LITMIR.BIZ

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one place today,’ Laura said, helping Tess up the steps with the buggy. ‘A little quiet, I'd say. How's this little 'un?’

      Tess liked the way Laura squatted down regardless of the way it made her uniform stretch and strain.

      ‘How are you, Em?’

      Em brandished her beaker in reply.

      The place didn't smell of wee. It smelt more like a library, less like a hospital though it shared the linoleum floors and particular signage of the latter, and really only the hushed ambience of the former.

      ‘She's in the day room,’ Laura said over her shoulder as she led the way. She stopped at a door and peered through the safety glass. ‘As I said, you might find her a bit, well, distracted. Well, she was this morning.’ Laura looked at Tess. ‘But you can never tell, really, how long it's going to last. It goes as quickly as it comes – one minute they're away with the fairies, the next they're back in the land of the living. Sad when you think they'd rather not be.’

      Tess looked into the room through the glass in the door and felt suddenly a little apprehensive. Was all this fair on Em? Or Mary? And even Joe too?

      Laura sensed her reticence. ‘Come on, love, she'll be delighted with the company – whether or not she knows you from Adam today.’

      The door opened into a world Tess knew existed but had never been party to. Her grandmother had died in hospital a day after being admitted from her own home. Here, though, were the infirm elderly en masse; all of them displaced because, for whatever reason, home was no longer an option. Yet there was a sense of calm about the place, perhaps because of the lack of movement: everyone was simply sitting, sitting as if waiting. Waiting for what? Three o'clock? But it was now five past. Visitors? There seemed to be only Tess and one other. The next meal? That wouldn't be for a while. Some looked as though they were barely breathing, jaws slack, eyes glassy and unfocused. As if they were simply waiting to – Tess didn't want to finish the thought so she smiled at everyone hoping to mask her pervasive feelings of sadness and, she had to admit, discomfort.

      The light from the sun, from the expanse of North Sea and the huge sky, flooded the room spinning silver into grey hair and an opalescence to otherwise thin old skin. Even the minute lady whose wig had slipped had an air of composure about her – sitting serene, the light playing off the folds and creases of her baggy stockings like a Da Vinci drawing. Sitting beside her, a resident whose sandals revealed toes so overlapped Tess thought it made her look as if she'd been telling lies all her life. The lips of the lady with a startling blue rinse moved constantly, though whether she was talking to herself or just had an involuntary twitch Tess couldn't tell. But her eyes were fixed very darkly on the clock and Tess hoped it was for someone only five minutes late. Em toddled right ahead, looking intently at everyone as she went. Pair after pair of eyes that had been gazing listlessly at nothing in particular now had a welcome focus. One or two of the residents made a noise similar to beckoning a cat. A couple said a cheery hello. One gentleman, with no teeth, still broke into an expansive smile.

      Someone said, little Daphne?

      Mary, sitting in the corner, looking out to sea, said, Emmeline!

      Em went to her outstretched hands. Tess following, nodding and saying hullo to all whom she passed. Mary was delighted, the crows’ feet around her eyes were like rays of sunshine suddenly radiating out from the interminable cloud of old age.

      ‘Little Emmeline! Where's Wolf?’

      The child barked, to a round of applause. She and Mary knitted fingers for a while and communicated with nods and coos. As Tess sat beside them, it slowly dawned on her that she hadn't been noticed by Mary. And then it took for her to say, hullo, Mary! – Mary? Mrs Saunders? – to realize that actually Mary didn't recognize her at all. So Tess became a silent observer, proud to witness the pleasure Em was bringing to the room. Wherever Em went and whatever she picked up (and Tess noticed many similarities between an old-age-friendly room and a baby-friendly one) she received a chorus of approval. This community spoke in a language Em readily understood. They said, ‘apple’ when she picked one up. And when she pointed, they confirmed ‘book’ and ‘shoe’ and ‘blanky’ and ‘tick-tock’. And they nodded knowingly when she talked in gurgles and they clapped when she showed them something or pointed something out. But Mary just gave Tess a distracted, yes, dear when she tried to talk to her.

      ‘I could bring Wolf one day?’ she suggested to Laura. ‘I've heard of people doing that – taking dogs to care homes, hospices, prisons even. Petting lowers the blood pressure, it's been proven.’

      ‘It'll raise the blood pressure of Health and Safety,’ Laura declared. ‘A nice idea, love. Just you come back with Em. She's a little actress that one, isn't she. They've liked it – more successful than the flaming bingo I tried to organize last week.’

      Tess looked at the lady with the blue rinse, with the ever-moving lips and the eyes fixed on the clock. She was the only resident on whom Em had had little impact. ‘That lady,’ she whispered to Laura. And then she didn't know what it was she wanted to know, it was none of her business after all.

      ‘Can't stop her doing it and believe me I've tried,’ Laura said anyway. ‘Whatever room she's in, if there's a clock, that's her – gone.’

      ‘Is she waiting for a visitor?’

      ‘Possibly,’ said Laura, ‘though she hasn't had one in all the time I've been here.’

      An exhausted Em was asleep by the time her mother had strapped her into the buggy. Tess felt low. She'd suddenly felt desperate to leave Swallows, couldn't get out of there quick enough; she'd felt claustrophobic, unwell, but now in the fresh air she felt wretched. For the first time in weeks, she longed for someone to talk to. She wanted to say, Christ, let's go and have a coffee and a cake. She wanted someone with whom she could share the unexpected emotion of the visit. Will we too grow so old? Will you choose your hair to be blue? Will my toes knit like that? Will our chins get whiskery? Will we not mind if our teeth are in or out? Might that be us – waiting and waiting for no one to visit us? Will we sit and wait to die?

      She pushed the buggy along the clifftop and stood awhile looking down the path leading to the cliff lift. There was no one around.

      ‘I'm lonely,’ she said quietly. ‘I'm really really lonely.’ She was immediately ashamed of the emotion.

      She took Em home, cursing herself for destroying her SIM card, cursing SIM cards for damaging her memory for numbers in the way that a computer spell-check had compromised her ability to spell. She didn't even know Tamsin's number by rote. Then she wondered about her mobile handset itself. Did it have a memory of its own? She switched it on. And found that it did.

      Tamsin didn't recognize Joe's landline number so she didn't take the call. Tess, though, rang again and again until she answered curtly out of frustration.

      ‘Tamz?’

      ‘Tess? Jesus freaking Christ, where the fuck are you?’

      ‘Hullo.’

      ‘You can't send me a text out of the blue saying you're fine and going away for a bit without telling me the whys and wheres, and then go completely off the radar for – what is it now – a month!’

      ‘Sorry.’

      ‘Where are you? I even went round to your flat and tried to break in. I thought – I don't want to tell you what I thought but it was grisly. Don't laugh. It wasn't bloody funny at the time.’

      ‘Tamsin – sorry. I didn't think.’

      ‘Where. The fuck. Are you?’

      ‘Saltburn.’

      There was a pause. ‘Where. The fuck. Is Saltburn?’

      ‘In Yorkshire.’

      ‘In Yorkshire.’

      ‘Yes, in Yorkshire. On the north-east coast. It's gorgeous.’ Another pause. ‘I'm so glad you're enjoying your

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