stung at the thought of how she’d rejected him and she now longed for the feel of his arms around her. Bringing up a blank text she wrote: Im rly rly sorry. Plz 4giv me. Luv M, and pressed Send. She sat with the phone in her lap; her father started the engine and they pulled away. A minute later her phone bleeped a reply: U r 4given. C u l8r? A x. Thank God, she thought. She texted back: Yes plz. Luv M. Returning the phone to her bag, she relaxed back and looked at the road ahead.
It felt strange sitting beside her father in the front of the car as he drove. Despite the worry of Grandpa being ill, it felt special – an occasion – an outing. Mandy couldn’t remember the last time she’d sat in the front of a car next to her father. When she’d travelled in the car as a child her place had always been in the back, and later it had been her mother who’d taken her to and collected her from university. When she’d started work she’d bought a car of her own which she’d sold to help finance her year out. No, this was definitely a first, she thought. I don’t think I’ve ever sat in the front next to Father.
‘The hospital was pretty grim,’ her father said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘Apparently it’s a brand-new building, but staffed by agency nurses. Your aunt said there was no continuity of care and your grandfather was left unattended. She suggested they paid for him to go into a private hospital but your grandfather wouldn’t hear of it.’
Mandy smiled. ‘That’s my grandpa!’ Like her father, he was a man of strong working-class principles and would have viewed going private as elitist or unfair. She noticed her father referred to his sister as ‘your aunt’ rather than using her first name, which seemed to underline the distance which still separated them.
‘I expect he wanted to be out of hospital,’ Mandy added. ‘It’s nice to be with your family if you’re ill.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘As long as he’s getting the medical care he needs.’
She nodded.
‘It’s good weather for the journey,’ he said a moment later, changing the subject. ‘Not a bad morning for March.’
March, she thought. She was over halfway through her year out – five months before the money ran out and she would have to return to the classroom.
‘Does Sarah still live at home?’ Mandy asked presently as the dual carriageway widened into motorway.
‘I don’t know, your aunt didn’t say.’
‘It would be nice to see her again after all these years. I wonder what she’s doing now.’
Mandy saw his hands tighten around the steering wheel and his face set. She hadn’t intended it as a criticism, just an expression of her wish to see Sarah again, but clearly he had taken it as one. When her father had fallen out with his sister ten years ago and all communication between the two families had ceased, Mandy had been stopped from seeing her cousin Sarah, which had been very sad. They were both only children and had been close, often staying at each other’s houses until ‘the situation’ had put a stop to it.
‘It was unavoidable,’ he said defensively. ‘It was impossible for you to visit after…You wouldn’t know, you don’t remember. You were only a child, Amanda. It should never have happened and I blame myself. I vowed we’d never set foot in that house again. If it wasn’t for Grandpa being taken there, I wouldn’t, and I’ve told Evelyn that.’
Mandy felt the air charged with the passion of his disclosure. It was the most he’d ever said about ‘the situation’, ever. Indeed, it had never been mentioned by anyone in the last ten years, not in her presence at least. Now, not only had he spoken of it, but he appeared to be blaming himself, which was news to her. And his outburst – so out of character – and the palpable emotion it contained made Mandy feel uncomfortable, for reasons she couldn’t say.
She looked out of her side window and concentrated on the passing scenery. It was a full ten minutes before he spoke again and then this voice was safe and even once more.
‘There’s snow forecast for next week,’ he said.
‘So much for global warming!’
A few minutes later he switched on Radio 3, which allowed Mandy to take her iPod from her bag and plug in her headphones. It was a compilation – garage, hip-hop, Mozart and Abba; Mandy rested her head back and allowed her gaze to settle through the windscreen. The two-hour journey slowly passed and her thoughts wandered to the trips she’d made to and from her aunt’s as a child. The adults had taken turns to collect and return Sarah and her from their weekend stays. Mandy remembered how they’d sat in the back of the car and giggled, the fun of the weekend continuing during the journey. Then the visits had abruptly stopped and she’d never seen Sarah again. Stopped completely without explanation, and she’d never been able to ask her father why.
They turned off the A11 and Mandy switched off her iPod and removed her earpieces.
‘Not far now,’ her father said.
She heard the tension in his voice and saw his forehead crease. She wasn’t sure how much of his anxiety was due to Grandpa’s illness, and how much by the prospect of seeing his sister again, but Mandy was sure that if she hadn’t agreed to accompany him, or her mother hadn’t changed her mind and come, he would have found visiting alone very difficult indeed. His dependence on her gave him an almost childlike vulnerability, and her heart went out to him.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said lightly. ‘I’m sure Evelyn will be on her best behaviour.’
He smiled and seemed to take comfort in their small conspiracy. ‘We won’t stay too long,’ he reassured her.
They slowed to 30 m.p.h. as they entered the village with its post-office-cum-general-store. Mandy remembered the shop vividly from all the times she’d stayed at her aunt’s. Auntie Evelyn, Sarah and she had often walked to the store, with Sarah’s Labrador Misty. When Sarah and she had been considered old enough, the two of them had gone there alone to spend their pocket money on sweets, ice-cream, or a memento from the display stand of neatly arranged china gifts. It had been an adventure, a chance to take responsibility, which had been possible in the safe rural community where her aunt lived, but not in Greater London when Sarah had stayed with her.
Mandy recognized the store at once – it was virtually unchanged – as she had remembered the approach to the village, and indeed most of the journey. But as they left the village and her father turned from the main road on to the B road for what he said was the last part of the journey, she suddenly found her mind had gone completely blank. She didn’t recall any of it.
She didn’t think it was that the developers had been busy in the last ten years and had changed the contours of the landscape; it was still largely agricultural land, with farmers’ houses and outbuildings dotted in between, presumably as it had been for generations. But as Mandy searched through the windscreen, then her side window, and round her father to his side window, none of what she now saw looked the least bit familiar. She could have been making the journey for the first time for the lack of recognition, which was both strange and unsettling. Swivelling round in her seat, she turned to look out of the rear window, hoping a different perspective might jog her memory.
‘Lost something?’ her father asked.
‘No. Have Evelyn and John moved since I visited as a child?’ Which seemed the most likely explanation, and her father had forgotten to mention it.
‘No,’ he said, glancing at her.
