with cropped grey hair and sharp, pretty features was coming along the pavement in jeans, dark donkey jacket and a red patterned scarf. Her dark eyes looked us both up and down.
‘Hello, Jinni,’ she said coolly, before holding her hand out to me. ‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ she added, her voice low, but with an edge.
‘How remiss of you!’ Jinni’s tone was dry. ‘Not harangued Tess with one of your many petitions yet? Not even the one about me?’ Jinni turned back to me, unsmiling. ‘Ingrid is against what I am doing here. She thinks if I am allowed to open a B&B it will bring ruin and devastation on the town and all who live here …’
Ingrid released her grip on my fingers and gave a chilly smile. ‘I am concerned,’ she said in her cultured tones, ‘about extra traffic and congestion in this narrow road.’ She held out a flyer. ‘We are already seeing a greater influx of Londoners using this as a weekend base and contributing nothing to the local economy Monday to Friday. And now, with the high-speed rail link bringing in new residents who can comfortably commute from here,’ she paused and raised her eyebrows at me, ‘the housing stock is shrinking and local people are being priced out of the market.’ She gave an extraordinarily sweet smile that was framed in steel.
‘Tess is my newest neighbour,’ Jinni told her. ‘Ingrid is Northstone’s foremost agitator, she said to me. ‘No issue too small! The local council adore her.’
‘I prefer the term “campaigner”’ said Ingrid, with another sugary-tight beam. ‘It’s nothing personal,’ she finished. Jinni made a small snorting noise.
‘Well, nice to meet you,’ I said uncertainly. ‘I must get going. Jinni, I’ll um–’
‘Come over soon,’ Jinni finished for me shortly. ‘And shout if you need anything.’ She turned abruptly and strode back over the road towards her house.
As I moved back towards my car, Ingrid fell into step beside me. ‘Do you have a view on this … development?’ she asked, enunciating the final word as if it could do with a dose of antibiotics.
‘Well, the plans sound lovely,’ I said, trying to sound friendly and reasonable. ‘And Jinni seems very nice to me.’
I shivered. It had got cold while I was standing there. Ingrid looked at me with a pitying expression and then gave an odd little laugh. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Things aren’t always what they seem.’
It seemed like a stroke. That’s what her best friend Mo said when she phoned to say my mother had been taken to A&E. The patient, discharging herself in a matter of hours, insisted it was a fuss over nothing much.
‘Gerald’s taking me away for a few days,’ she’d announced, moments after I’d cancelled work to rush to her bedside. ‘We’re going to see Sonia in Dorset. Well he is. I’m going to the pottery if it’s still there. Not been to Poole for donkey’s years.’
‘Shouldn’t you be resting?’ I enquired, knowing I’d have more luck suggesting a little light pole-dancing or a ride on a camel.
‘What for? They can’t find a thing wrong with me. It was likely migraines with what do you call it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Yes you do – migraines where you can’t speak.’
‘I really don’t know anything about them.’
My mother had sounded impatient. ‘I wish you wouldn’t be deliberately obtuse.’ While I was spluttering she swept on. ‘I’ve just looked it up and already it’s gone. So annoying. That word to do with light – they take pictures of it.’
I felt a frisson of unease. ‘Mum, what are you talking about?’
‘Migraines! It’s not that I mind Sonia, you know I don’t, but I don’t want to sit there all afternoon, when there’s the harbour to see.’
‘Well you don’t have to, do you?’ I said, struggling to keep up with my mother’s conversational switchback technique. Was she usually as scattered as this? ‘Sonia won’t mind if you go for a walk. She can catch up with her dad.’
‘We’re not staying there. Gerald’s got us a hotel.’
‘That’s nice. Can I speak to him?’
‘He’s gone home to pack.’
I listened while she talked on, covering a myriad subjects ranging from the problems of deciding what to take when March was cold one minute and sunny the next, Mo’s dog’s possible gallstones and the squirrel in her garden who’d eaten all the bulbs.
She did sound okay – her voice was strong enough and she appeared to be wandering about the house as she told me about the nice staff at the hospital, who were forced to work such long hours with little thanks from this government, and how the doctor had been impressed with her blood pressure.
Keeping her to the point was no easy task, but then again, as I wrote to my sister, that was nothing new.
Mother’s made of stern stuff, I typed, as much to reassure myself as Alice. And it was true. She was rarely ill, still gardened and her gleamingly clean house put mine to shame. She travelled, went to galleries and the theatre, was a sterling member of Margate Operatics and had more friends than I did. Seventy-four was no age these days. Even if she has had a TIA and is keeping it quiet, I concluded, knowing that Alice would immediately Google the full implications of a Transient Ischaemic Attack and be an expert on it by the next time she wrote. It will take more than a few microscopic clots to finish her off.
I pushed away the memory of Tilly saying that when she’d last phoned, Granny sounded even more bonkers than usual and the way my mother had suddenly sounded vague and distracted and appeared to temporarily struggle to recall Ben’s name. Was she feeling unwell more often than she was letting on?
I’d been phoning daily, I told my sister instead, as I tried to still the anxious fluttering in my stomach as I imagined my seemingly indestructible parent suddenly helpless and frail. Her dear old friend Mo was there a lot; Gerald as often as he was allowed to be.
Alice was having none of it. No amount of explaining that our mother herself had actively discouraged me from going down this weekend, saying the traffic would be bad with all those other mothers being towed out to lunch, that I had a long list of household tasks to complete and a presentation to finish before Tuesday, would sway my elder sister. You need to see for yourself, she instructed. While actually numbering my duties: 1) get a proper list from Mother of all symptoms. NB What exactly was said by medics? (suggest you take notes). 2) double-check with Mo for accuracy. Have noticed Mother can be woolly of late. 3) Speak to Gerald (do not be fobbed off by Mother. I do not have a number for him. Make sure you obtain. 4) I think it would be best to phone her GP on Monday and you’ll need to be fully armed with the facts …
I growled and sighed. Years of experience have taught me that when a diktat arrives from the US, it is quicker in the long run to follow it. Alice may be three thousand miles away in Boston. But her sheer will can still fill a room.
Thus on an afternoon
