‘Exactly,’ said Tess.
So Tess went upstairs to see to Em, and Laura went into the kitchen to see to Mary. They drank more tea and Em and Mary made a similar mess with the biscuits. The baby seemed entranced by all this female energy, whatever the age. Wolf made himself scarce.
‘We'd better go,’ Laura said a little reluctantly. ‘It'll not long be high tea.’
How different the view from the car than from on foot. How odd it felt to be back behind the wheel for the first time since her arrival. How strange to be travelling at a faster pace than a walk. It almost seemed steeper than on foot. Laura directed Tess down to the front then up along Marine Parade and into the Swallow House driveway some yards later.
Tess looked at the grand building.
‘Worse places to work, I can tell you,’ Laura said. ‘I was three years at one in Redcar. Dear God, the smell of piss.’
Tess looked at her sharply and glanced in the rear-view mirror but Mary was as engrossed in Em as Em was in her, and they were busy examining each other's buttons.
‘I mean, it was a shitehole compared with Swallows. Just couldn't get the place clean, I couldn't. The smell – seemed to have got into the bricks, you know? It closed down. Too right too. So here I am. Coming up three years.’
‘But how old are you?’ Tess said, thinking she looked way too young to have six years of elderly care to her credit.
‘Twenty-one next month.’
‘That's amazing,’ said Tess. ‘I salute you.’
Laura thought it was odd, a little over the top, but she could see Tess meant it.
‘How old are you, then?’
‘Thirty,’ Tess said.
‘Thirty,’ Laura marvelled as if it was a distant goal. ‘You're not from round here, though?’
‘Down south,’ said Tess, wanting to leave it at that.
‘London?’ Laura said expectantly.
‘For a while,’ Tess said as she parked and turned off the engine. Everyone seemed content to remain in the sudden stillness. ‘Nice to meet you, Laura Gibbings.’
‘And you.’
‘Listen – if Mary, you know, goes missing again, I'll let you know, shall I, if she comes home? And you'll phone me, will you, to let me know if she might be on her way?’
‘Early-onset dementia,’ Laura said quietly. Then she brightened, turned round and clucked at Mary sweetly. ‘She gets confused. Don't you, love?’
‘But she always heads home?’
‘That's my instinct,’ said Laura, ‘and hers too, apparently. I know her best, see. She's a bit of a bag with the others – but we rub along just fine. Don't we, love! The others worry she'll go off the pier or peg off down the beach. It's all about Health and Safety and not getting sued, nowadays. Anyway, she doesn't much like the beach, our Mary.’
‘Nor do I,’ Tess said darkly before visibly brightening. ‘But shall we do that – you and me – keep in touch?’
‘Sounds like a plan, Stan,’ Laura said which made Tess laugh. Followed by Em.
‘Stan?’ said Mary.
And Laura said, bugger me – Stan was only her old boy, wasn't he.
‘You're all right, Mary,’ she said, twisting around again and offering Mary her hand. ‘You're all right. We're home now, love.’
Tess helped everyone out and up the front stairs, thinking Laura was an old head on young, capable shoulders.
‘Do you want to come in?’ Laura asked.
‘Another time,’ Tess said though she was loitering.
‘Any time,’ said Laura, ‘inside visiting hours, of course. Come on, Mrs Saunders, let's get you in.’
‘Bye bye, Mary,’ Tess said and Mary turned and stared at her vacantly.
‘Goodbye, dear.’
And as Laura led her into the house, Tess heard Mary say, do I know her? and she heard Laura say, ‘Course you do, Mary – that's Joe's girl, that is.’
She drove off and kept driving, right out of town out along the Loftus road. All the way past the Boulby potash mine, which looked like a Dr Who backdrop, before driving inland, into the countryside. She parked the car and took Em from her seat, perching the child on a five-bar gate looking out across fields.
‘It is nice here, isn't it, Em. I think we'll stay. I really do.’
It wasn't until Tess had driven home, fed the dog, fed and bathed Em and sat down by herself with a bowl of soup that she allowed herself a little surge to be thought of as Joe's girl.
Joe did ring. The day after his departure, the evening of the day when Tess met Mary. Tess heard the phone and hovered, wanting it to be Joe but not wanting to take it for granted. When the answering machine clicked in and she heard his voice, for all the button-pushing configurations she tried, she could not interrupt it. She considered dialling 1471 in case he was phoning from a hotel or apartment, or she could call him back on his mobile – he'd left the number on the kitchen calendar. But she did neither because all his message actually said was that he was phoning, ‘like I said I would’. In the silence of the house after the answering machine clicked off, his message continued to reverberate in her mind. No ‘how are you’. No ‘hope all's well’. Joe's girl, indeed! Still, she found it impossible not to dither the evening away with whether to pick up the phone or not. She justified that she was too tired to speak anyway, what with all the cleaning and hills and Mary business.
While the TV flickered away in her peripheral vision, Mary accosted her mind's eyes. Tess realized she'd simply assumed Joe's parents were long dead because he spoke of both with an air of neutral finality. The more she thought about it, the more unnerving she found it that his mother lived in the same small town. Why hadn't he mentioned her before, let alone warned Tess of the probability that she'd come knocking? Ah, but was it any of her business – did it have anything to do with house-sitting? Well, yes, actually, it did – if someone was going to give her an almighty shock by lurking around the property and peering in through the windows, whatever their age or frailty. Didn't Joe usually warn his house-sitters about this? Or was it a more recent thing? Early-onset dementia. Mary was probably only in her mid-seventies. Was it still Mary's house – was Joe just house-sitting too?
Tess would be mentioning it to him when he next rang or returned. Your mum popped round for a cup of tea and a digestive. Nice place, that Swallows Residential Care Home, great view.
It was the view which Tess used as an excuse to push Em's buggy into the drive at Swallows at the end of the week. There'd been no further contact from
