’t rate my chances of earning a response too highly. When you’ve been trying, one way or another, to find a true friend in this harsh world, someone who might turn out to be your soulmate, for as many years as I have, you learn not to set your expectations too highly.