The Couple at No. 9(80)

‘I won’t be long.’ I sit on the edge of the bed pushing my feet into trainer socks. ‘I want to ask Gran about Victor. Now that I know more. And it might be easier without …’

‘Without your mum there?’

I nod guiltily.

He takes my hand. ‘Is everything okay between the two of you? I noticed some tension yesterday when I got back. I know you’d just had an intense meet-up with Theo and found out about Victor but … there was something else, like something brewing between you.’

‘We had a bit of an argument. I said some things I shouldn’t have said.’

‘Oh, Saff.’

‘I know. It’s not my proudest moment. Mum tries her best. And I do love her, but …’

‘Hey,’ he holds up his hands, ‘you don’t have to explain it to me. I know it’s complicated between the two of you.’

‘My gran was just so much less complicated, you know? Or,’ I laugh ironically, ‘so I thought.’

He pulls me towards him and kisses me. ‘Drive carefully,’ he says. ‘And don’t be too long or your mum might have reorganized the whole house!’

When I arrive, Gran is in bed. Joy tells me she’s had a bad night and I try to quell the swirls of anxiety in the pit of my stomach as I head down the corridor to her room. Millie, Gran’s lovely nurse, warned me that one day she may not recognize me at all, that the little pockets of lucid moments will be rarer until they’re non-existent. We’ve been lucky up until now, I know. One day she will be gone completely and in her place will be an old lady who doesn’t remember who she is, let alone who I am. An old lady with no memories, past or present.

She’s sitting up in bed, propped up by two massive pillows, the blankets tucked underneath her armpits. Her hands, folded across the covers, look bony and frail, her skin like rice paper, criss-crossed with blue veins. Her eyes are closed and I stand at the door and watch her for a while, her translucent eyelids, her lashes, once long and dark but now sparse, dusting her weathered pink cheeks. She looks a lot older than her seventy-six years, a shrunken figure in the large bed. On her table is a framed photograph of me when I was a teenager, taken in the garden of her Bristol house underneath the apple tree, hugging her black Labrador, Bruce. I haven’t been in her room since she moved in last year and the sight of the photo brings a lump to my throat and I have to concentrate on not crying. I don’t want Gran to see me upset. Quietly, so as not to wake her, I sit in the chair next to her bed. Opposite is a large window and I can see a tree in blossom outside, the pink petals obscuring half of the glass. She’ll like that, I think, as I take one of her frail hands. I wish I could go back to a time when she wasn’t suffering from dementia. All those years when I sat in her living room, just the two of us, all those missed opportunities to talk, for me to find out about her past.

There is a tray over her bed, as if she’s in a hospital, containing a jug of water and a glass. I pour some for her, just in case she’d like it when she wakes up. And then I sit with her. Enjoying it being just the two of us. As it used to be.

I’m on my phone, reading the work emails I’d missed during the week, when I hear a cough. I look up to see that Gran has woken up. She lies there just staring straight ahead for a few moments, as though trying to get her bearings, until she notices me and then her eyes widen. ‘Who are you?’ she whispers, her voice croaky.

I hand her the glass of water and she puts it to her lips, her hand trembling. ‘It’s me, Gran. It’s Saffy.’ I point to the photo. ‘Your granddaughter, remember?’

But there is just confusion in her eyes. Confusion and fear.

So I start to talk. About Skelton Place, about Snowy, about Mum, the house in Bristol with the pebbledash and the greenhouse, anything to help her remember who she is.

‘And you used to show me your tomato plants in the greenhouse, remember? You taught me how to plant seeds and radishes.’ I have to stop to swallow my emotions. ‘And now I’m going to have a baby of my own.’

‘A baby.’ She smiles and it lights her whole face and she’s my gran again. My wonderful, kind, quiet-mannered gran, who loved knitting and gardening and watching daytime TV and dunking custard creams in her over-stewed tea.

I lean forward to take her hand. ‘You’ll be a great-grandmother, imagine that,’ I say, trying to keep my voice light.

‘Imagine that,’ she repeats, her eyes glistening. She hasn’t got her teeth in and it makes her look so much older, the bottom half of her face like a Punch and Judy puppet. And then her eyes cloud. ‘You’ll be a good mother, won’t you? You’ll look after the baby?’

‘Of course I will. And Tom will make a good father.’

‘Tom … Tom …’ she says, then recognition flashes across her face. ‘Tom is a good man.’

‘He is.’

‘You’re very lucky. Neil wasn’t a good man. And neither was Victor.’

Victor. I’m relieved she’s brought him up. This is my chance. ‘Is Victor your ex-husband, Gran?’ I ask.

She lets out a snort of laughter. ‘Of course not. I’ve never been married.’

‘But Victor is Lorna’s dad. Lolly’s dad?’

Her big hazel eyes meet mine. ‘Yes … yes, I think he is.’