The Switch(6)

‘How are you, love?’ I ask Leena.

‘I’m fine, how are you?’

I narrow my eyes. ‘You’re not fine.’

‘I know, it just came out, sorry. Like when someone sneezes and you say “bless you”.’ I hear her swallow. ‘Grandma, I had this – I had a panic attack at work. They’ve sent me off on a two-month sabbatical.’

‘Oh, Leena!’ I press my hand to my heart. ‘But it’s no bad thing that you’re getting some time off,’ I say quickly. ‘A little break from it all will do you good.’

‘They’re side-lining me. I’ve been off my game, Grandma.’

‘Well, that’s understandable, given …’

‘No,’ she says, and her voice catches, ‘it’s not. God, I – I promised Carla, I told her I wouldn’t let it hold me back, losing her, and she always said – she said she was so proud, but now I’ve …’

She’s crying. My hand grips at my cardigan, like Ant or Dec’s paws when they’re sitting in my lap. Even as a child, Leena hardly ever cried. Not like Carla. When Carla was upset, she would throw her arms in the air, the very picture of misery, like a melodramatic actress in a play – it was hard not to laugh. But Leena would just frown and dip her head, looking up at you reproachfully through those long, dark eyelashes.

‘Come on, love. Carla would have wanted you to take holidays,’ I tell her.

‘I know I should be thinking of it as a holiday, but I can’t. It’s just … I hate that I messed up.’ This is muffled, as if she’s speaking into her hands.

I take off my glasses and rub the bridge of my nose. ‘You didn’t mess up, love. You’re stressed, that’s what it is. Why don’t you come up and stay this weekend? Everything looks better over a mug of hot chocolate, and we can talk properly, and you can have a little break from it all, up here in Hamleigh …’

There’s a long silence.

‘You haven’t been to visit for an awfully long time,’ I say tentatively.

‘I know. I’m really sorry, Grandma.’

‘Oh, that’s all right. You came up when Wade left, I was ever so grateful for that. And I’m very lucky to have a granddaughter who calls me so often.’

‘But I know chatting over the phone isn’t the same. And it’s not that I … You know I really would love to see you.’

No mention of her mother. Before Carla’s death, Leena would have come up to see Marian once a month at least. When will this end, this miserable feud between them? I’m so careful never to mention it – I don’t want to interfere, it’s not my place. But …

‘Did your mother call you?’

Another long silence. ‘Yes.’

‘About …’ What was it she’d settled on in the end? ‘Hypertherapy?’

‘Hypnotherapy.’

‘Ah, yes.’

Leena says nothing. She’s so steely, our Leena. How will the two of them ever get through this when they’re both so bloody stubborn?

‘Right. I’ll stay out of it,’ I say into the silence.

‘I’m sorry, Grandma. I know it’s hard for you.’

‘No, no, don’t worry about me. But will you think about coming up here at the weekend? It’s hard to help from so far away, love.’

I hear her sniff. ‘Do you know what, Grandma, I will come. I’ve been meaning to, and – and I really would love to see you.’

‘There!’ I beam. ‘It’ll be lovely. I’ll make you one of your favourites for tea and clue you in on all the village gossip. Roland’s on a diet, you know. And Betsy tried to dye her hair, but it went wrong, and I had to drive her to the hairdresser’s with a tea towel on her head.’

Leena snorts with laughter. ‘Thanks, Grandma,’ she says after a moment. ‘You always know how to make me feel better.’

‘That’s what Eileens do,’ I say. ‘They look after each other.’ I used to say that to her as a child – Leena’s full name is Eileen too. Marian named her after me when we all thought I was dying after a bad bout of pneumonia back in the early nineties; when we realised I wasn’t at death’s door after all it got very confusing, and so Leena became Leena.

‘Love you, Grandma,’ she says.

‘You too, love.’

After she hangs up the telephone, I realise I’ve not told her about my new project. I wince. I promised myself I would tell her the next time she called. It’s not that I’m embarrassed to be looking for love, exactly. But young people tend to find old people wanting to fall in love rather funny. Not unkindly, just without thinking, the way you laugh at children behaving like grown-ups, or husbands trying to do the weekly shop.

I make my way back to the dining room and, when I get there, I look down at my sad little list of eligible Hamleigh men. It all feels rather small now. My thoughts are full of Carla. I try to think of other things – Basil’s tweed jackets, Piotr’s ex-wife – but it’s no use, so I settle down and let myself remember.

I think of Carla as a little girl, with a mass of curls and scuffed knees, clutching her sister’s hand. I think of her as the young woman in a washed-out Greenpeace T-shirt, too thin, but grinning, full of fire. And then I think of the Carla who lay in Marian’s front room. Gaunt and drawn and fighting the cancer with all she had left.