The Day She Came Back(11)

Her thoughts flew to her mum and she tried to imagine how very different her life might have been if Prim had not been on hand to scoop her up, feed and clothe her in the role of both mother and grandmother – a neat trick that Prim had mastered. And one that had seen Victoria safely arrived at adulthood. Just. Not that the fact that she was now eighteen in any small way alleviated the utter terror she felt at being left by herself. She wasn’t ready. She was, in fact, as unprepared for the loss of her gran at eighteen as she had been at four, five, six . . . and in truth she doubted she ever would be prepared for it. The loss of her mother was sad, but the simple truth was that she had never known any different, having been in Prim’s care since she was mere weeks old. Her gran had always, always made her feel safe, but now? Victoria was alone, cut free, floating, and fearful of where she might land.

I need a bath, but first I think I’ll make Prim a really good, strong coffee and arrange the baklava on a pretty floral plate, one of Granny Cutter’s, and we can sit on the veranda and . . .

It was like a pick to her chest, the realisation that this was not going to happen today. Or any other day, for that matter. It was as if the news simply wouldn’t sink in. She felt a strange sensation in her knees, which were suddenly cold and wobbly, her stomach jittery, heart skipping. Daksha reached up and took the key from her friend and, turning it, she pushed the door open.

The two girls stepped inside, as they had done thousands of times before, but today it was a house in a different world, a lesser world, where Prim no longer existed.

The spindle-backed wooden chair that had sat in the corner of the hallway with a needlepoint cushion propped on it for as long as she could remember had been moved to the bottom of the stairs to make way for . . . what? A stretcher? A gurney? She didn’t want to know. Yet apart from the odd door that was usually closed left ajar, and the fact that the curtains in the dining room were still drawn, the house looked and smelled just the same as it always had. She didn’t know why, but she had expected both to be a little different. What was different, however, and markedly so, was the way Rosebank felt. Quiet and still, like a thing hollowed out, scooped free of all that gave it substance. Soulless, an eggshell, a husk, a river run dry. Prim had been the energy of the house, the noise and vivacity, and without her it felt blank, like nothing; no longer a home, just a house. Her house now.

‘Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?’

‘God, Daks, what is it with your family and tea?’

‘I don’t know.’ Her friend looked into the middle distance, as if reflecting on this very question. ‘I think maybe we use the offer and provision of tea as a filler, a way to plug the awkward gaps when we either don’t know what to say or are avoiding saying what we know we want to.’

‘Which is it right now?’

‘I think a combination of the two.’

‘Okay then, go make the tea!’ Victoria sighed, half in apology and half in exasperation. ‘I’ll be upstairs; I need to put something warmer on.’ She rubbed the tops of her arms. She was still wearing the vest laundered by Prim’s hand, the vest she was wearing when her gran had waved her off from the doorway of the garden room, only yesterday. Yesterday. It felt like a lifetime ago.

Pausing on the half landing, Victoria let her eyes wander over the photographs of her mother.

‘Are you two together now?’ She let this thought linger, as her eyes settled on her mum’s smiling face, feeling a ridiculous stab of misplaced jealousy, an almost visceral reaction at the possibility that this might be the case. Throughout her life, if Prim had ever reprimanded her, Victoria would take up her favoured spot here on the landing and tell her mum all about it.

‘ . . . and Gran said I had to read my book and I told her I only had to do three pages, but she made me do the whole chapter . . . I hate broccoli, Mummy, but she said I had to eat it, they look like little trees and who wants to eat a little tree?’ And later in life: ‘I like this boy. Flynn, his name is Flynn . . . how can I make him notice me? What would you do, Mum? How did you attract Marcus?’

‘You’ve abandoned me,’ she whispered. ‘You have both abandoned me.’ Addressing this to the photograph, thinking most unfairly of Prim, whose only crime had been to get old after dedicating her entire life to her granddaughter’s well-being.

Her aim had been to avoid Prim’s bedroom, two doors down from hers on the opposite side of the landing. The room in which her gran had slept every night of Victoria’s childhood, first with Grandpa, and then alone. Victoria had taken great comfort in her close proximity. It was one of six rooms on the square landing with a round, turreted bedroom in each corner, and her intention had been to walk straight past, but something told her that whilst it might be hard, leaving the task and letting her nerves simmer at the prospect might just be a darn sight harder.

She pushed the door, which opened with a creak. The small gold tassel on the key that sat in the lock swayed back and forth. The room smelled of her gran, or rather her scent – the lingering waft of Chanel No5 that had been her signature fragrance, and which Prim had applied liberally every time she walked past her dressing table; morning, noon and night.

‘Darling, I can honestly say I can’t smell it any more! My nose is completely blind to it!’

‘Trust me, Prim, I can smell it. And so can the Maitlands at the end of the lane!’