Three Things About Elsie(56)

Elsie turned to me. ‘How many more “one day I’d like to”s do you have hidden away?’

‘One day I’d like to learn to play the piano,’ I said. ‘One day I’d like to go whale-watching.’

‘Whale-watching?’

‘I’ve always fancied it.’

‘You get seasick on a canal boat,’ she said.

‘One day,’ I said, ‘I might be the kind of person who doesn’t get seasick.’

‘I’ve never fancied it,’ she said. ‘All that bobbing about.’

‘No one’s putting a gun to your head, Elsie. No one said you have to come with me. We don’t always need to do everything together.’

I saw Chris and Jack give each other side-looks. Elsie pushed herself as far as she could into the seat beside me, and her chin made a home in her coat.

Jack cleared his throat. ‘Can you think,’ he said, ‘who might have been in that car? Who might have been wearing red?’

Elsie shook her head. I could see her face fighting with the past, and the sight of it was so hard to bear, I had to look away again.

‘I don’t remember,’ I said. ‘I don’t even remember being told Beryl was dead. It’s as though I’ve always known it.’

I rested my forehead against the glass and watched the traffic. So many cars. We’re running out of roads, I thought. Soon, it will be a stalemate. An endless line of people looking out over their steering wheels, searching for a destination they’ll never reach and stuck on the tarmac forever.

‘Some experiences are like that.’ I heard Jack from the front seat. ‘They affect you so much, you can’t remember what life was like before they happened.’

‘But I need to remember,’ I said. ‘We need to find out who it was.’

‘You will,’ he said. ‘You will.’

I leaned further into the glass and closed my eyes. I’d almost drifted off when I heard Elsie’s voice.

‘They make wristbands now,’ she said, ‘for travel sickness. Very effective they are, by all accounts.’

I reached over and squeezed her hand.

When we pulled into the grounds of Cherry Tree, Chris said, ‘What’s all this then?’ and put the brakes on so violently, Elsie and I lurched forward in our seats.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

In the courtyard, there were fire engines – two of them. Fire engines are like cows, in that you don’t realise how large they are until they’re standing right in front of you. There were people walking around with their hands on their hips, and mixed in with the helmets and the high-visibility jackets, the residents drifted like leaves. Simon appeared to be attempting a head count, but Miss Ambrose had to keep retrieving the heads for him and appealing to their better nature.

‘All hands on deck!’ said Jack. He unfastened his seatbelt.

I tapped Elsie’s arm. ‘I thought he was in the army, not the navy.’

‘It’s interchangeable,’ she said, ‘in a crisis.’

It was only when Jack marched across the gravel that I realised his stick lay forgotten in the footwell of the car.

‘Ah, here you are.’ Miss Ambrose spotted us from a distance and made a beeline. She stamped across the courtyard with her arms folded, and pieces of gravel launched themselves into the grass in fear. ‘I was wondering when you’d be back.’

‘What’s happened? What have we missed?’ I said.

She looked over at the flats. ‘There’s been an incident. Quite a serious one, I’m afraid, but no one has been hurt, so we should count our blessings.’

‘What kind of incident?’ said Jack.

Miss Ambrose bit her lip. ‘A fire.’

We all joined in and looked over at the flats. Nothing seemed out of place. ‘A fire?’ Elsie said.

‘Well, more explicitly, a near miss.’

‘People should be more careful,’ I said. ‘Chip pans, gas fires. Everything you put on yourself these days is Chinese and flammable.’

‘Where did it start?’ said Jack. ‘This near miss?’

Miss Ambrose looked at us with a tilted head. ‘Well, actually,’ she said, ‘it was in Florence’s front room.’

My mouth became very dry.

I stopped looking at the flats and looked at Miss Ambrose instead. ‘My front room? What on earth is there to catch fire in my front room?’

‘You left the iron on,’ she said. ‘It burned a hole in the ironing board. You really should be more careful, it could have been disastrous.’

A fireman walked past. He stared.

I carried on talking, although I wasn’t sure anyone was listening any more. ‘I don’t even use an iron. I’ve not ironed anything in years.’ And then, ‘There’s been a mistake. Where is Miss Bissell?’

‘We need to do some paperwork,’ said Miss Ambrose. ‘We’ll have to fill out an incident form.’

‘But I didn’t cause the incident. The incident wasn’t me.’ I knew I was shouting, because Jack put his hand on my arm.

I pulled my arm back. ‘I’M NOT AN INCIDENT—’

‘And we should all be very grateful to Mr Price,’ said Miss Ambrose.