firstly because she says I’m her favourite (based purely on the fact that I look like her son and wear his clothes) and secondly because she can talk about Dad till she’s run out of air and I won’t lose interest.
I don’t think Grandad is much help with all that. His name is Norman and he fought in the war in North Africa, driving munitions trucks through the desert and smoking woodbines and wetting his pants. Norman is a really really nice bloke and he’s always been a good grandad, but these days he doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. What’s happened is he’s had these tiny strokes, and every time he has one (and you wouldn’t notice if he was having one right in front of you, they’re that small,) some of his memory gets wiped. Some days he’s better than others, but it drives Pansy mad because she says she never knows where she is with him. One minute he’s getting all romantic on her, the next he thinks she’s the home help come to give things a once-round with the hoover.
Pansy has a dog called Jack (Russell) and sometimes I have no idea if she’s talking about the dog or Grandad.
“He’s been under my feet all day and his breath smells terrible.” (Dog)
“He’s not been for three days. I think he needs a good walk.” (Norman)
On a good day Norman will remember that I’m Lucas, and on a stroke day he’ll think I’m my dad. Me and Pansy just agreed to let it slide on stroke days because it makes him happy. Pansy says she wishes she could have a stroke so she could forget her only child had seen fit to abandon his family and head for the hills. Then she dabs her crumpled eyes with a crumpled tissue and says, “Fffck it, let’s have another slice of Battenberg.”
The times I do sit down and have a chat with Norman he’s overjoyed because he doesn’t get a word in edgeways most of the time and he’s actually got quite a lot to say. When you first meet him and Pansy, she’s the one who grabs you because she’s so vibrant and sharp and energetic and into everything, but after a while you realise that Norman is the tortoise to her hare and that if you just give him a minute he can be very interesting and knowledgeable about a lot of things.
The person who really likes being with Norman is Jed. Jed’s too young to realise that Norman forgets things. He thinks he’s just doing it to be funny and he gets a big kick out of it. Jed thinks Norman is the funniest man alive. They hang out together in the kitchen eating biscuits and making Meccano planes and they laugh themselves sick over old Laurel and Hardy films. They’re also allowed to take the dog out together, which is about the only time for both of them that they get to go anywhere without a responsible adult. Jed says being with Grandad is just like being with one of his friends from school except better because Grandad knows a lot more and is really good at sharing.
A while ago, I got this idea in my head that Norman knew something really vital about where Dad is except he couldn’t tell us because he’d forgotten. I was convinced that everything he said, however ordinary, was actually a hidden clue and if I broke the code I’d save my dad. Sometimes when he’s talking to me I still cross my fingers that it will just slip out, an address or a phone number, or a last message, but things are never that simple.
When I told Pansy about Violet, I did it just like I would if I’d met anyone normal, or at least alive. Violet was still on the shelf at Apollo Cars when I did it.
I think I said, “Gran, I met someone you’d really like the other night” and Pansy said something sharp like, “Well don’t go getting her pregnant” and I nearly spat my biscuit out at the thought and said, “No, no, she’s an old girl like you!”
“How old?” said Pansy. “Where did you meet an old lady? What do you want an old girlfriend for?”
I said, “She’s in her seventies like you and she’s not my girlfriend and I met her in a cab office last Friday night on my way home.”
Pansy pursed her lips tight and sucked air in like she was smoking an invisible cigarette which didn’t taste good and she said, “Mercy said you pinched her money, you bloody cheapskate.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t,” I said, and then she sort of waved her hand around to say let’s not talk about that and said, “What’s a seventy-year-old woman doing in a cab office on a Friday night?” which was the question I’d been waiting for.
“She was on a shelf,” I said a bit too quickly, and Pansy glared at me.
“Have you been smoking that wacky baccy again, Lucas?”
I glared back. “Gran, you know that’s not really relevant.”
“Don’t use those long words with me,” Pansy said. “I told your dad about that stuff and look where he is now.”
I kept looking at her and I said, “Dad could be anywhere, we don’t know, but Violet is trapped on a shelf in a mini cab office and she needs our help.”
It felt like one of those things people say in films, and it was coming out of my mouth.
“Where’s Violet? What in hell are you talking about, Peter?” Norman said, and he made me jump because I’d forgotten he was there.
“I thought you were asleep,” I said.
Pansy winked at me and whispered, “Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.” And then she yelled, “Nothing Norman! Go back to sleep. It was the telly,” which was a bare-faced lie because the telly wasn’t even on. Then we were back to the film script and she said, “Is there a ransom?”
It wasn’t quite what I was expecting. “What?”
“If someone’s holding an old lady hostage in a cab office they must be doing it for a reason.”
“She’s dead, Gran,” I said, and I counted to ten for it to sink in.
“They’ve got a dead lady on a shelf? That’s disgusting!” Pansy had got over excited. I could see the little explosions happening behind her eyes. “How did you meet her if she was dead, Lucas?”
“She’s in an urn. She’s been cremated.”
Pansy didn’t say anything to that. She just unclasped her hands, fingers spread out either side of her face, still trying to catch the answer to her last question. Her eyebrows were raised so high up her face that her forehead looked like a terraced hillside. I knew I had her full attention. Now it just remained for me to reel her in.
“Gran, I’m not promising anything, but I think she’s communicating with me from …”
Pansy mouthed the words at me in a furious display of facial gymnastics, “ …the other side?”
I nodded and went to put the kettle on.
I did this because I know that my grandparents’ response to anything, from the disappearance of their son to the adverts in the middle of Emmerdale, is to make a cup of tea. I don’t think they’ve ever gone more than an hour or two without one in fifty years. They are tea junkies.
And maybe there’s some truth in their tea beliefs. Once she’d had had a sip, Pansy was back to her normal self, no more gawping and tonguing her teeth back and forth. She was all helpful hints and blinding ideas.
I said I wanted to rescue Violet. The rest of the plan was mostly down to Pansy.
It
