Will you let me help you dress? We can go together.’
‘I had a feeling something was happening today.’ She grimaces.
‘It’s also my birthday, Grandma.’
‘How old are you then?’
‘Twenty-seven.’
‘Have you seen my Christmas present?’
‘You’re wearing it. It’s a pretty colour on you.’
She examines her sleeve as if it were covered in bird poo. ‘Not this.’ She stresses this to make her disgust clear. ‘My new photograph.’
The frame sits on her bedside table, beside a plastic jug of water with a matching tumbler in an unfortunate shade of urine-yellow. Almost immediately, my grandmother blocks it from my view, lurching her upper body to the side to try to grab at the photograph with her arthritic fingers. There is a crash, and a cry. ‘Blast! Oh, oh oh!’ She is screaming in frustration.
‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’ I am out of my chair and rushing to the other side of the bed. Water has sloshed everywhere. The jug has bounced onto the linoleum floor.
‘Don’t be upset.’ I am already in her efficient wet room with its accessible shower and toilet and sink, grabbing a vinegar-smelling towel. I retrieve the frame from beneath the bed where it landed, and wrap it in the towel.
‘Is Princess Anne all right?’ my grandmother says.
I can feel my face creasing in puzzlement as I sweep the towel over the floor with a foot. I study the image inside the frame. ‘Oh my God.’
‘Don’t talk that way. You’re a heathen – you cannot be my granddaughter.’
‘But it really is Princess Anne.’
‘Of course it is. Kindly answer my question, please.’ My grandmother makes the words kindly and please sound like insults. ‘I asked if Princess Anne is all right.’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t hear you.’
Her ears are still as sharp as the wolf’s, but I repeat the word. ‘Yes.’
‘No cracks?’
‘Not even a hairline fracture.’ I cannot tear my eyes from the picture, which has been cut from an article that appeared in a local newspaper last September. Three whole months ago. All that time, I was living my poor imitation of a normal life, not knowing this was out there.
Princess Anne’s skirt and jacket are sewn from maroon and navy tartan. My grandmother is wearing her favourite dress. A background of dried earth, sprinkled with flowers the shade of wet mud. This is an adventurous pattern and pallet for my grandmother. Her white wisps of hair look lit from within.
My grandmother is standing, a wooden walking stick shaped like a candy cane in each hand, and care workers on both sides, ready to catch her if she crumbles. I think of my grandmother as tall, but she is stooped and tiny in front of Princess Anne, and looking up at her with a slant eye. My grandmother is not trying to please. My grandmother is never trying to please. Princess Anne bends towards her. The princess’s back is straight and perfect and in line with her neck and head. Only the hinge of her waist moves. The impression is that she is paying homage to my grandmother, rather than the reverse, as you would expect. This is exactly how my grandmother thinks things should be.
My grandmother says, ‘Will Princess Anne be coming to see me again soon, Holly?’ Despite my shock, and my fear, a small part of me registers that at least my grandmother has remembered my name. ‘As soon as she gets a chance, Grandma.’
I am not much of a royal follower. But staring at the photograph, I recall Princess Anne’s visit, and the excitement it occasioned in the residents and staff at the care home. I was working that day, and happy to miss it.
Katarina hurries in, wearing a red Santa hat with a white pom-pom that matches the one she put on my head when I arrived. She has on a tinsel bracelet and necklace, too. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Just a water spill. All dry now.’ I hold out the photograph. ‘How thoughtful,’ I say to Katarina. ‘Is this from you?’
She nods. ‘I think Mrs Lawrence likes it.’
‘She does. That was so kind of you.’ I am trying to seem pleased when I am anything but. But the damage is done. However I seem, it will make no difference now.
There is a tagline beneath the photograph. The Princess Royal talks to Oaks resident Beatrice Lawrence, 93.
It is the sight of my grandmother’s name in print that makes my breath catch in a blend of fear and nausea. All the things I have done. All the measures I have taken. Except for this photograph. This is what I missed. What I didn’t foresee. A tiny thing that might make all the difference. The chance is small, but I know better than anybody that I must prepare for the possibility that this will lead him straight to me.
Two years and eight months earlier
Cornwall, April 2016
The three years since I failed to join MI5 passed slowly, with little to show for them. I spent the time taking care of my grandmother, moving her into a nursing home, and working behind the counter of the town pharmacy that Milly’s father owned.
Everything changed when Milly helped me to get a new job as a ward clerk in the hospital where she worked as a nurse. On my first day, when there was a telephone call for Dr Zachary Hunter, I knew exactly where to find him. The click-clack of his shoes let me track him like the crocodile in Peter Pan.
I hovered in the doorway of a side room, watching Dr Hunter examine a patient whose eyes were closed. The woman’s arm fell from the bed and dangled as he manoeuvred her.
‘Dr Hunter?’ Those were the first words I ever said to him. ‘GP on the phone.’
I felt professional. I felt as if I were starring in a television drama set in a hospital. I felt proud that I was being so helpful. I was extra-diligent. I paid attention to absolutely everything and everyone. Already, I was on top of it all.
Dr Hunter’s back was towards me. Otherwise, I might have seen that he was rolling his eyes in irritation. If he hadn’t been pulling the red triangle above the patient’s bed, so that the siren went off and the lights flashed, I might have heard him swearing under his breath at the idiot new girl.
What I saw, though, when he turned his head, was a calm face, filled with energy and intelligence. What I heard, as he gave me clear, succinct instructions, was an authoritative voice. ‘Dial 2222. Say, “Adult cardiac arrest on the cardiac unit”. Go. Now, Holly. And call me Zac.’
What I thought, as he began chest compressions, was how does he know my name? What I noticed, unable to look away, was that the compressions were a kind of violence. The patient’s white belly flopped from side to side each time he plunged down on her.
‘Go,’ he said again.
