Tim saying that he’d been to see Olive and she ‘wasn’t her usual self’. She hadn’t been her usual self for about five years because of the onset of dementia. Maddie bit the side of her lip, frowned and leant in towards the screen to get a better view. Tim had said she was asking for Stan constantly and getting angry with the nurses. He hadn’t said anything about the money or what had happened. Maddie tried to put that out of her mind for the moment and concentrate on the call.
It was thirty-six degrees outside. A fan whirred noisily above their heads, blowing a warm waft of air across her shoulders every few seconds. It was welcome and annoying at the same time. The place was full of backpackers hunched over screens, sipping cans of cold drinks, condensation dribbling down the side and pooling on the tables. A few of them had abandoned their screens and were simply using it to escape the heat.
‘Hello, Mrs Brown, I’ve got Olive here.’
Maddie peered at the screen and could just about make out Olive in a wheelchair. She looked thinner than she remembered, and quite hunched.
‘Hello, Olive! How are you?’
The woman on the screen squinted at them and narrowed her eyes. ‘What’s that?’
‘I said, how are you? I’ve got Ed here. Are you well?’
‘We had fish today.’ She smiled.
‘Good. That’s one of your favourites, the battered cod!’ Maddie smiled back and noticed Clare had put her hand on Olive’s shoulders.
Clare said: ‘Olive, tell them about the Giant Sudoku – that Beryl cheated, remember!’
Olive sat in the chair expressionless, then looked the other way.
‘Maybe tell Olive what you’ve been up to?’ Clare looked at her and Ed.
‘Aunty Olive, I’ve been surfing!’ Ed said to the screen.
Olive stared back. ‘That’s nice. But we need to get to the doctor’s.’
Clare gave her a sideways look. ‘No, Olive, we’ve just been.’
‘Olive.’ Maddie’s tone was like that of a schoolmistress. ‘I’m going to be back soon, OK? I am changing my flight today. I’ll be back to see you and we can go for a stroll in the gardens. I’ll bring a catalogue with me and we’ll choose some Christmas decorations! You like those! Soon we’ll be putting a small tree up in your room, OK? Is it cold there? When does Maybank put up its decorations? Remember last year they put them up so early!’
Olive squinted at them on the screen.
‘It’s very hot here,’ Maddie carried on, more for herself than Olive. She stared at the screen, willing there to be some sort of spark of recognition in Olive’s eyes.
Clare patted Olive’s shoulders. ‘Do you want to say something, Olive?’
The ceiling fan whooshed around, a gentle breeze flicking Maddie’s fringe up and then back down onto a damp forehead. Up, down.
And then Olive turned to Clare. ‘Who are these people, dear?’
Maddie felt like her heart might break.
22
Olive
‘It’s not as if she uses it, does she?’ One of the care workers; possibly Annoying Annie or maybe – Olive leant to the left – was it Kind Clare? You could never tell at some angles, same green outfit, same belt across a puffy waist, a fringe, no, yes, it was Clare – not, thank heaven, Pongy Peter, the nurse who came on after 5 p.m., the one who had BO and didn’t believe a word you said, had that patronising voice you knew he would use on pets or small children. How you doing today? Like she was a two-year-old. Whenever he spoke, Olive wanted to say, ‘Are you going to put me on the naughty step?’ But if she did that she’d be sent straight to the Dementia Ward, so she didn’t risk it. No, Clare was a good girl. She took proper care of everyone; she listened to them.
Clare was tugging gently at a blanket underneath Beryl and cajoling her to lift her legs. ‘C’mon, Beryl, you know it’s not yours.’
‘But Olive doesn’t use it anymore! It’s mine!’
Olive watched the scene unfold as if she was an observer to her own argument. Yes, she did use that blanket, and Beryl knew it. It had been given to her by… by… It was there, just there and if only she could retrieve it… nice girl, Maddie, yes! By Maddie. She knew it was wool with a delicate blend of heather purple and light mossy-green. It had been from Marks and… Marks and… oh blast, well, that shop. She’d had it for fifteen years and it was one