she started playing so hard to get that he had more chance of winning the lottery than seeing her.
He was still keen, so far, but for how long?
‘Come on, I’ll walk out with you,’ she said.
I might not have seen Nick, but at least I got her away from work. ‘Go see Callum,’ I urged her when we got to our cars.
‘Maybe.’
Dad rang me around midnight. ‘Phoebe, this is your father.’
‘What’s happened?’
But I knew, even as I asked the question. Mum wasn’t invincible after all.
The doctors were baffled. None of the tests had shown that cardiac arrest was imminent. But then, Mum always did love to surprise people.
She left behind pages and pages of notes in her sprawling handwriting. Like she couldn’t get the words on the page fast enough. That’s what she’d been doing on her mobile all the time. Planning her last hurrah, just in case. She’d probably spent her final hours on earth trying to figure out which canapes would most impress their neighbours.
At twenty-eight, I was half orphaned. I was also stuck with such a confusing mishmash of feelings about Mum that I didn’t have the faintest idea what to do with them. All I could do after the funeral was to throw myself back into my life and hope for the best.
Three months later…
We’ve lost Laney at work. That’s no euphemism, though I can see why you might think so, what with me recently ‘losing’ my mother, plus us being in a care home and all. I’m sorry, madam, we did everything we could, but we’ve lost Laney.
We actually can’t find her.
It’s not the first time, but it is the longest that she’s been missing. Even June is starting to get nervous. Not that anyone but me would be able to tell. She’s the most famously unflappable person here. The worse things are, the calmer she gets. That’s how I know she’s worried, when she starts speaking like she’s convincing someone to put down the knife. But I would never let on. Everyone’s got their coping mechanisms.
Laney was last seen at breakfast, sitting with her usual friends at their usual table. Not the one directly next to the big sash windows in the dining room, because Laney doesn’t like to squint when it’s sunny, and besides, Sophie thinks the light fades her hair colour. Which is already the colour of wholemeal bread, so I don’t know why she’s so worried. Sophie says she and Laney were going to do Zumba together, but Laney didn’t turn up for it.
That wouldn’t normally raise any alarm bells, since Laney isn’t much of an exerciser. She is a joiner-inner, though, who doesn’t like to disappoint people. Plus, she doesn’t usually go off on her own, so we’re getting worried.
‘I didn’t think much of it,’ Sophie continues, pulling her navy-blue legwarmers back up over her sturdy calves. ‘It’s not the first time she’s stood me up. She will skimp on her exercise.’ Her deep brown eyes are huge behind her thick glasses. I can never look at her without thinking of a barn owl. Now I’m tempted to say ‘She whoo?’ It’s as much because she’s owl-shaped and has a beakish nose as because she powders her round flat face with a shade that’s so light that we could use her as a road-marker post at night.
Sophie has been a Jane Fonda workout devotee since 1982, as she reminds us every chance she gets. Hence the legwarmers. She also makes everyone feel guilty for eating donuts, so she’s that kind of person and we do try to overlook her faults.
If we weren’t so chronically understaffed and overworked, we might not have lost Laney. It’s a wonder we don’t lose more residents. Max will be furious. He’s edgy about his business as it is.
Nobody would call him a good boss, except in the sense that he’s not generally around to bother us. When he does visit, he always rings first as a warning. That’s because he knows he’s not popular.
Not like his mother, the founder and previous owner of the Jane Austen Home for Ladies. That’s its official name now, though everyone in the village calls it Friendship House, because of the plaque beside the front door, from when people named their houses instead of numbering them. That must have been a nightmare for the postie.
We all call it the Happy Home for Ladies though. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? It was Max who made his mother drop the Happy, in case anyone ever sued us for false or misleading advertising. It’s not, though, because the residents are happy. Plus, they’re women. Max was just being his usual miserable self.
‘He’s here,’ June calls out, speaking of the devil as she glances out the window. ‘Everyone, act normal. It’s not like he’s about to do a headcount.’
But this is the biggest kerfuffle the residents have seen since Dot fell out her bedroom window. They’re all gathered in the dining room making plans for Laney’s rescue, wherever she may be. Fat chance of acting normal.
‘Has anyone checked the greenhouse?’ Nick wonders. ‘I could go look.’
Nick is the only one who ever goes in there, and then only to get out the lawnmower. I can’t see Laney suddenly wanting to become a garden expert, but you never know with her. Any throwaway comment can send her mind skittering off on some obscure trail. Then, down the rabbit hole she goes.
‘Let me go with you,’ I tell Nick. ‘I mean, if she’s there, she could be hurt. There should be two of us.’
That sends the residents into another flap. I should know better than to mention getting hurt to residents in a care home. Now I feel bad for upsetting them for my own selfish ends.
And they are totally selfish. I’ll latch onto any excuse to be with Nick, even if it’s only in a draughty old greenhouse that stinks of fertiliser.
I’m sure my feelings would be easier to ignore if we didn’t have so much fun together. If only he’d get grumpy once in a while, or develop an annoying habit or at least a bad case of halitosis. But he remains stubbornly fanciable. There isn’t even any hint now of the awful weirdness that almost ruined our friendship. Those were terrible weeks, but at least if they’d gone on then I wouldn’t still be pining for him. Maybe I’d be satisfied with never sharing anything more than a friendly laugh in the shed together.
When Sophie puts her arm around Dot’s bony shoulders, I say, ‘I’m sorry, Dot, I’m sure she’s not hurt!’
If Sophie is a sturdy barn owl then Dot is a sparrow, reed-thin and restless. She doesn’t seem like the type who’d say boo to a goose.
She waves away my protest, sending her bracelets tinkling merrily. ‘It’s all right. There’s no need to fuss over me.’
How thoughtless can I be, when Dot’s only been off crutches for a few weeks?
We thought we’d lost her a few months ago. And I do mean that in the scary sense of the phrase.
Thank goodness for the rhododendrons that cushioned Dot’s landing when she tumbled from her window. Otherwise
