More worn. Those things don’t really alter a person at the end of the day, though. It’s just the small print. What really matters is the eyes. The smile. The way someone looks across a room as though they had never left.
I have felt fear many times in my life. I feel it each time I sit alone in darkness, and dare to peel away a corner of the past. I’ve felt it over the years in an unexpected mention of his name, or a casual remark. It was strange, because up until that day, it had been the very absence of him which frightened me, but now he was here, standing not ten feet in front of me, I finally knew what real terror was, and there was nothing quite like it. It felt as though it could pull my heart right out of my chest.
Because he was back.
And I had been found.
‘A happy, contented community …’ I could hear Miss Ambrose’s voice somewhere outside my own thoughts. Ronnie looked exactly the same. Some faces disappear in-to old age, and their past self and present self are two completely different people, but the lines on Ronnie’s face had only made more of who he was. Even the scar was there. A tiny mark at the corner of his mouth, which disappeared each time he smiled.
‘A safe harbour in those twilight years,’ said Miss Ambrose.
Twilight was a ridiculous word to use. It means dim and confusing, and stumbling about. I couldn’t swear to it, but I was almost certain he expected me to be there. It was the look more than anything. The same look he had in the factory yard and on the bus, and across a kitchen table. When you’ve seen that look you don’t ever forget it. Even a lifetime later.
‘So please join me in welcoming the new occupant of number twelve, Mr Gabriel Price.’
There was a beat of silence before I heard my own voice.
‘Gabriel Price?’
All the breath I’d been holding escaped along with the shout, and there was the scrape of a chair leg, as someone leaned forward to look. Miss Ambrose tilted her head to one side, and she stared at me.
‘At your service.’ Ronnie Butler touched the edge of his trilby. He stepped forward, and I felt the back of the chair push into my bones. I could almost smell the night he died. I could almost reach out across the years and take it in my hands, and carry it with me out of the room. A pulse drilled into my throat with such violence, I couldn’t understand how the whole room hadn’t heard.
Ronnie looked straight into my eyes and smiled, and when he did, the little scar at the corner of his mouth disappeared.
Like magic.
‘We’re off then, are we?’
I’d waited for Elsie outside the ladies’. I took hold of her elbow as soon as she came out.
‘We are,’ I said.
‘Can’t it wait? I had my mind especially set on mandarin segments.’
‘I’ll open a tin when we get home.’
‘And what about the raffle? It’s a rollover week.’
‘There’s a box of shortbread in the bottom cupboard. You can have that.’
‘It’s not the winning, Florence. It’s the anticipation,’ she said. ‘The thrill of the chase.’
‘I just want to get out of here.’ We stopped halfway along the path that led behind the blocks of flats, and I let go of her elbow. Not many people used this path. There were leaves collected around its edges, and the grass there seemed to have forgotten it needed to grow. Most people liked the front path, with its handkerchief borders and opportunities to pass the time of day, because people always seem to like to walk the same way everyone else walks. But I preferred this one. It was a forgotten path. A path that could sort out a problem.
I saw the tick of confusion in Elsie’s eyes. ‘What on earth’s the matter, Flo?’
‘Nothing. Nothing’s the matter. Whatever makes you think that?’
She looked down. ‘Because your hands are shaking,’ she said.
‘Off her rocker, if you ask me.’
No one had. However, to Handy Simon, questions were only ever optional. To Handy Simon, the world was a place in need of a running commentary, and he seemed to have volunteered himself to provide an explanation, just in case anyone might find themselves in need of one.
‘Hmmm?’ Anthea Ambrose peered into her compact mirror. She had bought it because everything was magnified by the power of ten. This was something she was now beginning to regret, but she found herself unable to look away. It was like watching a car accident on the opposite side of the motorway.
‘Leaping up and shouting like that.’ Handy Simon dragged a table back to its rightful place, and the sound of an abandoned plate of egg sandwiches rattled across the empty room. ‘Whatshername.’
Miss Ambrose shut the mirror, and all her worries hid themselves behind the click of a compact. ‘Florence,’ she said. ‘Miss Claybourne. I suspect it’s only a matter of time before she goes to Greenbank.’
‘I don’t know how you tell them all apart.’
Miss Ambrose returned the mirror to her handbag. ‘It’s my job.’
Handy Simon took an egg sandwich, and launched it into his mouth. ‘There’s so many of them, and they all look the same,’ he said, without giving the sandwich an opportunity to leave. ‘I’ll pop outside now, if that’s all right with you. Clean some of the mess out of the guttering. Or we’ll have a blockage to deal with.’
There was a time when Anthea Ambrose had briefly considered the merits of Handy Simon. After all, trainers can be cleaned. Hair can be trimmed. You see it on television programmes. People buy a whole new wardrobe from John Lewis and part their hair on the opposite side, and all of a sudden they’re completely different people. It was a time when Miss Ambrose had scanned the horizon for a possible husband, like a castaway searching for the arrival of a distant ship.
‘Preventing the efficient flow of rainwater.’ He took another sandwich. ‘Which could eventually lead to permanent damage.’
Although some ships were perhaps best left unboarded.
‘And potential structural problems, if the situation isn’t addressed promptly.’
For fear of having the entire rest of your life explained to you.
Anthea Ambrose walked back to her flat at the far edge of the grounds. It was separate from the residents’ apartments, but she trod on an identical beige carpet (‘Universal beige,’ said Miss Bissell, ‘goes with everyone,’) and the doors closed with the same faint click of apology. Her flat also offered a similar view, through windows that opened only a fraction of an inch, because the fear of residents slipping through and defenestrating also seemed to extend to the staff. When Anthea Ambrose looked out from her kitchen window, a concertina of old age unfolded before her, beckoning into the future. The flat came with the
