‘Thanks,’ says Collette. Looks about her for somewhere to sit and, not finding anything in the Spartan lobby, stands awkwardly before the desk like a supplicant.
‘We’ve not seen you before, I think,’ says the woman, and there’s an edge of judgement to her voice. Your mother’s been here for three months, now, says the tone. Where have you been?
‘No,’ says Collette, and feels the blush creep further up her cheeks. Cheeky mare. You don’t know anything about it. ‘I’ve been away.’
‘Away?’ Lucky for some, says the single word. Wouldn’t it be nice for all of us, if we could be away when responsibility called?
‘Abroad,’ she says. Adds, defensively: ‘Working. I couldn’t get away before.’
‘No, dear,’ says the woman. ‘Well, it can be a terrible inconvenience.’
Oh, fuck you, thinks Collette. Who do you think you are? Do you really think that the ones who end up here, the ones with no one to take them in, are totally innocent of their situation? Don’t you think we’d have at least tried to have them with us, if they’d been nicer when we were young? And it’s not like I haven’t been drip-drip-dripping my cash into her bank account, to pay for your services and keep her out of council care.
She doesn’t voice it. It can’t be a greatly rewarding job, this. Making the families feel guilty must be one of the few pleasures she gets.
‘Well, I’m back now,’ she says. ‘For as long as it takes.’
‘Good for you,’ says the woman, patronisingly.
I just hope it’s not too long, thinks Collette. God help me, I shouldn’t be wishing her life away, but it’s only a matter of time before they find out I’m in London, even if they don’t know why. They seem to have contacts everywhere.
‘Actually,’ says the receptionist, ‘while I’ve got you, we probably need to update your contact details, if you’re not in Spain any more. Have you got a phone number? In case of – you know – emergencies?’
She’s not memorised it yet; has to look on the menu to reel it off. The woman types, hits the tab key. Looks up. ‘And where are you living?’
She’s about to say the address when her natural suspicions stop her. There’s no need for them to know. It’s not like she’ll be switching the phone off. She tells the woman the address of her mother’s flat, because it’s the first thing that springs to her mind.
Footsteps soft-shuffle down the corridor and a man appears, wearing what look like chef’s whites. He wields a bunch of keys, like a jailor, and peers enquiringly past the flowers at the receptionist.
‘Visitor for Janine Baker.’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘Oh, riiiight.’
‘Her daughter,’ says the woman, significantly.
He turns to Collette and gives her an up-and-down look. ‘I was beginning to think she was all alone in the world.’
‘Yes,’ says Collette. ‘I couldn’t get here sooner, I’m afraid. I’ve been abroad. I had to make arrangements.’
‘Fair enough.’ He turns and starts walking back up the corridor. She hesitates for a moment, unsure as to whether she’s supposed to follow or not, then, when he turns and looks over his shoulder, hurries to catch up.
Deeper into the building, the smell of nappies is stronger and the smell of polish weaker. They pause at a double fire door as he unlocks it. ‘It’s a toss-up,’ he explains. ‘I know you’re meant to keep them unlocked, but whoever made that rule clearly wasn’t trying to herd cats like we are. I’m Michael, by the way.’
Collette nods and mutters a second greeting. On the far side, the atmosphere is slightly damp, slightly feral, like the air in the underground she’s just come off, the walls a soothing mint green. She walks beside him, glimpses an empty dining hall, Formica tables and a wall-length window overlooking a garden full of privet and the corrugated iron wall of a warehouse. I must start stockpiling opiates, she thinks. I don’t want my last view to be of this. A seascape, a bottle of gin and a bottle of Oromorph: that’ll do me if I make it that far. In a lounge, shrivelled forms sit on non-absorbent surfaces and stare silently at Jeremy Kyle on the television. Each chair has a built-in tray sticking out from its right arm, each bearing a medical-pink earthenware teacup. There are no visitors, no people standing up by themselves who aren’t in uniform. Wrong time of day, thinks Collette. At least, I hope so.
‘Your mum’s in her room,’ says Michael. ‘She likes to stay there most of the time. Till lunchtime, at least.’
‘Fair enough,’ says Collette. Janine was never a very sociable sort, in between boyfriends. God knows how she managed to replace them, sitting in her chair smoking and gazing at the telly while her peers went out arm in arm to the bingo, but she did. Even got three of them to marry her, for a bit. ‘How’s she doing?’
They reach a junction and the wall colours change abruptly. To her right, sky blue, to her left, where he leads her, candy pink. Even in second childhood, the genders are distinguished by decor. ‘She’s fine,’ he says soothingly.
Always good to get a medical opinion. ‘Sometimes she’s a bit confused, but mostly she’s quite content,’ he adds.
So why did they decide she needed taking away? wonders Collette. This is how I remember her all my life, though I suppose the Temazepam and gin might have had a bit to do with that. Cardiac-related dementia, they called it when they informed her. Her heart’s failing and the oxygen’s just not getting through to her brain.
They reach a door, which sits ajar like all the others she’s passed, so the staff can see the inhabitants without going inside. No real privacy in a twilight home. Collette wonders if they even close the doors at night and suspects that they don’t. From behind the door they have just passed, a reedy voice rises in a wail. ‘They won’t let me they won’t let me they won’t let me! Bugger them. Why can’t I? All I want is…’
‘Here we are,’ says Michael, drowning the voice out. ‘Now, don’t be surprised if she’s gone downhill a bit since you last visited. It can come as a shock, I know, but Mum’s still inside.’
Last time she saw her was in the garden of Collette’s flat in Stoke Newington: her hard-won respectability, her move into home-ownership. Three-odd years ago, looking unimpressed as she smoked her Bensons under a monstrous parasol, gin and tonic rattling ice in her hand. I loved that flat, thinks Collette. I was so proud of it. It was my proof that all the work I’d done was paying off. I wonder what’s happened to it? Taken back by the bank, I suppose. Someone else is living there now, enjoying my kitchen, probably using my parasol and congratulating themselves on their auction bargain. And Lisa’s probably credit-blacklisted until the end of time.
‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘I’ll remember.’
He calls in through the gap in the doorway. ‘Janine, love? Are you decent?’
He mother’s voice, but not. It’s gone reedy, like that of the weeper next door, and breathless. ‘Yes, thank you, dear.’
‘I’ve got a visitor for you,’ he calls, and pushes the door full-open.
Janine sits in a high-backed faux-leather fauteuil in front of a window that looks out on to a blank wall, two plastic tubes hooked into her nostrils. She looks up with childlike curiosity and a big smile, then her face falls, fills with confusion.
‘Are you sure you’ve got the right room?’ she asks, between breaths. ‘Who are you?’
Collette feels a lurch. She was never much of a mother, but she can’t have forgotten me, surely? ‘It’s me, Mum,’ she says, and walks further into the room. Crouches down beside her mother’s chair and looks up. ‘Lisa.’
Janine’s shrunk. She looks like a facsimile of herself, like someone’s run her through a photocopier that’s running low on toner. Last time Collette saw her, her hair had been loose-permed and lowlights ran through a base of yellow blonde. Now, she’s grey: grey skin, grey eyes, grey greasy hair that looks like it’s been cut with the kitchen scissors, charcoal lines running up from her lips and into her nostrils. She stares at Collette for a long time, then shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says, decisively. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Lisa’s only seventeen. You’re bloody ancient.’