Should she have picked it up? Was there a child crying somewhere because they had lost their favorite toy? How could that be, on such a wild and remote island where no one save for the doctor and his housekeeper appeared to live? It was very curious indeed. She must remember to ask John about it.
Chapter Five
London, Spring 2018
The shopping cart had a faulty wheel and Eve yanked it sideways, narrowly missing a display of turquoise baked bean cans. She could imagine the fuss if she knocked over the towering pyramid: the apron-clad supermarket assistants would come running, possibly the manager, shoppers would tut judgmentally and any small children in the vicinity might scream. She could do without any of that today, thank you very much, and breathed relief as she passed it without incident.
She consulted her list again, and checked the contents of the cart. Milk, bread—“the soft stuff, none of those chewy grains if you please” her grandmother requested—bananas, oatmeal, ham, tomatoes, green beans, and broccoli, sparkling water and a trio of prepared meals. That was everything. She pulled the bothersome cart toward the checkout, noticing as she did, buckets of bright yellow blooms. Daffs. Grams’s favorite. A couple of bunches of those might cheer her up. On impulse she shoved them into the cart and then reached into her jeans pocket for her bank card.
* * *
It was past noon by the time she had battled the traffic back to the house, and her stomach growled in hunger as she pulled up. The yeasty aroma of the loaf she’d chosen from the baker’s wafted toward her from the shopping bag that swung from her elbow and reminded her of how long it had been since breakfast. Eve juggled her phone and the keys, looking for the one that would open the door to her grandmother’s house.
“Hello!” she called into the echoing hallway.
No reply.
Halfway along, a steep set of stairs led up to the first floor, and she noticed with annoyance the stack of overdue library books at the bottom. Damn. She had meant to take them back that morning. Sitting on top of them was a pile of folded clean washing and a pair of well-worn hiking boots with cherry-red laces rested on the step below. It would be a long time before her grandmother wore those again, but they had sat unmoved at the bottom of the stairs for months. Eve had at first wondered whether to tidy them away but had decided in the end to leave them be and so they’d stayed there, gradually acquiring a layer of dust and taunting her with their memories of paths long ago explored together.
A long, tiled corridor stretched past the stairs to the back of the house, where the kitchen looked onto a pocket square of a courtyard. Her grandmother’s room was what used to be the dining room, off the corridor on the left. Grams had moved there last month, after a couple of weeks in the hospital, when it became obvious that her injuries precluded access to her bedroom on the floor above.
“Grams!” Eve called out again. “I’m back.” She put the shopping bags on the floor outside the room before tapping gently on the door. Opening it a fraction, she peered in. The curtains were still drawn and she could just make out a humped shape under the covers. No movement. She must still be asleep. Eve retreated from the room and made her way to the kitchen, stowing the shopping in the fridge and cupboards before pulling out a board, butter dish, and the bread to make lunch for them both.
She filled the kettle, flicked it on, and while it was boiling she assembled a tray. Linen napkin, china cup and saucer—“never a mug, thank you very much”—and a matching plate. She sliced the bread as neatly as she could, scraped on butter, added ham and some cucumber and cut the sandwich into triangles. She rummaged through the cupboards and found a vase for the daffodils, then tiptoed into the bedroom and placed them on the bookcase opposite her grandmother, where she’d see them as soon as she woke up.
* * *
Eve had taken her last bite of sandwich when she heard the cry. Swallowing hurriedly, she raced into the bedroom to see her grandmother sitting up in bed, eyes wide, long silver-gray hair a lion’s mane about her face. She had the almost translucent, papery skin of the very old, and though