jumble of discarded trainers and shopping bags, and the council’s plastic boxes for recycling bottles and newspapers. Lola’s old bicycle was propped up against the wall even though she hardly used it nowadays, and one of the three bulbs in the overhead light fitting was still out. I had been meaning for days to bring up the stepladder from the basement and replace it.
Jack was sitting on the bottom stair. His face was a motionless white triangle under a stiff jut of hair. His arms were wrapped round his knees and his chin rested between them. His eyes fixed on mine.
‘Jack? What are you doing? Where’s Lola?’
My voice sounded sharp. The main feeling I had at the sight of him, out of bed at almost midnight, was irritation. He should be asleep. He should be recharging, ready for another school day. He should be many things that he was not.
‘Lola’s in her room.’
‘So should you be.’
I put down my bag and eased past the bicycle handlebars.
‘Why?’
It should be obvious even to a twelve-year-old boy that midnight is not a suitable time to be sitting around on the draughty stairs in a house in which the central heating has gone off for the night. But it was – or used to be – Jack’s way to question the obvious with earnest attention, as if even the simplest issue were a matter for philosophical debate. Most recently, though, he has more or less stopped talking altogether.
I sighed. ‘Please, Jack. It’s late. Just go to bed.’
He stood up then, pulling his pyjama sleeves down to cover his fists. He looked small and vulnerable. He said, ‘There’s some bad news. Grandad has had a heart attack.’
I turned, slowly, feeling the air’s resistance. ‘What?’ I managed to say.
‘Mum, is that you?’
Upstairs a door clicked and Lola materialised at the head of the stairs. She ran down to me.
‘What?’ I repeated to her, but my mind was already flying ahead.
That was it. Of course, it was why he had been in my thoughts tonight. I had smelled his cologne, glimpsed his shadow out of the corner of my eye even in the slick light of a trendy new restaurant.
Was he dead, then?
Lola put her arm round me. Jack stood to one side with his head bent, curling the toes of one foot against the dusty mat that ran down the hallway.
I looked from one to the other. ‘Tell me, quickly.’
‘The Bedford Queen’s Hospital rang at about nine o’clock. He was brought in by ambulance and a neighbour of his came with him. He had had a heart attack about an hour earlier. They’ve got him in a cardiac care ward. The Sister I spoke to says he is stable at the moment.’ There were tears in Lola’s eyes. ‘Poor Grandad.’
‘We tried to call you,’ Jack said accusingly.
But I’d forgotten to take my mobile phone out with me. It was on my bedside table, still attached to the charger. I put to one side my instant regrets for this piece of negligence. ‘Is there a number for me to call?’ I asked Lola.
‘On the pad in the kitchen.’
I led the way down the stairs to the basement with my children padding behind me.
The light down there was too bright. There were newspapers and empty cups and a layer of crumbs on the table.
‘My father. Mr Ted Thompson,’ I said down the phone to a nurse on Nelson ward in the Bedford Queen’s Hospital. She relayed the information that Lola had already given me. ‘Should I come in now?’ I asked. I didn’t look at them, but I knew that Jack and Lola were watching my face. We hadn’t seen their grandfather since Christmas. We observed the conventions, meeting up for birthdays and Christmases, prize-givings and anniversaries, and we exchanged regular phone calls, but not much more. That was how it was. Ted had always preferred to live on his own terms.
‘I’ll check with Sister,’ the nurse said. A minute later she came back and told me that he was comfortable now, sleeping. It would be better to come in the morning, Sister thought.
‘I’ll be there first thing,’ I said, as though this was important to establish, and hung up. Lola put a mug of tea on the counter beside me.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
Jack lifted his head. ‘Is he going to die?’
He was over eighty. Of course he was going to die. If not immediately, then soon. This was reality, but I hadn’t reckoned with it because I wasn’t ready. There was too much unsaid and undone.
‘I don’t know.’
I put down my tea and held out my arms. Lola slid against me and rested her head on my shoulder. I stroked her hair. Jack stood a yard away, his arm out of one pyjama sleeve. He was twisting the fabric into a rope.
‘Come and have a cuddle,’ I said to him. He moved an inch closer but his head, his shoulders, his hips all arched away from me.
After a minute I pushed a pile of ironing off the sofa in the window recess. Lola and I sat down to finish our tea and Jack perched on a high stool. He rested his fingertips on the counter top and rocked on to the front legs of the stool, then on to the back legs. The clunk, clunk noise on the wooden floorboards made me want to shout at him, but I kept quiet.
In the end Lola groaned, ‘Jack, sit still.’
‘It’s quite difficult to keep your balance, actually,’ he said.
Lola sniffed. ‘What if he’s going to die? I don’t want him to die, I love him.’
‘So do I,’ Jack added, not to be outdone.
It was true. My children had an uncomplicated, affectionate relationship with Ted. They teased him, gently, for being set in his ways. He remembered their birthdays and sent them occasional unsolicited cheques. In a corner of myself I envied the simplicity of their regard for each other.
I stroked Lola’s hair. ‘Let’s all go to bed,’ I suggested. ‘Grandad’s asleep. If anything changes they’re going to ring us. We’ll see him tomorrow.’
I followed Jack up the stairs into his bedroom. I sat on the end of the bed and he lay on his back with his arms folded behind his head.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
‘Can we tell Dad what’s happened?’
‘Of course. In the morning.’
Tony wouldn’t appreciate a call about his ex-father-in-law in the middle of a week night.
Jack turned on his side, presenting his back to me.
‘I’m going to sleep now.’
‘That’s good.’ I leaned over and kissed his ear, but he gave no response.
The
