Reluctantly Home(46)

Nicholas tried sometimes, too. He had arrived with cardboard packing boxes just last week.

‘Please let me clear some of this stuff, Auntie Evelyn,’ he had said, brandishing the box like a weapon. She could hear him moving around on the landing outside her room.

‘What are you doing out there?’ she shouted. ‘Those are my things. Stop touching everything. You’ll mess it all up. I’ll never find anything.’

He had stuck his head round her door at that point, a wry smile on his lips.

‘You may well mock,’ she’d said, ‘but I know exactly where everything is, and I’ll thank you not to go muddling it all up.’

A few minutes later he had appeared in her room, his hands raised in surrender. ‘Okay, okay. I give up. I don’t have time to sort it all out anyway. It would take me all year. But honestly, Auntie Evelyn, please let’s get someone in. It can’t be good for you, having so much clutter around the place.’

Evelyn had given him one of her hardest stares, the kind reserved for when people were particularly irritating. She had copied the look from Joan back when she was still in the business of collecting facial expressions, fully expecting to have to use them in front of a camera in the future. Somehow, her impression of her sister’s stare had never been quite as withering as the original, but it seemed to work quite well on Nicholas, who shrank a little under its blast.

‘I’ll thank you not to go interfering with my life,’ she snapped. ‘How I choose to live is my own business and nothing to do with you.’

Nicholas had shrugged and muttered something about just wanting to help, and had left shortly thereafter. When he had gone, Evelyn regretted her waspish words. What harm would it do just to sort things out a little? But then again, what would be the point? She was just waiting in her house to die. She had been waiting there for over thirty years. No one would ever see how she lived except Nicholas, and she didn’t care about such matters. Why would she want to change things when the only change she had ever wanted was totally beyond her power, beyond anyone’s power?

Slowly, with stick-thin arms, she pushed herself up out of her chair, her back crying out at being forced to alter its curvature. Then, step by painful step, she shuffled her way to the bathroom to perform her weekly ablutions.





27


It wasn’t until later that Evelyn noticed that something was missing. The food order had arrived, and she had taken delivery of it without anyone trying to infiltrate her private enclave. It had been more than she could face to put it away, however, and so, other than the few chilled items that she had stowed in the fridge, she had left the groceries sitting on her kitchen table to be dealt with later.

Then she had taken herself back up to the first floor and into the little room that Joan had used as an office. She didn’t go in there often, mainly because she couldn’t remember whether it was still relatively accessible or if the quantity of books stacked behind the door were a barrier to entry. But she was pretty sure this was where Nicholas had been moving things around earlier, and she just wanted to check.

As she climbed the stairs, slowly pulling herself up using the bannister step by step, she thought about her nephew’s visit, noticing a tightness in her chest as she did so. She shouldn’t have snapped at him like that. He’d only been trying to help, and he didn’t deserve the tongue-lashing she’d given him.

In fact, it was a miracle he kept coming back. Anyone else would have been driven away by her unfriendliness and her temper long ago. And where would she be without him? Entirely alone, that was where. Then she could snap and snarl to her heart’s content with precisely no one to hear her. If she wasn’t very careful, she would turn into Joan, and wouldn’t that be ironic?

Perhaps that had already happened? It had been so long since she had spent any time in company that she had no idea whether she was still capable of it, although, going by the time she spent with Nicholas, she feared she had quite lost the knack. In fact, she quite enjoyed presenting herself as grumpy and difficult. It was a role she could play easily, barely having to delve into her actress’s box of tricks at all, and it served to keep people in general at bay, which suited her mood these days. But Nicholas was family, and she should be kinder to him.

Finally, she reached the landing. She pushed against the door to the office, but it resisted her, no doubt prevented from opening fully by a pile of something or other on the other side. Evelyn shouldered the door as firmly as she dared – broken bones were to be avoided at all costs. It gave a little, but she had to turn herself sideways to slink her way in.

Once she was in, the room didn’t look nearly as bad as she had feared. In fact, she wasn’t sure what Nicholas had been making such a fuss about. Yes, there were books piled on every surface, but she could still see the fading red medallions on the Persian rug.

It was clear someone had been in there relatively recently, however. There were gaps in the dust where items had been picked up and put down elsewhere. It looked a little like a stage set, which pleased her in a perverse kind of way.

Then she turned and took in the shelves that lined the wall behind the door, and her heart stopped beating. Where were the books? She stood, mouth gaping, and stared at the newly created space on the shelf. A run of about three feet was completely bare; not a single book was left. Evelyn swayed slightly, then pushed her way through to the shelf, not caring what she knocked over in her rush to get there.